Toyota Says Data Show[s] Driver Error

[PBS Poll-435]

Toyota Says Data Show(s) Driver Error

Toyota says data from the black boxes involving "virtually all" crashes blamed on unintended acceleration show that drivers were pressing on the wrong pedal.

By Dale Jewett of AutoWeek via MSN
Date/Time Not Provided


Toyota Motor Corp. says data from black boxes it has inspected show that many drivers were pressing on the throttle, not the brake pedal, during unintended-acceleration events.

Over the past four months, Toyota has investigated about 2,000 reports of unintended acceleration. It has reviewed the data from recorders when a car was in a crash, spokesman Mike Michaels told Bloomberg News.

Toyota has not found any electronic problems with its cars' "drive-by-wire" throttle system.

A report on Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal said that the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration had found that in many cases of unintended acceleration, drivers were actually pushing on the throttle pedal, not the brake pedal. NHTSA declined to comment on the report.

[dionysus]

1. oh boy.

:popcorn:

[PBS Poll-435]

22. !

What!?!




:yoiks:

[Rex]

2. Okay, so why would people DO that repeatedly? Design flaw?

I've been driving for 23 years now and have never done what is being described nor do I know anyone that has. I like how they say MANY drivers, what about the FEW that didn't accidentally hit the wrong pedal? Act of God?

[dmallind]

3. Not going for grammar nazi but why the parens around "s"?

Data being the plural of datum, they would show something. The word is often taken to be singular, and I occasionally use singular verbs with it, but it's really plural.

[PBS Poll-435]

5. !

Personal preference. It may be correct, but I needed an Advil after reading the headline.

[dmallind]

8. Fair enough. I admit it looks weird when correctly conjugated. NT

[tridim]

4. Apple and Toyota should merge.

[Hoopla Phil]

6. No it does not. It shows that the the computer flooded gas and O2 into

the the cylinder heads but I do not see where Toyota has proven that the pedal was mashed by the driver. Toyota has a "drive-by-wire" throttle system where you suggest to the computer what speed you wan to drive at and how fast you want to accelerate. The computer then decides how much O2 and gas to use. Many have claimed that the real problem is in the electronics and that the computer is causing this. I tend to agree with this.

It is foolhardy to trust all to the computer as this system does. The accelerator peddle needs to be hard wired to a butterfly valve that controls the amount of O2 going in. This will prevent a computer caused acceleration problem.

[NoNothing]

11. It will prevent computer problems

But it will cause mechanical problems.

And frankly, if the recorded throttle surge is *not* also accompanied by a brake surge - and if the other engine data corroborate that the brakes were not applied (because brakes do have a mechanical linkage to the pedal) - that suggests a pretty clear scenario.

[madrchsod]

7. the nhtsa declined to comment on a report that is`t released but

the wall street journal claims it has read. so i guess it`s safe to assume the nhtsa released the report to wall street journal and toyota is correct.....the problem was the drivers fault....

[PBS Poll-435]

9. Probably more like Sec. LaHood is busy formulating a response

Report True/Untrue, doesn't matter. Somebody is wrong.

[LostInAnomie]

10. Who would have thought that a company that was knowingly allowing people to die...

... because of their faulty products would try to blame the victims? Amazing.

[Romulox]

12. Toyota pronounces itself "not guilty"! Why even have a trial?

:rofl:

[PBS Poll-435]

13. You have to admit that "no response" from NHTSA is a little strange...

:D

[Romulox]

14. I thought the decision to place Toyota in charge of investigating itself was quite odd.

"Self Regulating Companies"

[PBS Poll-435]

15. Foreign Gov'ts were way ahead of the curve regarding AMD vs. Intel

And are they hassling Toyota?

Not like here...

[Romulox]

16. How many people have died because of the Core2Duo?

:silly:

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18. Too many

:cry:

[taught_me_patience]

17. Now that it appears that GM is out of trouble

the government can back off the Toyota hysteria they whipped up.

[aquart]

19. It was the government and not the dead Toyota owners?

Well, how could they, after all. They were dead. Still are.

The data came from where? The Toyota car computers? I'm sure they're as trustworthy as computerized voting machines from Diebold.

[PBS Poll-435]

20. Still waiting from a response from NHTSA on the OBD-II data...

:shrug:

[Igel]

21. This isn't the first time that brakes have been blamed.

One NPR spot months ago talked to a guy who was involved in the research on the same kind of claim from the '90s. I don't recall the make/model of vehicle.

Nobody really believed him when he said it was just people stomping the gas by mistake.

So he went back and looked at the data again. He found a very strong correlation between age and brake reliability. Apprently if you were 70 or above (or a new driver) you had a much, much higher risk of having your brakes somehow either fail or accelerate the vehicle when you stepped on them. Even if you weren't the primary driver, if it was the brakes it meant the brakes somehow recognized that the driver was either inexperienced or elderly.

This is an interesting way of looking at it. There's absolutely no way a car manufacturer could fairly correctly predict who would buy a given vehicle. There's no way a driver could pick a car with brakes that would likely fail. There's no way the brakes could know the driver's experience or age.

But a driver's experience or age could easily be causally linked to an increased probability of making a mistake. It then meant that there was either just a statistical fluke--people win the lottery, statistical flukes happen--or a design flaw that somehow helped such drivers make this mistake.

This doesn't mean Toyota's off the hook or the current claim is correct. However, since we've already once had a fair number of drivers blame the brakes when it was almost certainly their own fault I'm not sure I feel forced to accept the assertion that because a fair number of drivers blame the brakes there's no way it could be their fault.

[sendero]

23. Something you should understand..

... the same sensor that told the black box the accelerator was depressed told the engine the pedal was down.

THE FACT THAT THE BLACK BOX SAID THE PEDAL WAS DOWN MEANS JACK SHIT.

[PBS Poll-435]

24. Lol!

Cute




;)