jeez, the tone of that article is absolutely absurd.
The Toyota Witch Hunt
21–30 of 111 posts
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#22The Mythbusters tried to slam a car into reverse at speed. What they discovered, is that there are safety mechanisms to prevent this from happening in automatics.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the Toyota problems had nothing to do with the mats--they are drive by wire and the computer was slammed on the gas without the pedal being depressed. Depending on when this occurs it could be deadly even with an expert driver.
Please forward your proof of this to Toyota and the congressional committee to which Toyota swore this was not the case. It's tempting to blame drive by wire, since electronics is black magic to most people. Keep in mind that most passenger jets in the sky are fly by wire, these days. For you to point blank claim this to be true, when it's been flatly denied several times, seems a bit over the top, don't you think?
Really? I think it was an article here (maybe, maybe not, I'm pretty hung over today) that mentioned that the problem was that the primary and backup pedal position sensors' wires could short and max out.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#24I bet there is a mechanical/electrical issue that is blown way out of proportion, and human error in some of these issues.
Once I accidentally slammed on the gas thinking it was the brake. (I got confused switching from a manual transmission to an automatic.) It was scary...the car jumped a curb and my driver's ed teacher was furious. He slammed his brake and it stopped the car.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#25Can someone explain to me why Congress gets involved in investigating things like Toyota's manufacturing defects or the way college football teams are ranked?
Does Congress have a legal mandate to investigate anything it deems to be interesting/fishy/a potential target for legislation? Has Congress always conducted these types of investigations or is it a modern phenomenon?
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#26Wow. A wonderful article. The real question is, just how in-control is the computer. And how much has to go wrong such that uncontrollable acceleration happens and nothing can override that acceleration such that no matter what you do the computer makes the car go into "drive" and accelerate to the max, without responding to other parts of the system like the breaks and such.
The accelerator pedal would have to be immovable, frozen in place. The ignition switch would have to lock or otherwise malfunction The shift lever or clutch or automatic shift lever would have to malfunction The brakes would have to overheat (does not really happen much in a production car). It is not 100% true that brakes will always overpower the engine, but the cases in which they don't are the ones with massive 7…
If you were creative and knew something about cars, you could pull one of many fuses from the fuse box. On cars I've serviced, the computer fuse is always in the driver kick panel, so just rip off that panel and start yanking fuses while watching the road.
Unfortunately, this is probably considerably more dangerous than driving while on your cellphone.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the Toyota problems had nothing to do with the mats--they are drive by wire and the computer was slammed on the gas without the pedal being depressed. Depending on when this occurs it could be deadly even with an expert driver.
Please forward your proof of this to Toyota and the congressional committee to which Toyota swore this was not the case. It's tempting to blame drive by wire, since electronics is black magic to most people. Keep in mind that most passenger jets in the sky are fly by wire, these days. For you to point blank claim this to be true, when it's been flatly denied several times, seems a bit over the top, don't you think?
car complexity is exploding; its not far fetched. Of course it's denied.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the Toyota problems had nothing to do with the mats--they are drive by wire and the computer was slammed on the gas without the pedal being depressed. Depending on when this occurs it could be deadly even with an expert driver.
Please forward your proof of this to Toyota and the congressional committee to which Toyota swore this was not the case. It's tempting to blame drive by wire, since electronics is black magic to most people. Keep in mind that most passenger jets in the sky are fly by wire, these days. For you to point blank claim this to be true, when it's been flatly denied several times, seems a bit over the top, don't you think?
Complaints of out of control acceleration increased several times over after moving to DbW and some recent complaints have noted that no floor mats were in the vehicle (which makes it hard to blame on floor mats):
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/business/la-fi-toyot...
Toyota is claiming it's not the DbW system, but they also thought they had this issue fixed a long time ago. It's a hard thing to prove unless you see it yourself (unlike a broken cable like we used to have before DbW).
Even Woz thinks is the DbW software:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10445564-64.html?tag=mncol...
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The accelerator pedal would have to be immovable, frozen in place. The ignition switch would have to lock or otherwise malfunction The shift lever or clutch or automatic shift lever would have to malfunction The brakes would have to overheat (does not really happen much in a production car). It is not 100% true that brakes will always overpower the engine, but the cases in which they don't are the ones with massive 7…
> The accelerator pedal would have to be immovable, frozen in place. In recent Toyota vehicles the pedal isn't connected to the throttle--it's drive by wire. In theory the computer could continue accelerating regardless of the gas pedal's position.
I've designed systems like this. You use redundant potentiometers to sense throttle position. If they don't match within 5%, you power down.
You also toggle bits in your code. One in the main loop, another in any interrupt service routine that you are dependent upon. These bits then go to a GPIO so that the GPIO toggles. If the ISR freezes or the main loop freezes, the GPIO quits toggling. You then have an hardware, RC-Diode type circuit, that stays high if it's input toggles, but goes low, if it's input goes low and stays low, or goes high and stays high. The output of this circuit drives a relay, so that if the CPU quits toggling the GPIO, the relay clicks off. The output of that relay is a dead-man's switch that powers down the vehicle. The end result is a hardware fail-safe if the CPU misbehaves. There are other tests to confirm that the relay isn't frozen, that the RC-Diode circuit isn't frozen, etc.
So, in theory, if a high-school sophomore designed the vehicle, you might have a problem. Otherwise, I think you don't give the engineers that design these systems enough credit.
Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt
#30I hold the conspiracy theory that these issues are being so aggressively sought out in an attempt to bring Toyota's image down to the level of American auto manufacturers.
I've been beginning to suspect this as well, mainly because of all the media coverage this has been getting.
If this theory is true, it's saddening because Toyota's image is completely tarnished in many people's eyes, and they won't be able to recover from this for years (if ever).