Toyota's runaway-car worries may not stop at floor mats-LA TIMES

If the 3 secs shut off method is not good on the Prius and all Toyota cars using it, well, then clearly you have not been in recent BMWs, Audis, Mercedes, VWs, Renaults, etc - they have all have (on 1 or more models) start/stop buttons all of which surely will not allow immediate OFF.
Immediate OFF is dangerous - immediate off means, no power steering, no ABS, no traction control, no power brakes, nothing. It means the driver is required to apply a non-typical, *way* higher than normal force to steer/break/control the car.

The last thing you want to do is turning off the engine, even in a self-speeding car. The only really effective thing is set it to N and break it down to a stop.
If the problem of the on/off button is a real issue, on - let's say - Toyotas, then the whole automotive industry has a *big* problem with these on/off buttons.
Too bad that with all the cars using this on/off system already, I have never heard on the news, and trust me, the coverage in EU is just as good (or bad, depending on the point of view... ) as in the US, of people having accidents because they were not able to turn off the car while driving it. Again, turning off a car while driving it, is *really* dangerous.
BTW - in the old mechanical systems with keys, turning off, sometimes enables the mechanical anti-theft lock of the driving wheel - do you really want that to happen???? or are you cool enough, in an emergency situation, to set the key to ACC to avoid the steering wheel to lock?

 

You certainly brought up issues I had not thought off. Is there anyway to keep those systems running or are they all driven by the engine?

 

I don't yet agree with this portion. If my car suddenly began running away, and could not be shifted out of gear, I'd happily trade that problem for all the others you mention.

No traction control? Not needed when engine is off.

No ABS? I drove most of my life without it, and still don't need it 98% of the time. The odds are against this situation happening during that 2%, and even that can still be handled the pre-ABS way -- sloppily, but possible.

No power steering? Been there, done that with both manual steering and with cars that stalled unpredictably. Possibly necessary only at lower, much less lethal speeds. If you can't steer at highway speed without the power assist, your car is too big.

No power brakes? That is already part of the problem with these high speed runaways. The assist is powered by the engine vacuum, which is almost entirely lost when the throttle is stuck wide open, so after a few pushes of the pedal the driver has already lost virtually all power assist. Non-power brakes with a dead engine will stop much faster than non-power brakes fighting against 272 horsepower.

I was fortunate that my one 'uncommanded' acceleration, in hindsight a fatigue-driven pedal misapplication, was instantly terminated by hitting the clutch. The few storied I've heard of folks who rode out runaway engines, fearful of losing power steering and power brakes, and survived, left me mystified. I would rather have killed the engine long before the car reached their peak speeds. The new problems they feared where problems that I'd already dealt with, and conquered, on finicky older cars that stalled frequently and unpredictably.

Is a full-throttle runaway any less so?

 

Agree with this. Power brakes shouldn't be an issue since they will have been already applied when the engine is shut off. In any event the loss of power braking isn't instantaneous with engine shutdown. Yiu still have at least one full power application from built up pressure.

 

I would bet immediate off would kill more people per year than 3 second off. (And I have been in a vehicle during runaway acceleration. We did not turn off the vehicle until it was stopped.)

 

No power steering -- that depends. On vehicles with electric power steering, there will still be power assist. On vehicles with hydraulic assist, steering will require more effort, but is still manageable with a couple fingers at highway speeds. Effort required increases as speed drops, but unless the driver tries to do some parking lot maneuvers at 3mph, they will not have trouble steering the car.

Power brakes are often assisted with vacuum pressure. There's usually enough vacuum reserve for several brake applications. I can bring my car from 70mph to 0 with the engine off and still have power brakes at the end of it.

Safety features such as ABS and airbags do not require the engine to be running to operate. If the key is in the "On" position, then those systems will be running.

A simple fix for Toyota which Bob already mentioned: Make brake application cancel out any accelerator requests. Could be a few simple lines of code for the ECU. Some manufacturers have been doing this for almost a decade now.

 

What cars do this now?

It's bad enough you have to push down the brake just to shift into drive from park all because of the unintended acceleration problems in the 80's. People thinking they were pushing the brake were actually pushing on the accelerator pedal. OOPS.

I still don't understand what all this fuss is about? Put car into neutral --- engine will race. Bring car to a stop using max effort on brake pedal if you already used up the power brake reserve.

Nothing to do with the ignition switch or button and it's just driving 101.

Excerpt from the official California DMV Parent-Teen Driver's Training handbook:

Stuck Accelerator

If your accelerator becomes stuck, you should:

1. Shift to neutral.
2. Apply the brakes.
3. Keep your eyes on the road.
4. Look for a way out.
5. Warn other drivers by honking and flashing your emergency lights.
6. Try to drive the car safely off the road.
7. When you no longer need to change direction and have stopped, turn off the ignition. (Turning off the key locks the steering wheel of many vehicles.)

