80% drop in unintended acceleration

Some says during the worst of times is actually one's finest hours.
A true test of character.

 

80% drop in unintended acceleration claims once the government started investigating claims of unintended acceleration. 80% of all lawyers depressed. 0% of reports claims due to software error. 0% of lawyers happy about it.

Where is the profit in facts when they could have had unimpeded litigation?

 

Heh! 100% drop off of media interest since it became obvious it was driver error and hoaxes! Now it's "Blah Blah motor co. Has announced the recall of 300,000 Blahs for wheels falling off at highway speeds, now here's Kristen with the weather!"

 

Well, as some of us have stated here, I think BP partly "fixed" Toyota's problem by getting them totally out of the media spotlight. But, yes, the hoaxes and driver error stories stopping probably helped too.

Then we've had all the remedies (floor mat replacements, accelerator shim, sawing off/trimming gas pedals, etc.)

Side note: I brought in my 06 Prius to have the dealer look into an intermittent high pitched squealing (I posted about a horrible noise I heard, months ago), ensure no brakes were dragging and the inner and outer brake pad wear was equal. The service dept apparently sawed off my gas pedal for me. (Neither service writer nor I asked asked for it and he was surprised it was done.) I guess I'll see tomorrow if I'm happy w/the trimming.

 

For the first time, they couldn't repro and I posted the outcome at http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...ng-noise-sound-file-attached.html#post1061906.

Since then, I've still intermittently heard a high pitched squeal (nowhere near as bad as what you heard in the recordings) while not on the brake. Between it being very intermittent and me being so busy, I finally found the time to take in again. It's definitely not the sound of inverter nor MG whines nor anything interior. One can only easily hear it w/the windows down.

Dealer today says they can't repro it, said inner and outer front pads at are 10 mm (I'm just shy of 49K miles) and there's no evidence of inner nor outer pads dragging. They've kept my car overnight to see if it'll repro for them (since I mentioned that I think it might repro more easily if car is left for awhile).

 

Hey, Bob (& others),

I live a few miles from that location & our kennel club meets in a building just a few hundred yards from there too. It's not too far from a highway exit (exit #67, for Rt.31) off of a major interstate (I-84). It is also a food stop for big buses that run from Boston to New York (mostly the Fung Wah line). There is a McDonald's & a Burger King right across the street from each other, but the buses ONLY pull into the Burger King.

Since the food stops are so short & so many people are trying to get served at the same time within such a short time period (with the probability that there are some local customers already there), many people do run across the road to reduce their waiting time by getting food from McDonald's. However the roadway reduces in size from 4 lanes (in the area under the interstate & near the exit & entrance ramps) to 2 lanes RIGHT AT the driveways to the 2 restaurants, thus creating quite a bottleneck in that area with everybody trying to merge & drivers trying to cross traffic to get to the burger place of their choice.

There are a lot of accidents there because of this & it's too bad the road has to narrow there like that only to widen again a few hundred yards further up from there for a major local highway intersection of Rts 31 & 30. However there are some older homes in that narrow section that the owners probably don't want to surrender to the state for them to widen the road in that short stretch. You would think that the difficulty those home owners must have getting in & out of their own driveways might make them reconsider staying there.

So yes, it was probably not in the parking lot (although I only heard about it on the radio & did NOT see the TV news piece) & if she indeed was crossing that busy roadway to get from McDonald's back to her bus in the Burger King parking lot, then any make of car could have hit her---it just happened to be a Prius. The view you provided was looking from the Burger King lot across to the McDonald's lot with only LIGHT traffic & likely the lighting conditions were similar. A driver wouldn't expect to have somebody crossing over the road in that area (although, as I said, it's very common when the buses stop at the Burger King, especially when 2 buses stop there at the same time) & she may have had dark clothing on too.

Ken (in Bolton,Ct)

 

It doesn't by chance sound like a really high pitched whistling, does it?

 

You need to remember toyota changed the cars to remove sticky pedals and carpet trapping. In one of the investigated incidents unintended acceleration happened with a sticky pedal that the dealer claimed to have replaced and did not. Other incidents may not be reported because toyota has properly started using brake over ride software. These were not phantom issues, but real issues that caused accidents some of them fatal. Now that incident reports have dropped to industry norms it is likely that electronics are not at fault. There is no way to tell if software was at fault as this has been changed in many of the affected cars.

 

Yes, intermittent sound resembles a high pitched whistle but it's definitely not wind noise.

The only car I or my parents had I can think of that ever developed a similar problem was our 86 Olds Cutlass Ciera. I don't think we ever got to the bottom of it.

 

Yes, in the North American made Toyotas using North American made parts there were sticky pedals, Toyota has tracked down over 80% of them in it's recall. This does not effect any Prius owners.

And again this does not effect Prius owners as they already did override before this time.

The 2010 Prius had a software update for braking, (not acceleration) and 86% of effected Toyota owners have received it, but no other Prius is effected.

Pedal shortening to avoid any unsecured or incorrect floormats has only been applied to 58% of effected Toyotas, as owners tend to deny they have unsecured or incorrect floor mats at this point in time.

From the start, the Prius was the poster child for Unintended Acceleration, but none of the fixes address Unintended Acceleration in a Prius. None the less, claims are down.

 

With all due respect to toyota on this one, they either covered it up, or illegally delayed reporting. Toyota specified the part, reviewed the design, and knowingly did not report incidents in europe that they documented and turned over to congress. Who said this included the prius. Read the OP's article. Toyota was wrong on this, admited it, and paid a ridiculously small fine.

Again, the article did not say prius on this. Toyota had in the pased refused to add braking over ride to their non-hybrid cars as the NHTSA had requested. They are now doing this. Perhaps actually doing the correct thing reduces the reported incidents. Do you think?

If there was pedal entrapment it is unlikely that the toyota teams even saw this. The owner was likely told by a dealer that it was a problem and they need to have the fix. Again this would not be in the statistics. The poster child for unitended acceleration is a dead family that was driving a lexus, that a dealer had piled floor mats up on. Where you got the idea that the Prius was a poster child is beyond me. It was not part of the sticky pedal recall and had a primitive form of brake over ride.

These incidents are real and toyota appears to be fixing some of their problems. It still has some institutional issues that prevent it from acting in an entirely ethical fassion.

 

There is NO Prius, nor any Toyota HSD vehicle, as of yet with brake override.

"Regen enable", yes, but not conceptually designed as/for "brake override".

The idea behind "brake override" is to have a "failsafe", secondary backup functionality, that puts the drive system into idle or neutral when the standard system fails to do so.

Killing the fuel injection system, for example, in case the throttle is mechanically or electronically failed in WOT position.

 

Your definition. The Prius has brake override by my definition. If you press on the brake, it overrides the accelerator. This action is dependent on the standard ECUs, so it is not redundant brake override, or failsafe brake override. This type of override protects against operator error and pedal entrapment. It does not protect against control system failure.

Tom