Posted on 03/07/2010 11:12:34 AM PST by Oklahoma
How to Handle Sudden Unintended Acceleration: Video
In this video, PM senior automotive editor Mike Allen accelerates his car to 55 and then stops it—while the throttle is still open.
DO • Brake. Brake once, don't pump or ride the brakes. This will only heat up the brake pads, potentially overheating them and making them fail. It will take more force than you're used to to make the vehicle stop. Use both feet if you need to. • Shift. Move the gearshift into neutral. If the throttle is truly stuck, the engine will redline and make a lot of noise, but it won't be damaged. The injection computer will keep it from over-revving. Leaving it running will keep the power brakes an power steering working normally. Obviously, if your car has a manual transmission, simply stepping on the clutch pedal will slow the car. • Steer. Steer your car to a safe place off the road and away from traffic.
DON'T • Pump the brakes. • Shift into park. (Which won't engage at speed anyway.) • Drag the brakes. • Shut off the engine. (Well, shut off the engine as a last resort, but it may affect the brakes and steering, which will become heavier, although they'll remain operational.)
Risky stuff...throttle by wire is pretty mild compared to steering and brakes...and throttle by wire is already being implicated here. Hopefully, the body count won’t have to go too high before these companies realize that enough is enough, and they start to let people drive their cars again.
I just know that for years I have listened to Toyota owners savagely bashing American car companies while nearly worshiping their overrated cars. While I enjoy watching the Toyota quality myth get exposed, it is sad Americans had to die for it to happen.
“Screw being diplomatic.”
You should see me on other blogs (LOL). Here it’s mostly our people, so I try to stay on nice terms...even if they’re way off on some issues (like this).
The emergency brake is very weak. It’s really a parking brake to keep the car from rolling when parked. It can be used to stop the car if the brakes fail, but it will be a very gradual stop. Unlike the main brakes it’s not strong enough to overcome the force of the engine.
Some cars do, yes - they use an electronic gear selector, either a knob or pushbuttons, or even a normal looking gear selector that isn’t actually mechanically connected to the transmission.
A more limited form of this is more common, where only “P/R/N/D” actually do anything in terms of moving a lever on the side of the transmission and the remaining “3/2/1,” etc, are just switches that tell the transmission computer what gear you would like to be in (as the hydraulics inside the gearbox have been replaced by solenoids and it is no longer possible for manual un-electronic gear selection to occur). This limited form has been around since the late 80s and is generally quite reliable.
I’m not convinced of that explanation; plus these days, it doesn’t matter who owns the factory they’re cranked out in - the parts are designed in-house and then farmed out to the lowest (generally) bidder. That’s how Toyota ended up using CTS-made throttle pedal assemblies instead of Denso ones.
Another part that serves the same purpose may be made in the same factory but not resemble the defective one in the least because some *other* maker designed it and put it out for bid.
Given the relatively recent adoption of throttle-by-wire designs, the "real world" durability of the hardware is as yet unknown. I'm pretty sure that these problems are more likely to show up in all vehicles as they age and wear.
Let's be sure to give credit for this mess to the federal government, which basically mandated that design by requiring that electronic stability control be standard equipment in all vehicles by model year 2012. And they want to call all the health-care shots, too... what could possibly go wrong?
Strangely, Jaguar’s had TBW since 1997 and had no SUA problems. People used to complain that it was too sensitive about sensors being out of range and the like, forcing the car into ‘restricted performance’ mode.... until the Toyota SUA incidents showed up - at which point the complaints all disappeared.
I wonder why. :P
Actually the author of this article does his best to tell people what to do. Unfortunately he gets it all wrong in believing that most of it will work(and he needs to educate himself). These are the days of drive by wire. In Toyota’s case these systems do not respond in a runaway. So this guy is just blowing a lot of hot air and trying to act like he knows something when in fact he does not.
For Toyota(modern years):
Trying to shift into neutrual will most likely be ignored By the computer when in this situation.
He is right about using the brakes all at once to try to stop. However first hand accounts of people who had this happen suggest that the brakes are not strong enough to stop the car in this situation. They in fact cause loss of control.
You would be so lucky to be able to kill the ignition in these cars first thing if you could. That is if you are able to hold the ignition switch down for three seconds with one hand while you are flying out of control down the highway. And that is if the computer will even respond to that. If you can’t handle your car without power steering for a few seconds then you have no business driving it.
The fact that the USA allowed these designs to ever exist in a US car is just beyond me. They are purely about the cheap cost in making the car, and are not designed for safety or for “What if” situations. It was purely assumed that there could be no system failure. That is a pathetic assumption that anyone who has ever worked in software and hardware electronics for any length of time can attest to.
Many of the cars that are afflicted with possible SUA will shift into neutral when you move the gearshift lever as that is a mechanical selection and the computer has nothing to do with it.
It’s just that most people panic and either push the lever the wrong way or don’t do it right.
From what I hear...Toyota has been been using shift by wire for a while now. In such cases you have no direct mechanical control of shifting. Your shift lever is connected to a sensor that tells the computer what gear you want. The computer controls the transmission. The point with these cars is that all systems are going drive by wire. I have been told that even some of the braking systems in some cars are going that route. The power steering recall for Toyota and GM....Is...You guessed it....Drive by wire for the power part(Electric/Electronic power steering). Luckily they still have mechanical back up. But for how long? And what happens if the power part decides to work against you? Pretty scary stuff.
