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

Something I learned 2 decades ago (I cant believe it has been that long since my TD classes) is that no matter what happens, maintain control and FOCUS on the problem at hand. If your vehicle is exhibiting a problem, get off the phone, place both hands on the wheel, check your surroundings and calmly resolve the situation. One of the biggest fears of driving an 18 is blowing a steer tire. When that happens all hell can break loose. First the weight transfers rather quickly to the wheel that no longer has a tire, when that happens, the nose will drop, and the truck will pull immediately towards the blown side. Your first reaction is to hit the brakes, WRONG!, do that and you will become one with the ditch. You mash the go pedal, that will transfer the weight back to normal and allow you to regain directional control, then you can ease off the gas, and let the truck settle and get off the road. It happened to me, and instinctively I nailed the go pedal and brought the rig under control in seconds and was able to pull off with nary a problem. What saved my nice person that day was proper training.

Proper Training Prevents Piss Poor Driving.

When your car is out of control, the last thing you want to be doing is holding a damned cell phone. You assess the situation, then try to get the car out of the runaway condition, if you cant shut it down, get it out of gear. There is no car in the world I am aware of where you can't put it in neutral while in motion. Unless the car is non computer controlled, you don't have to be concerned the engine will over rev, they have rev limiters for just that reason.

Todays drivers are taught the basics of driving, poorly I might add. Not one of them is taught how to get out of a situation where lives are at risk. Everyone should have at least 2 hours skid pad training before getting a license. First it will scare the crap out of them, second they will learn how to react and avoid a situation, and third how to deal with it if they cant avoid it. Believe me, there is nothing more scarier driving than seeing your trailer trying to pass you.

 

My point is that, generally speaking, trading from a situation that is already very dangerous, to one that might become equally dangerous but most often will not, is a good trade. An action that helps just 95-98% of the time shouldn't be rejected just because it won't be 100% successful. Unless there actually is a 100% solution, which we don't currently have.

As for being too shocked from the stuck accelerator to be able to handle a stiff steering wheel, that is a driver inexperience issue. That can interfere with nearly all proposed courses of action.

 

the lady on GMA is FOS

simply shifting the Prius from D to N will disengage power to the transmission, and unlike on any other car with a stuck accelerator the Prius accelerator will electronically disengage the motor as well ... no more WOT ... the motor stops

to recap,

one, the lady on tv is a liar

two, shifting to neutral in the Prius is IMMEDIATE, disengages the transmission from the motor, and immediately disengages the EFI

how do i know?
i tried it ten times on surface streets and the highway at WOT at multiple speeds

if my Prius "surges," i now know exactly what to do, and it's exactly the same thing i plan to do in any other car ever manufactured ... shift to neutral

but i'm not worried, because it's not going to happen
because in real life, cars don't surge unless you've done something to cause it

case and point is the floor mat issue
BUT if your floor mat does get caught on the accelerator, simply shift to Neutral and your ordeal is over ... over

the end.

 

After reading the article pointed out in the previous post:
Sudden Acceleration in Toyota Cars Causes Owners to Rebel After Accidents - ABC News

and after watching the linked video linked in the same page of the article:
What to Do if Your Car Accelerates Out of Control - ABC News

I decided to try to brake and accelerate at the same time.
Guess what? My Prius 2010 did brake but it also revved up the engine and could accelerate - I tried it both at a standstill and while driving slowly - in both cases, pressing the brake pedal did not negate the pressing on the accelerator pedal.
Obviously I wrote immediately today to Toyota asking the reason of this nonsense behaviour of the car (software bug, design, some kind of security measure??? - who knows why they made it work that way) and if they are aware about it. Why on Earth should a car (any car!) accelerate when braking?!?!
Obviously when I drive, I use only one foot and in 15 years driving, I have never pressed both break and accelerator pedal together. Nevertheless, I also made Toyota Germany customer service note that, if the accelerator somehow does work by its own, braking will not override it and setting N, turning OFF (keeping pressed 3 secs the button), braking and accelerating are all computer supervised operations. The only mechanical thing remains the braking action via hydraulics (hopefully with no computer supervision) and the brake pedal. As if to say "Let's hope the car does not run Windows!!!!".

