Toyota Acceleration Issues
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Call me crazy, but don't all cars have brake pedals? :)
Yes - in this case they burned out the brake pads trying to stop the car. The drive system was more powerful than the braking system.
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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Why would he (or the DOT) need both hands on the wheel to reach the ignition button? Was it on the other side of the car or something? Also, as a highway patrol officer, shifting it into neutral should have indeed been "blindingly obvious". I don't see any indication that he even tried it, although your speculation that the gearbox ECU refused to allow a shift out of drive is worth testing. Perhaps some modern ECUs will refuse to shift into, say, reverse while travelling forwards at a high speed, etc, in the same way that tiptronic gear shifts with autoboxes can be ignored/delayed by the ECU under certain conditions (like "it would send the revs too high" as you suggest)... I wouldn't expect such a limitation to apply to shifting out of gear, but then again, perhaps they thought "shifting from drive to neutral with the accelerator floored is bad, why would anyone do that?". Definitely worth testing (by an independent testing company, not yours or mine... even if I had a nice new car I wouldn't try that even on axle stands :D). Sure, there are some design (and serious usability) errors from Toyota and they should be rectified ASAP, but that doesn't negate the fact that there were options which are obvious to anyone with a clue how cars work.
Either ABC or NBC recently reported on the DOT testing including video of the driver trying to shut off the engine with the ignition button. I have no idea why it did not work, but they have documented the problem. That reportedly was why DOT came down hard on Toyota. By the way I am not trying to pick on Toyota, all complex systems have hidden design issues that all too often are discovered by users. Some are benign, others are deadly. The point of my posting is to highlight that the operator is not always at stupid as it might appear at first light. In the aircraft industry, the first response is always pilot error. But deeper reviews frequently point out design or system errors that turn a minor operator error into a disaster. As an aside, Mercedes apparently has a bug in the software (for some models) that causes rapid acceleration away from stops. It is momentary but startling to the driver. Mercedes is aware of the problem, but has not (yet) made any changes.
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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It is relatively difficult to find a standard transmission for sale in the US anymore.
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I can't understand the stories of people who crashed after going 100+ mph in Toyota cars due to unintended acceleration. Why don't people just turn off the engine?
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
Why don't people just turn off the engine?
Because it's not that easy. These cars are electronic brakes, throttle, auto-trans and push button start/stop. These devices have built into them restrictions that stop you from damaging the car, like not being able to change from drive to neutral/reverse/park while under acceleration/speed, and you can't turn off the car until you come to a stop, hence saving you from turning off the power steering/brakes/trans etc and crashing. The only way you can turn off the electronic systems & engine at speed is by holding in the Stop/Start button for 4+ seconds, it's in the drivers manual, unfortunately people don't RTFM so its not common for the driver to know that little trick.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
in some cars you can't turn the engine off while it's driving
I'm curious as to what cars do that. I keep hearing this claim, but nobody ever names the cars.
Jaguar S-Type, Audi A6, and AFAIK, most autos.
