The thought occurred to me when I just watched this online news video about a representative case. Notice how thoughtless and panicked the guy sounds, even though he’s only doing a whopping 80 mph. on the interstate - he literally sounds like he’s in some sort of trance state commensurate with blind, mass hysteria panic. The staccato answers, the bizarre pauses - It hasn’t even occurred to him to try putting the car in neutral or to even turn off the ignition!
It’s weird to me that the most realistic answer anyone can come up with is sticking floormats - no computer problem has been discovered or reproduced in any way. Yet time and time again, people caught in these situations are using phrases like “it seemed like the pedal was moving on its own” or “it was like the car had a mind of its own.” By extension, I feel like they’re really saying is “it was like my body was moving on its own and I wasn’t in control.”
Mass Hysteria is a legitimate phenomenon - what are the chances that this is simply that?
You tell me. Of course, the cop could have just told him to put the car in neutral and let him slow to a stop… but in any case, at least that story had a happy ending.
Edit: Can’t see videos on the computer I’m currently using but it just occurred to me that the story I linked to may have been the same as yours. In the article I link to it mentions him hitting 94 mph, not 80, so someone else will have to let me know.
"During the two 911 calls, Sikes ignored many of the dispatcher’s questions, saying later that he had to put his phone on the seat to keep his hands on the wheel.
Leighann Parks, a 24-year-old dispatcher, repeatedly told him to throw the car into neutral but got no answers.
“He was very emotional, you could tell on the line he was panicked,” Parks told reporters outside the CHP’s El Cajon office. “I could only imagine being in his shoes and being that stressed.”
Neibert told Sikes after the CHP caught up with him to shift to neutral but the driver shook his head no. Sikes told reporters he didn’t go into neutral because he worried the car would flip."
As has been said a number of times, the Toyotas in question are what are known as drive-by-wire, which means that there are no mechanical connections between the controls and the systems they control. The driver is entirely at the mercy of the computer.
As it stands now, there is a good chance that the car’s computer would not allow a shift into neutral, and the shutdown procedure requires the driver to depress and hold the start/stop button for about 3 seconds to shut the car down.
Well, to be fair, 80 on the freeway when you want to do it is one thing. 80 on the freeway when you weren’t planning on it is quite another. If that happened to me, I’m sure I’d know somewhere in the back of my head that I should put my car in neutral and slow to a stop. . .but I’d probably have a good bit of “OMGWTFBBQ.” Momentary panic is not mass hysteria.
Besides, I thought that some people at least had been able to reproduce what occurred, though I guess Toyota’s disputing that.
I heard it reported on NPR yesterday (though only once) that the incident in question happened just after he left a Toyota dealer insisting they check his car, but it wasn’t on the recall list.
Hysteria + get-even in my book. I’ve got 150,000 miles on a 2004 Prius, and have never had a single problem with it.
The brakes are computer controlled, too. And even if they weren’t, OEM brakes are, shall we say, not as good as one might expect. Most cars do not have the benefit of Brembos, they tool along with brakes good enough to stop the car under normal use with one or two panic stops in a short period of time. It isn’t hard to fade the brakes on a modern car with OEM brakes.
Does drive-be-wire control the gear shift and brakes as well? And what about the steering wheel? I’d think that if there were anything on a car that shouldn’t be turned over to a computer entirely it would be the steering, gear shift and brakes.
Being blown off by the dealer. And to possibly set up a lucrative lawsuit.
Drive-by-Wire is a vastly improved system. Contrary to these vaguely menacing statements, it’s a huge upgrade, not a downgrade. Analog systems actually have more points of failure and possibilities of things going wrong, particularly as a car ages.
The short version though is that while things like this do rarely happen, there’s . Toyota didn’t issue a recall until it actually became clear there was a problem. Most “mysterious and unexplained” acceleration problems are unreproducable. And theya re probably caused by the drivers. There are a lot of such complaints every year, but there’s no evidence or pattern to them. Toyota actually did the right thing, and issued a recall when the situation because clear.
I can see how in general terms drive-by-wire would be an improvement in regard to such things as anti-lock braking and oversteering and so forth, but I wouldn’t expect that a computer would always know what’s best in every situation. And besides, computers can fail themselves. I’d be very reluctant to drive a car that wouldn’t let me override the gear shift or turn off the ignition or to count on the steering mechanism following the wheel whether the computer was working correctly or not.
I had a 2004 Prius with 190,000 miles and no problems at all. I now own a 2010 Prius with 20,000 miles and no problems. I have experimented with shifting to neutral at 75 MPH and had no problems doing so. I have not tried stopping the car with my foot fully on the throttle pedal. Might try that tonight. I do know that if I press on the pedal with the car in N or Park the engine does nothing. It would be interesting to know the effect of pressing the brakes and throttle at the same time. Maybe the computer will recognize the brake application and reduce the throttle.
When I last had my oil change, about two weeks ago, they did say they were going to flash a new program into the braking computer.
The initial brake application is fly-by-wire via electric regeneration, but further application results in mechanical application.
I agree that such problems are almost always elusive. That is what I found most amazing about the recent report: It’s detailed, unambiguous, and well-documented. In most cases, test engineers trying to reproduce this type of problem wouldn’t come up with better evidence.
The car was serviced three weeks ago. Based on the known evidence, to me at least, it looks more like a car defect. If there is some evidence that comes up that he had a beef with the dealer, or a history of frivolous litigation, then that’s a different story.
The US government forced Toyota to do the right thing.
My understanding concerning brakes and stopping in a situation like unintended acceleration is that the brakes will stop any modern car (sorry, can’t locate a cite at the moment).
However, that is if the driver fully depresses and hard.
If the driver hits the brakes, but not with fully, constant effort, then brake fade will quickly occur as the brakes overheat. Further attempts at braking will result in further fade, and finally feeling like you lost all braking ability.
So again, depressing fully and hard and not letting off will stop a car at full throttle, as I understand.
Not the same problem, but my 2008 Prius has had electrical issues which rendered the push on/off power button and dashboard display non-functional. Upon starting the car, everything came on except dashboard display did not light up. The power button on the car didn’t function, and removing the key from proximity to the car did not work either. I removed the key and took it inside the house, but the car did not shut down.
Gear shift worked fine, but the beeping sound when shifting to reverse did not happen. Spontaneously after 20 min of driving, all dashboard display appeared again as normal. This has happened 3 times in the last year. Dealer is unable to replicate the problem and has no solution.
I too have tried to shift into neutral while at speeds and it works fine. Of course, this is when all systems are functioning normally. If there is some sort of electrical/computer control problem, I could see that overwhelming the gear shift control as well.
I still drive the car regularly and am not in any sort of hysteria, but I do feel more apprehensive than I did before. My only solace is that there are many more “functioning fine” prius models out there than ones that have problems. No comfort if your car accelerates to 100mph on its own.
Here’s a film clip from Popular Mechanics, where one of their drivers demonstrates braking a Toyota (one subject to the recall, but not yet remediated) while under full acceleration. It stops in slightly over the normal stopping distance.
I conclude that there may be some rare thing that might have caused it once or twice, but that the rest is a case of the popular delusion of crowds.
As others have noted, P.J. O’Rourke had an article out years ago about the Audi sudden acceleration issue, which was officially declared to be entirely due to driver error. That’s right, “the dumb buggers pushed the accelerator instead of the brake.”
Are you thinking that he was actually standing on the gas pedal?
That sounds to me like he was confusing “putting it into neutral” with " pulling the e-brake." I would be concerned about doing the latter at high speed for fear of losing control.