“NASA engineers found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles capable of producing the large throttle openings required to create dangerous high-speed unintended acceleration incidents. The two mechanical safety defects identified by NHTSA more than a year ago – “sticking” accelerator pedals and a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats – remain the only known causes for these kinds of unsafe unintended acceleration incidents. Toyota has recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in the United States for these two defects.”
In other words, it was not driver error or electronic flaws, it was sticking pedals and badly designed floor mats. (of course, in some isolated case driver error did occur, and certainly there could have been a couple of electronic failures too)
Note that Toyota agreed and paid it’s **50 million $ fine. **
Just a thought:
If people are too stupid to stop their cars by shifting into Neutral, we should just put a huge red button to the right of the steering wheel that says ‘STOP ENGINE’ that would kick the tranny into Neutral and drop the RPMs to idle speed.
Make the button like this with different letters:
You know, I went to a car wash, and they put the mat back in wrong, causing the accelerator to stick. Even for me, who has been driving for more that 30 years, there was a very scary moment there. Since I was driving a Manual Trans, I put the clutch in, so nothing bad happened, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with being stupid. It’s damn easy to panic in that sitrep.
I recall a recent admission, perhaps from NHSTA, that no problems were detected in the Toyotas that led to the reported stuck accelerators. The recent floor mat issue sounds like an extra precautionary measure. I don’t have the details, but it should be simple. NHSTA keeps statistics, and so do insurance companies. If there is a problem, there will be a higher rate of accelerator problems for Toyotas, and specific Toyota models, than is typical among all cars. I doubt the statistics show this to be the case.
The vast majority of stuck accelerator issues are the drivers fault. People step on the gas when they mean to step on the brake. The gas pedal gets stuck on the floor mat (which aren’t always the factory version) or some other crap lying on the floor of the car. Many cases are made up after the fact when someone on a cellphone rams into somebody, and then claims the gas pedal was stuck. Some are intentional, people pretend their accelerator is stuck to get attention. A few are due to defective cables, rods, or other mechanical parts.
Whenever a story about a stuck accelerator hits the news, people start reporting the same problem for the same make or model of car. In the vast majoirty of those reports, there is nothing but anecdotal evidence of the incident occuring. There is a strong indication these stories are fabricated. Even after enduring a harrowing, death defying ride with a stuck accelerator, brakes that magically stop working, a transmission that won’t shift into neutral, and ignition switches that refuse to turn off, these poor victims don’t take their car in for service.
Until someone can show me some numbers that indicate a higher percentage of accelerator problems for Toyotas proportional to their distribution among all cars, I will consider this story as another irrational panic response to a non-existent problem.
The floor mat issue was identified early on (and was indeed the cause of the crash involving the CHP officer and his family) and a recall was issued (involving zip ties, no less). The sticky gas pedal was also identified somewhat early on and a recall was issued. Reports continued to roll in about SUA, though, with the implication that Toyota hadn’t found the real problem. This report basically says that yes, they had.
However…
Two-thirds of examined cases being driver error isn’t exactly isolated. There was some discussion on the auto blogs as to why the NHTSA didn’t just come out in their report and say that it was mostly driver error when they readily admitted it to reporters. The non-conspiracy conclusion is that the NHTSA/NASA study was searching for an electronic cause, failed to find one, and that’s all they were obligated to report. No need to call out people for screwing up and hitting the wrong pedal if they didn’t have to.
Good to know I didn’t have to wait for the Rapture though
I was thinking of the Saylor guy, where somebody had time to call 911 and talk for a notable amount of time while steaming down the road at 120 MPH.
If he couldn’t have found a big red ‘STOP’ button in that time, stupid applies.
I understand that you might not be able to figure things out in your parking spot, and might still plow into some kids coming out of Sunday School in a church parking lot.
With a little luck, my proposal could keep the accidents in the ‘under 35 MPH’ area, where you’ve at least got a chance of surviving.
""NASA engineers found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles capable of producing the large throttle openings required to create dangerous high-speed unintended acceleration incidents. The two mechanical safety defects identified by NHTSA more than a year ago – “sticking” accelerator pedals and a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats – remain the only known causes for these kinds of unsafe unintended acceleration incidents. Toyota has recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in the United States for these two defects." Bolding mine.
