Nissan, you just got "Sikes'd"

Saying youre an engineer doesn't make you sound any less ridiculous.

 

The sage continues....

Saw on the news last night that Toyota has now made an admission that their EDL "reader" itsself had a firmware flaw and many past "readings" were incorrect. So when was the firmware flaw corrected, post or pre Sikes....

I guess when it rains it pours...

 

Tell me what part(s) of what I have said sounds ridiculous to you and I'll go back and try to spell it out more clearly and in more detail.

 

It's not just the data. If his story was consistent and only the logger data was different I might suspect a Toyota error/coverup. But his whole story made no sense. He had several different ways to shut the vehicle down and wouldn't do any of them...I call bullshit

 

Googling provides 0 results mentioning any of this... Link?

And sage is a herb, saga is what you are going for.

Lets assume the flaw was found post-Sikes. The (supposed) erroneous readings of the data does not change the data itself. It was made by a mad man trying to escape payments. If this was an ongoing issue, I would expect to be hearing about a case every week since there are millions of units on the road. If it is a firmware issue then every car has the potential to go crazy. From a user base of millions, having all the incidents happen within a specific and very narrow timespan is rediculous. Only exception being if there is a RTC inside that somehow jumps bits when it is close to Jan 2010, but there isn't and it wouldn't so it doesn't.

 

Agreed. After enough white dwarfs were fed this kind of mass BS they became 1a supernovi and exploded. Talk about overreacting! Push em to the Chandresekhar Limit and see what happens.

 

The first time I had a floor carpet interfere, detrimentally interfere, with the gas pedal I was test driving a new Miata. I returned the car, advised the salesman of the situation, and promptly put it out of my mind.

Years later, YEARS later, I had virtually the same thing happen in a relatively new Mazda minivan loaner. When I would press on the brakes fairly hard the engine would surge, so much so that I found myself out in traffic in the middle of an intersection wherein the light had been against me. I removed the offending floor mat and advised the van's owner of the situation.

Should I have done something to more widely "publicize" the safety problem...?

Over all those intervening years how many do you suppose, hundreds, thousands, ?? of those very same incidents occurred before Toyota took the issue public.

 

Where accidents were the result, I would put my money on people wanting to place blame on the manufacture instead of themselves for economic reasons. While I agree with your point, I still feel that most of the incidents are human error.

 

"..I still feel that most of the incidents are human error.."

I would even say the clear MAJORITY are the result of human error, DRIVER error.

But I don't think the most or majority term applies to wanting to place blame on teh manufacturer. Driver's will almost always know if the vehicle did not react to inputs in a standard way.

How many of us have watched that pushbutton start TV commercial sequence without even thinking about...

Push to start...but "what"/how to stop...?

And how many of us would actually get into one of those cars without thinking about the "stop" issue or without the salesperson having told us of the stop "feature" procedure.

Just a bit ago I have a friend take their Toyota in for servcie and was given a Prius loaner. Just a bit down the road at a traffic light the engine QUIT running. He called the dealer to find out what to do...

 

If it means driver may be excused for his/her mistake then I could see them placing blame elsewhere. If you mistakenly stomp on the gas instead of the brake while trying to park your car and you end up smashing through a building or another parked car and are liable for damage incurred then it is likely you will try to shift blame. People do this ALL the time. When money is involved, the trend escalates.

I will admit that there are those people who really think they did press on the brake pedal instead of the gas pedal. They would not be lying intentionally if they swore by their case but that doesn't make them correct and factual.

 

Its not a salesman job to read the manual to you like a child. Starting and stopping the vehicle is all in the good book Toyota provides you.

 

No, but when the operation of a vehicle deviates from the legacy "standard" in a significant way then I am of the firm belief that it becomes the dealer's responsibility to advise, make the buyer fully aware, of those differences.

I just found my way, selectively, through a ~600 page 2011 Acura MDX owners manual last week. It's about time those were made available on a CD, or even a DVD with video descriptive demostrations.

 

Then nothing innovative would ever be done, we would be too busy explaining how things works.

Some Lexus models come with a DVD Quick Start guide, and the salespeople usually do one-on-ones after a purchase for an hour or two explaining every detail. If you can't read, then perhaps you should buy Lexus instead where a salesperson is at your beckon call 7 days a week for any stupid question.

Whether you buy a car or a dvd player, if it comes with a manual it is your responsibility to read it. There is always the approach that some software from the mid 90's tried to get people to read the manual. During various stages of installation it would require you to input the 4th letter of the 6th paragraph on page 18 of the manual or something like that. Perhaps similar lockouts to primary controls until the manual is reviewed is what you are suggesting.

Or you can just be a big boy and read the manual. The Prius does not deviate from normal for any control systems. The entire point of the vehicle is to operate exactly as any other car if you didnt know any better. Things like the forwards creep and the slow engine drag when no accelerator are all key points. It would be more efficient and less work to not have these "features", but to make it a normal vehicle they kept them in...