You hear a bit incorrectly.
First, the only brake by wire cars in the US are Mercedes E-classes with Sensotronic. There aren’t any US market Toyotas currently equipped with this technology.
Second, yes, the gearshift and sensors issue is correct, BUT neutral is a mechanical override that the computer cannot interfere with. At least one owner who had a runaway engine was able to get his car to a dealership by flicking his car in and out of neutral. The problem most people encounter with doing this is that the slapshift +/- gate is right next to drive and if you’re trying to get neutral, going over into that gate is really easy when panicked.
Third, the power steering recall is for the electric power steering pump. It dies, often mid-turn. It can’t ‘work against you’. That isn’t drive-by-wire at all.
>> They are purely about the cheap cost in making the car
They’re for being able to put 200+ hp in a front-wheel drive car and still letting the car pass emissions standards, to make them easier to insure, and to make them “drivable” by people that lack the skills to handle the hp.
I don’t think they make the car cheaper because a cable is a lot cheaper than a position sensor on the pedal and throttle and the computer in between. It’s another case of the Nanny State and its regulations meeting the Law of Unintended Consequences.
All these TBW cars need a kill switch that doesn’t lock the steering wheel.
He was driving a 2010 Camry. Are you saying it isn’t one of the models subject to sudden uncontrollable acceleration?
Good to share with some of my students . . .
some of whom have had trouble stringing simple sentences together well in their writing.
“There have been 37 fatalities. That sounds pretty bad to me.” And “by a Toyota-owned (20something%) Japanese company. The quality responsibility is of course with GM who used the part but....” “While I enjoy watching the Toyota quality myth get exposed, it is sad Americans had to die for it to happen.” PROUD TO BE RIGHT
“Thirty four fatalities” is what I read and that is spread over nearly twenty years of the problem. That is only around two per year which isn’t much, is it? And I’ll bet most of those were caused by wadded up floor mats and hitting the wrong foot pedal, not some mysterious exotic fly by wire software glitch.
We get it you don’t like Toyotas but that isn’t the issue. The issue is the media led lynch mob going after a non-union company for a really small problem. All cars manufactured by all companies have problems some big and some little. People die from poor design, poor craftmanship, poor maintenance, and poor reactions and that will never change.
“Third, the power steering recall is for the electric power steering pump. It dies, often mid-turn. It can’t ‘work against you’. That isn’t drive-by-wire at all.
It is one step away from drive by wire. And the power steering part is controlled by electric motors which in turn are controlled by electronics. The GM circuits shut down when the motors act erratic. I am not so sure that Toyota even does that. Say what you will, but GM is way ahead on the safety issues.
As far as the fly by wire brakes are concerned. I never said that Toyota had them at this time. I was just making the point that they exist, and are on the way to all cars.
And again...There is more than one person out there claiming that they could not get there Toyota to go into neutral when this happened to them. One of the cases I read(and I have read very few first hand)...They finally did. It is not acceptable for it to be difficult to get the car into neutral. On one of the car forums I read that Toyota was now fully shift by wire with no mechanical override what so ever.
Even as early as the 1980’s cars had Throttle position sensors. The difference is where it is placed, and how it is operated. Even as of 2000 GM still had the sensor mounted to the throttle body(where it is not exposed to so much snow, water, and abuse). It and the butterfly air intake flap were controlled by a mechanical cable from the gas peddle. If the sensor called for full throttle and the butterfly was closed then the engine would just flood out and die due to lack of oxygen. This was the mechanical safety. Also the ignition switch was still a mechanical disconnect of power to the ignition. I am not familiar with the most recent years of GM. But if they messed with that setup then they should not have been allowed to do so.
I am saying he did not do his homework. He did not take everything into account, and made too many assumptions. When I first heard about all of this then I made the same assumptions that he did. When I found out just how much of these cars have gone to drive by wire, then I realized I was wrong about my original assumptions.
So lets say you are connected to the internet with a dial up modem. You have MS office on your screen, and you are 3 pages into printing 10 pages on your printer. You are also listening to an audio CD in the CD Rom Drive. Now your computer crashes. What happens to all the processes that were currently in progress. In what way exactly do they fail? You never know do you? Well this is the kind of car you are now driving. And Toyota never even said “What if” when they were engineering the car as far as I can tell.
A driver with a manual transmission will instinctively push in the clutch. But a lot of drivers with automatics just panic.
““Thirty four fatalities” is what I read and that is spread over nearly twenty years of the problem. That is only around two per year which isn’t much, is it? And I’ll bet most of those were caused by wadded up floor mats and hitting the wrong foot pedal, not some mysterious exotic fly by wire software glitch.
You better read this:
More drivers file complaints after Toyota fix
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100304/ap_on_bi_ge/us_toyota_no_fix
And don’t forget that some of these acceleration issues do not show up as such. For instance there is this guy who claimed this is exactly what happened when he crashed his car into whatever and his passengers were killed. He was of course convicted of killing them on purpose, and now sits in prison. When he gets out then I hope that he gets to OWN Toyota. That is because of the way they tried to hid this issue at the cost of more lives.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.