Ok, you’ve just linked to an article showing general statistics about all types of complaints about cars vs market share.
What exactly does that have to do with the specific category of vehicle speed/acceleration? (answer: nothing)
Why don’t you just go read the complaints about vehicle speed/acceleration for yourself. Compare the nature and pattern of the Toyota complaints over the last 10 years to the nature and pattern of complaints in the same category for other manufacturers, you will see that there is enough of a consistent pattern to the Toyota complaints that is not really found with the other manufacturers that it appears there is something going on.
Human problems also extend to misreporting/exaggerating/leaving out important details of stories including those relating to what actually happened on the way to and at the dealership.
Of course humans will report things wrong. Not only are the Toyota engineers fallible (as well as all engineers), so are the humans using the cars and reporting the problems. That’s pretty much a given when dealing with humans. I don’t think this is new information.
However, when independent people make similar claims over a 10 year period, do you think they are conspiring against Toyota? Are they targeting the Lexus and a few other models for some reason?
Re: Misreporting On the way to the dealer
Are you saying that the person may have done something he/she is not supposed to do that caused the accelerator to get stuck and remain stuck such that the mechanics couldn’t figure it out?
Re: Misreporting At the dealer
Or are you saying that the dealership disagrees with this person’s version of what happened and/or that they do not have a record of it?
Key questions:
Do you believe that it is impossible that Toyota (or other automobile mfg’s) can have a problem with their vehicle speed control system?
Do you believe that complex systems involving mechanical and electrical components can be made perfect for consumer products?
Do you believe that problems with door locks and transmissions are also user error?
Your post under reply included the comment “how can you continue to think that the human is causing that problem?” in the face of the “car driven to dealer” story. My answer to your rhetorical question was that the story could be inaccurate because stories are themselves human. If you think this is a given and not new information, then perhaps you should have answered your own rhetorical question (or not asked it in the first place).
When my wife went in for her Matrix’s recall, she was told the problem was with the accelerator pedal assembly and they would fix it with a metal shim that would keep it from sticking. She complained about how half-assed that fix sounded and they eventually relented and replaced the entire assembly with a new Japanese one. The woman at the counter explained that they had pedal assemblies made in the US and ones made in Japan and that it was only the US batch that was causing problems.
This is just my account of what they said and who knows if they were bullshitting or just ignorant or quoting the company line or whatever.
There are/were two pedal assembly suppliers talked about, CTS (US) and Denso (Japan/ROW). The CTS design had a friction shoe inside which interfaced with the pedal arm to give a desired pedal feel. The story was that in some cases the friction shoe could cause the pedal to stick or be slow to release. The shim is to move the friction shoe away from the pedal arm so it can’t bind.
Yes, but given that Toyota has confirmed the incident, your theoretical speculation doesn’t add any actual data, it’s basically meaningless. Of course we know that without confirmation pretty much anything could happen - maybe ABC was lying - maybe the story was from The Onion.
And my question wasn’t rhetorical, it was trying to understand the person’s logic.
No it caused you (eventually) to make this post indicating that Toyota had confirmed the incident, information which you had not previously provided. Previously, you had only linked to a news item giving the driver’s account. Thus my post was useful. Such is the nature of discourse and debate.
I listened to the audio from the Saylor 911 call.
I’m 99% sure that Saylor is the example you’re remembering.
I’m hazier on this, but I believe his concern was that the vehicle would flip over if he did that.
Aside: I’m thinking that we should just program vehicle PCM ROMs to kill or substantially retard fuel flow if the brake is depressed more than about 1/3 of the way.
Yes, they build a flipper into the car so that if you do something out of the ordinary it just comes out and flips your vehicle over, just to teach you a lesson. Great Og, people have no idea sometimes.
Preaching to the choir here, sir.
I’ve conducted fact-based research on rental cars produced by General Motors, Ford and ChryslerCorp which proves that shifting from D into N and then R at the vehicles’ governed top speed causes nothing worse than the engine stalling.
It’s hard to get statistics, but I personally feel that the vast majority of SUA cases are driver error. I’ve personally stabbed the wrong pedal on more than one occasion, and the brain is a funny thing. When the driver thinks his/her foot was on the brake, and it’s the driver’s word against the car’s, the driver tends to get the benefit of the doubt. Most of the Toyota SUA cases are also probably driver error, save the one obvious hoax that made the news.
Of course, driver error can’t and shouldn’t explain them all. But when you’re talking about a few hundred cases out of millions of cars, and then you throw out 80% of those cases due to driver error explanations, we end up talking about a vanishingly small percentage to look at for manufacturing defects.
Back in the day, it wasn’t entirely uncommon for a throttle return spring to break or slip off. Maybe it was that most cars had manual transmissions, or that keys actually turned cars off, or that you could pop the hood and say, “ah yes, that spring is broken,” but the mystery wasn’t quite the same.
Furthermore, a lot of this “the brakes can always stop the car” logic comes from the Audi SUA era, when cars weighed 3000 lbs and had 90hp engines. Throw 300hp at the brakes and they’ll overheat very quickly, rendering them useless. At worst, you might get one chance to apply steady pressure and stop the car, but the longer you drag the brakes (as you might if you’re not sure what’s going on at first), the more likely you are to be screwed. If you’re like the CHP officer and you can’t figure out how to get the car in neutral or turn it off, then you’re facing an unfortunate situation.
Bottom line, I see no reason why this can’t be explained by normal manufacturing defects in the electronic throttle’s servo motor (the modern equivalent of a broken throttle return spring) combined with newfangled ways of turning a car off and putting it in neutral. I don’t really buy the floor mat thing or the throttle pedal thing, but if one DBW throttle out of a million is bad, that’d be sufficient to explain the number of legitimate cases of SUA that I believe are out there. Since SUA affects every automaker to some degree, I suspect the hype around Toyota will eventually be replaced with a more universal fear.
In any case, I’m saving this question for the Rapture, because I think that’s the only time we’re going to discover the truth.
I’ve personally experienced “the floor mat thing”, albeit in an '81 Rabbit with aftermarket floor mats. Freaked me out a bit, but I wasn’t going very fast, the thing had no acceleration to begin with, and it was a stick (not sure they even offered autos in those old diesels). I successfully shifted into neutral without flipping the car over and came to a stop.
Heh heh … as a teenager I conducted inadvertent fact-based research into this very issue in my parents’ Chevrolet Astro van. While going down a hill at about 45mph I tried to shift into neutral (thinking it would save gas, as I recall) and accidentally pulled it all the way into reverse. I remember staring at the thing and thinking “Oh, dear, that wasn’t ri-” right before the whole van shuttered violently and the engine died and the vehicle jerked to a halt.
I was afraid I’d killed the transmission, but it was fine, just needed to be started back up. My uncle and cousins who were passengers in the car never let me live it down, though…