Thought to call 911 (like what is 911 gonna' do for you right now?) but nobody thought to turn off the ignition?
Did you know how to turn off the ignition in that car before the story?
I didn’t.
“Thought to call 911 (like what is 911 gonna’ do for you right now?) but nobody thought to turn off the ignition?”
You can’t turn off the ignition until it is in neutral or park.
Until you get to a lower speed you cannot take the car out of drive.
The only thing you can do is to stomp on the break as hard as possible and hope you can lower the speed far enough to get the car into neutral.
After that you had better not shut off the ignition because you lose your power breakunit and probably won’t have enough breaking power to stop the car.
Turning off the ignition would make the car hard to steer. The driver should have applied the brakes and shifted to neutral.
Just heard on the news this morning that the co-founder of Apple said he thinks it’s the software.
Anyone know if the pedal sticking or is the car accelerating uncontrollably (independent of pedal input?)Big difference. If it is a mechanical obstruction of the pedal, the car would reach a max speed for that pedal position. Otherwise, "exceeding 120 MPH" sounds like a run away acceleration to me. That would bring into it things like the cruise control actuator, wheel speed sensors, software, electrical, grounding problem.
One would think that if this were *only* a mechanical obstruction of the pedal, it would be fixed by now. As an Engineer, that it occurs in many models over many model years and the description suggest runaway acceleration would not have me looking at floor mats and shims for the pedal.
Or step on the brake, or put the car in neutral?
Or hit the brakes, which are designed to overcome the engine power. Or put the car in neutral.
I wonder how they figured out the accelerator was stuck if they were all dead? I presume they found the carpet stuck up in the accelerator. But 120 mph and the guy didn’t hit the brakes or put the car in neutral? And he was a trained police officer?
That was a strange one. The car was a loaner, and had the wrong carpet in it, and the carpet got stuck. “One of the family members called police about a minute before the crash to report the vehicle had no brakes and the accelerator was stuck.”
There is no rational failure mode that would stick the accelerator AND disable the brakes. The brakes are not fly-by-wire, if you stomp them it will apply the brakes. You can also lock the emergency brake if necessary.
Also, these push-button cars still let you put the car in neutral, although with a stuck accelerator that could overrev the engine.
Turning off a car while driving can be a problem, since it could lock the steering wheel. Toyota said “put it in accessory power”, but with these pushbutton cars, you have to power them off and then power them into accessory, which requires that you take your foot off the brake or it just turns the car back on.
In the Prius, the gas pedal is not only “fly-by-wire”, it doesn’t even directly control gas to the engine, because the car will only turn the gas engine on if it neeeds additional acceleration.