Try yourselves to see what your Prius does.
If the justification is only to make sure that in D, the car will crawl from stop without gas, that is BS. There is *no* reason to mimic old style automatic transmission cars. If there is some other reason why that is so, I want to know why - I am waiting for Toyota's reply.
Do you own other cars to test what happens? Including manual gearshift cars, to test at a certain speed, or even in Neutral to see what happens when the break pedal and the accelerator pedal are pressed together???
Unfortunately I did not test this on my Polo before selling it - but then, there is always to clutch to bypass whatever the engine wants or does not want to do by itself....

 

i honestly feel like i'm at a flat earth convention holding a 3D model of the earth ...


put the car in Neutral

that's how it works on a standard shift, that's how it works on an automatic transmission, and that's how it works in the Prius

this is simple

Neutral

 

Because the operator is telling it to.

Heel-toe would be impossible if your interlock was standard (obviously irrelevant for a Prius, but you said 'any car').

 

There is a Prius technique called a "forced charge" that requires the brake and accelerator at the same time:

• with car stopped, hold firmly with the foot brake
• floor the accelerator and monitor the energy flow
• the engine will run to force a charge into the traction battery
• when the battery is full, the engine will slow down and stop

It was a little scary the first time I did it but I monitored the transaxle temperatures and everything stayed normal. With my NHW11 (2003 Prius) it took about 10 minutes to fully charge the traction battery. Personally, I think this should only work when the car is in "P" so the parking pawl holds the vehicle immobile.

When someone is trying to 'rock' a car out of a mud puddle or snow ditch, it is not uncommon to spin up the engine and use the brake and clutch to rock the car. I've never had occasion to try this with a Prius but it is a technique used when cars were much simpler.

Personally I have no problem if the throttle input is defeated by application of brake but that is not my call. The easiest way to defeat power to the wheels is "neutral," which is what I used to test pulse-and-glide techniques on roads empty of other traffic.

I agree that the emulation of a hydro-mechanical transmission is dumb. I would prefer that when I lifted off the accelerator the car would roll as if it were in neutral ... in my case ... shifting to "neutral' accomplishes the same thing. I want regeneration to work only:

• when braking
• when shifted into "B" for downgrades

Bob Wilson

 

There's more to the smart pedal than what I've been describing. There are ways it can be overridden in my car, and I suspect the same is true for the BMWs, and Chryslers doing burnouts. I believe that in my car if I press the brake first, the throttle can then be applied and it is not ignored. BMW didn't have the smart pedal in all their cars until the 2005 model year, so it may also be possible that your friend's E46 didn't have it.

Doing a brakestand in a FWD car would generally involve the hand brake and not the brake pedal. The hand brake does not necessarily cancel out the throttle, even if the brake pedal does.

 

Left foot braking would also be impossible.


Also: Story hit Slashdot. Quite a few hybrid drivers appear to be complaining about similar issues.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/04/0053215/Toyotas-Suddenly-Accelerate-Owners-Up-In-Arms

 

Regarding Neutral - OK, let's do Neutral. But Neutral in the Prius is not a true N, is a simulation. And whether the car will go in N or not, depends on the computer - there is nothing mechanical.
The truth for the Prius is, that practically everything, except the brake hydraulic effect and the brake pedal and the steering wheel, is computer controlled. If the computer, or computers, go bezerk or stop working....well, you're out of luck - and you can try to put N as much as you wish.
Whether this is a problem only for the Prius, I doubt. There are so many cars out there from many other manufacturers using all sorts of electronics to manage gearshifts, brakes, acceleration, etc.
I mean, computer controlled accelerator, is nothing new, rather, quite old. The same goes for computer assisted gearshift (think of Tiptronic from Porsche) - if a Tiptronic decides you are not going into N, you are not going to. And if the gear is the right one, you can go plenty fast with the gas going bezerk, before you crash someplace.

