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The Toyota Witch Hunt

businessweek.com

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Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#71

Post by sliverstorm »

mediaman wrote: post #42
sliverstorm wrote: post #3

Thank god! I have heard only from people who buy into the witch hunt (and an excellent name for it, that is). I am really very glad to see I'm not the only person who realizes most of it is ridiculous and overblown. Hell, even if the gas pedal corroded AND the floor mat held it down, has not one of these drivers even though to reach down and PULL the goddamn thing up? I pray people realize this is folly... I don't kn…

I don't disagree that this has been overblown, but in fairness it would be fairly difficult to reach down and pull the gas pedal up while the engine is raging and the vehicle is undergoing significant forward acceleration, while the driver is presumably trying to avoid colliding into other vehicles and objects. Of course, they should just shift it to neutral and let it redline.

Yes to the second part

as for the first part, doesn't have to be your hand. Depending on the vehicle, you might be able to get your toe under the pedal.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#72

Post by sliverstorm »

By the way, just in case it ever helps anyone:

If you are in a car moving along and you have to kill the engine, or the engine dies, get on the brakes as fast as you can and don't let go. You can ease up on the brakes almost to the point of letting go of the pedal, but don't come off all the way.

The reason is the brakes will maintain the power-assist vacuum from the engine, even when the engine is later switched off, until they are released completely. The 'power-assist' strength will remain for tens of seconds, at least. I've tried this many times before. I can't guarantee it works on modern cars, but it sure did work on my '86 Toyota with standard hydraulic vacuum-assist brakes.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#73

Post by CamperBob »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #25

Can 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?

Toyota walked into a rotating fan blade. This was a really bad time to give Congress an excuse to concern-troll them, given that the government is now a direct stakeholder in the US auto industry.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#74

Post by CamperBob »

jonknee wrote: post #31
cryptnoob wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

... And yet there are out of control cars without the pedal being stuck. "Well, I have many models of Prius that got recalled, but I have a new model that didn't get recalled. This new model has an accelerator that goes wild, but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again--safely." "This is software. It's not a bad accelerator pedal. It's very scary, but luckily…

To be fair, Woz's account seems to be limited to the case where someone uses the cruise control above 80 MPH, far from what the control loop was optimized for. I didn't see anything in what he wrote that could possibly have any bearing on the cases being examined.

Brain-dead cruise control behavior is nothing new. My '92 Porsche 968 would cheerfully redline the engine if you disengaged the clutch with cruise active.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#75

Post by snom370 »

While I agree that the media and politicians are now feasting on Toyotas failures, the fact is that Toyota really botched this. Had they taken the reports seriously earlier none of this would have happened, and lives could have been spared. Apparently they never thought this story could spiral out of control.

People seem to forget that this only happened until after Toyota had repeated recalls, each promising to fix the problem.

Is there a ghost in the machine? I don't know, Woz certainly seems to think so. Replacing floor mats and then gas pedals seems awfully like what happened with the Therac 25 radiation overdoses in the 80s.

(The Therac 25 manufacturer first added an extra hardware switch to the radiation therapy machine and claimed it was "an order of magnitude safer". When more people died, the quick emergency fix was to remove the "up" button from the VT100 console.)

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#76

Post by joe_the_user »

presidentender wrote: post #12
erlanger wrote: post #8

I 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 wholeheartedly agree. The sheer number of failures that have to occur, the low level of action on the drivers' parts required to overcome the problem (put it in neutral! Use your brakes! Use your parking brakes!), the speed and intensity of the government's response, and the fact that GM is so unpopular combine to make the entire debacle suspect.

Considering you haven't presented air-tight evidence for your position, I think you should consider another issue.

The increased use of electronic control in automobiles means that cars now have the problem that software has had for a while; real but difficult to reproduce bugs. When the control of the car has gone away from physical devices like rods and wires, not only is it harder to find the control but any problem that exists just seems creepier. This is another that I suspect is driving the current reaction.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#77

Post by ryoshu »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #25

Can 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?

Any company that deals in interstate commerce -- or international commerce -- falls under the purview of Congress.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 3

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#78

Post by mahmud »

Splines wrote: post #6

This whole Toyota debacle makes me wonder if competing car companies buy cars made by other manufacturers and poke at them in the hopes of having something just like this happen.

The risk of being caught doing that is grounds for bankruptcy and life sentences.

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#79

Post by peterarmstrong »

It may be a witch hunt, but I have a 2008 Prius that has had a number of issues with brakes after potholes etc -- going for about one second without having much effect.

It has happened to me once when I went over a pothole and my wife a number of times (she drives more).

I'm in Canada and my local dealer can't reproduce the problem yet, but put yourself in the position of a Toyota owner who is no longer confident in being safe and who would get less than half the purchase price for a car with The Honda dealer doesn't want Toyotas as tradeins; they can't sell them.

Can you feel the anger?

I don't want to have to buy another car; I want to work on my startup. But I don't want to worry about my family's safety or buying some used car.

Toyota should be forced to buy back their crap products at some reasonable percentage, since these problems remind me of "heisenbugs" in code...

Re: The Toyota Witch Hunt

#80

Post by peterarmstrong »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #79

It may be a witch hunt, but I have a 2008 Prius that has had a number of issues with brakes after potholes etc -- going for about one second without having much effect. It has happened to me once when I went over a pothole and my wife a number of times (she drives more). I'm in Canada and my local dealer can't reproduce the problem yet, but put yourself in the position of a Toyota owner who is no longer confident in…

Or to put it more succinctly: just because there are stupid and/or dishonest people complaining about bugs in a product does NOT mean there are no bugs in said product or that all claims are baseless.

I would bet any sample of 3000 complaints about the Ford Pinto or any product had at least some stupid and some dishonest ones.

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