The NHTSA has identified Toyotas as having *mechanical safety defects * relating to " * sticking” accelerator pedals and a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats ". *
Note that the actual NHTSA site sez nothing about driver error. And of course, the LA Times makes a lot of money every year from Toyota ads. :dubious:
In any case, the NHTSA sez Toyota had “two mechanical safety defects”. Toyota paid a **Fifty Million Dollar fine **for those “two mechanical safety defects”. Whether or not there were cases of “driver error” or not is beside the point- Toyota had two significant "mechanical safety defects’ that caused the problem.
Nobody’s denying that there were mechanical (floormat and gas pedal) issues, and that Toyota was fined $50 mil for not issue a recall fast enough. But look at the first few posts in this thread. After the recalls were issued, people still insisted that the electronic throttle was the problem. Naysayers said that it was just driver error. In the “vast majority” of cases (WSJ’s words, not mine), the naysayers were right.
Basically, the number of driver complaints peaked last February and March - at the height of all the fears about unintended acceleration. The article concludes that a lot of it was the additional media coverage (awareness increases -> more complaints). Perhaps so, but it’s just as easy when there’s a known issue to blame the car than a faulty driver.
Also, there’s a limited bit of evidence that the elderly were more prone to sudden accelerations.
Sure, the elderly are usually more responsible for sudden accelerations than younger drivers, but in cases of systemic errors, you would expect the statistics to reflect the general Toyota driving population more closely.
No, neither paper is denying it. But both are emphasing driver error and de-emphasing Toyotas mechanical safety defects. Note the headline in the WSJ "U.S. Points to Toyota Driver Error ", and the *actual report *does *nothing of the sort. *
The actual report never mentions driver error at all, it mentions mechanical safety defects.
Note that the WSJ also gets considerable ad revenue from Toyota. :dubious:
And, note that the driver complaints dropped sharpley after Toyota **recalled the cars and fixed the mechanical problems. ** As your cite sez “This significant decrease to near industry average levels further suggests that the recalls Toyota issued–one to secure floor mats and reduce interference with the accelerator pedal, and the other to replace sticking pedals—may have addressed the problem, as the recent NASA report claimed” CR is a very trusted site, I agree.
Because that was the update. The mechanical defects were old news at that point. The NHTSA study basically said, “Aside from the previously known and understood mechanical defects, it was all driver error, as opposed to some undiscovered electrical problem like people were claiming.” That update is what the newspapers were reporting. I’m sure you can find no shortage of either newspaper covering the recalls in the years leading up to this NHTSA study.
I personally don’t care whether it’s driver, mechanical or electrical. The only thing I really care about is people sticking to the facts and not coming to either of the following:
Premature conclusions
Overly broad conclusions
If you look at the rate of complaints made to the NHTSA, you can see a consistently higher rate of acceleration complaints made against Toyota compared to their overall market share over the last 10 years about.
Go check it out and then come back and make statements after you have reviewed the facts.
The data is available, I believe I linked to the site in a previous post when this thread was current. Go check it out.
The primary thing that leaves this as an open question for me is the incident that Toyota has confirmed in which a person that had been to the dealer previously for an acceleration problem limped his car to the dealer while the engine was pegged.
Toyota’s official statement said basically that they were unable to determine the cause, but did note that pressing down the accelerator and releasing did eventually cause the engine to return to normal.
This is the story told to me by a coworker whose brother works for Toyota in Japan:
Toyota is the largest car dealer in the US. When the US government bailed out the US car companies, this created unfair competition because ownership of these car companies was transferred to the US government. This is why the Toyota fine was levied by Congress, not the court system. From the Japanese point of view, this was an attempt to unfairly cripple Toyota.
I thought this was typical Japanese hand-wringing, but when repubs lost control of the government after 2008, these hearings magically stopped.
Nowhere in the NHTSA cite I linked to is there any mention of driver error at all.
That was the update. If the newspapers had just reported the update, there’s be no mention of “driver error”. Superhal: Actually, the mechanical issues were not all that big, and if Toyota had just issued the damn recall in a timely manner and hadn’t tried to cover it up, there’d have been no fine. Toyota got arrogant and got caught.