My point was simply - assuming that "everything" is computer controlled, like in most modern cars, especially with automatic gearshift, why, of all the safeguards likely put into place, brake+accelerator is not equal to brake only???

I have to try though what happens not from a standstill, but while driving, keeping the gas, and braking. Maybe this is a case it will not accelerate? I need to find a good stretch of road with no traffic to test it. Braking with the left foot is extremely difficult as it is only used to press fully a clutch and not, to go feather light, on a brake or gas pedal...(the Prius is my first owned automatic - I have only rented automatic a couple of times, where else?, in the US...! )

I hope Toyota Germany replies something like "in case of speed not equal to zero, the gas pedal is overruled by the brake pedal". Or something like this.

 

This is also true of (almost?) every other car ever made.
There are several driving styles which involve the brake and accelerator at once.

Trail braking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Launch control (automotive) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While I doubt all that many folks are racing their Prius, all cars can brake and accelerate at the same time. If you push hard enough, the brakes always win.

 

from my experience the brakes override the accelerator on the prius, that force charge mode that bob wilson mentioned is partly why i think this is the case.

in my opinion i think its drivers that accidently step on the gas, a reason for this could be the pedal feel in the prius may be confusing to new drivers.

 

That's not always true.
Putting stuck floor mat survival strategies to the test: Consumer Reports Cars Blog

 

I was appalled when my local Toyota dealer told me that there was no recall! He said to call an 800# so I did. A nice young man at a call center was going to read me the company spiel on floor mats, but finally, after I pressed him for specific help for a run-away car, he said to press the brake pedal hard with both feet, put the car in Neutral and hold down the Power button for 3 seconds. This just gets more and more strange and unsatisfactory all the time. I saw the photos of the crashed car in California and it had the same kind of floor mats that I had (until I removed them) but I still think that this has to be about more than just the floor mats.

 

Famous last words:

• Hind sight is 20/20 (perfect vision,) foresight is something less.
• Safety regulations are written not in ink but blood.
• That is not a bug, it is a feature (Ok, software excuse)

It is difficult, very, very difficult, to get an engineer, much less a manager, to change their mind about some technical aspect of a product. I'm an engineer and I know how easily we can blind ourselves to what later seems so obvious.

After the 9/11 disaster, we stopped all aviation flights for two days while airlines suddenly rediscovered the 'anti-hijacking' technique called 'locked and re-enforced cockpit bulkheads.' We knew this answer in the 1960s when the very first hijacking occurred! It took four airliners crashed in one day and 4,000 dead Americans to finally implement what was known over 40 years earlier. <grumble>

I am not trying to mute the outrage but offer insight, an all too common human attribute, to "lock the barn door after the horse escapes."

Bob Wilson

 

We may have read different articles. Which cars failed to stop with full throttle?

As I have repeated many times, Hit the brakes and come to a complete stop, do NOT attempt to slow down. Move your right foot off the pedals and use your left foot. That strategy worked in every car in the article you posted. If you had a run away throttle, why in the world would you let it go again with anyone you liked still in the car?

Shift to Neutral, in a Prius this is harmless, but even if it destroyed the engine, you will have survived.

If both those fail you, turn off the engine, but you will lose power steering and power brakes, so it is not your first choice.

 

WRONG!

From the article in CR, testing the Toyota Venza and the Chevy HHR:

"This time we accelerated to 60 mph before we slammed on the brakes. Again, the engines downshifted and fought us all the way down. But by the time we slowed down to about 10 mph, the brakes had faded so much that we weren’t able to come to a complete stop. If the driver had less strength or was traveling at higher speeds, they would not be able to slow down nearly as much."

 

Any halfway intelligent person would shift to neutral and try to pull up on the accelerator or figure out what the problem was. Not our CHP officer though...

 

It may work in a Majority of cars but it certainly does not work in all of them. Many cars that do not have the braking power of the engine at full throttle.

 

TOM AND JIM - merely stating the facts in which i saw. I doubt that GMA would air this to get purposely sued by toyota if this were not factual. just concerned, not blowing things out of what's it worth.