In addition, when I was learning to drive, they instructed me to do this and if I had space and if safe, use my foot to try to pull the accelerator up from the floor. If one were stuck from the mat, this would have worked and it would have been back to normal.

 

I agree. You loose power steering and has anyone tried driving a heavy car without power steering? Give it a try -- shift into neutral and kill the ignition, then try to steer. On some lights cars it's just heavy but on some heavy cars, it's extremely difficult.

All it takes is a quick accidental touch while looking for another bottom and then you could be royally screwed.

There is a reason all cars have a neutral -- it's a federal law so you can use it if you need to disconnect the drive from the wheels in the event of a problem. That's why it's there.

 

I just have to comment on an article posted a few pages back. It says one of the "Design" flaws in the car is the automatic transmission shift gate may "make it difficult to shift into neutral when the car is moving."

Looks like a standard staggered shift gate to me. It looks like if you have it pushed over to the manual-mode to the left, you have to push it back to the right first before merely pushing up for neutral. How is that a design flaw? I suppose perhaps in the panic the driver moved it over to manual mode accidentally and was flustered why pushing up didn't go to neutral. But just look down to see what's going on. Perhaps he's just use to Police Interceptors (aka Crown Victorias)

Surely when the car shot out of control it wasn't going 120mph right away as he should have been able to control the speed at first before the brakes overheated.

That article just sounds sensational and ridiculous... typical useless media.

 

indeed, shift gate looks standard ... what's the problem here?

excellent post, i don't understand how this isn't common knowledge on the eve of 2010

everyone can text message and drive, but can't cut power from the motor to the drive train?

what next, chewing gum and walking?


thank you :thumb:

 

How heavy are you talking? Hummer? And what speeds did you try, parking lot or highway speed?

I learned to drive with a couple cars that stalled frequently and without warning. Steering was hard only at low speeds, becoming progressively easier when moving faster. But my experience with this was heavily weighted towards a rural area, no traffic on moderate speed side roads, so most readers here will reject that experience.

Since my previous post on this, I remembered a more recent 'sudden engine death' incident -- in the mid 1990s, my timing belt broke, on the Interstate in moderately heavy rush hour traffic north of Seattle. Was it hard to steer? Far from it, anyone who couldn't steer it to the shoulder should not be driving.

The previous decade, my little sister experienced the same thing, under similar circumstances, on the very same freeway. She did even better, reaching an exit, finding a service station, and pulling squarely into a parking space next to a pay phone. Purely on a dead glide from the 'fast lane' of the freeway.

Since then, cars have gained weight even faster than American arses. But have they become uncontrollable when dead? I doubt it.

 

Audi, BMW, Chrysler, and VW.

Yes, tried it. If the vehicle is moving at typical road speeds, it's not difficult at all.

 

Toyota: Mats, not mechanics, are problem | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Bob Wilson

 

Think there is any chance Toyota will give us free new floor mats? I'll take a set of all weather ones, Toyota!

 

If it's an electronics glitch that only happens occasionally, then it's unlikely that they'd find the car still 'glitched' once they pull it out of whatever lake it landed in. At that point, their pre-selected causes are all that they'll state.

My floor mats are nowhere near the gas pedal and I know the difference between the gas pedal and the brake pedal, so if you hear anything happened to me, tell Toyota they suck...

 

Are you talking about NHTSA? Or Toyota? Because the comment from the article is that Toyota is claiming that NHTSA has closed out the investigation. That's the claim I found interesting.

And it stands to reason that they were all satisfied it was the floormat since the earlier reports say that the data recorder was intact but has not been examined. Whatever they saw at the scene was enough to convince both NHTSA and Toyota that there was no need to go through it. One would presume in a very high profile case that NHTSA and Toyota could very well be in opposition on such a matter.

Piecing everything together the scenario appears to be that the floormat crept up between the brake and accelerator, covering the accelerator, the driver panicked when he braked and the car accelerated instead of slowed. He apparently never lifted off/checked with his feet or hands to determine why the throttle was jammed wide open.

:bounce::biggrin1:ound: Same here!

 

Apparently, ABC new is reporting that more issues are involved.

ABC News Investigation Uncovers Reports of 16 Deaths, Over 200 Accidents; Toyota Owners Demand Answers.

Sudden Acceleration in Toyota Cars Causes Owners to Rebel After Accidents - ABC News

Is this Toyota bashing?

 

I have not said this is a Prius problem. The thread title contains Toyota, not Prius. Maybe you should quote someone who got it wrong.

 

Rats, I thought I quoted the guy who said "We have multiple deaths and a known problem" in Prius chat. We don't have those deaths, the folks in (a hypothetical) Lexus ES350 chat might. There is nothing about this accident that hints Prius owners have a problem.

 

An ABC base page has pointers to numerous stories -- Runaway Toyotas.