The truth finally...

Release of findings of a study doesn't make for good TV video. Crashed vehicles and distraught people on the other hand.....

This doesn't absolve my favorite car company of the slowness of its responses to government regulators or its other failings, but it certainly ought to reassure people in the overall quality of the brand.

 

Agreed--that's what the off topic sub-forum is for.

 

i feel no sympathy for those idiots who couldn't figure out how to put their cars into neutral. its funny how these acceleration issues are unheard of in places like europe. It was all just a scam by congress to get people to buy american made cars instead. Which is funny because half of fords are made in mexico.

 

i guess that is what the sixteen million dollar fine was for.

 

That is what i have been saying along. That this was a ploy by the US government to help the Detroit automakers. For people who have a short memory, remember what the government did to Audi in the late 1980's and how it eventually destroyed the company.

 

No. This is a very wrong minded comment. I had trouble putting the car into neutral the first time. It is not intuitive to wait 3 seconds. Nonetheless, it's nice to confirm what we all knew: driver error was the basic source of this "problem".

 

Just for clarity, the 3 second delay is when turning the car off by holding the Power button down for 3 seconds. The delay for holding the shift lever to the left to go to Neutral is less than a second.

 

In my experience this is 100% correct. I've done it at 100mph and it's simple.

 

Uh, what did the government do to Audi, other than vindicate them long after the damage was done?

The damage I saw was caused more by the press and the general public.

 

Inasmuch as there was no problem, thus no reason to report a non-problem to government regulators .... will the government return the fine?

 

Were you intending to go 100 mph, or did that fall under "unintended acceleration"?

 

The fine was for toyota hiding a safety defect. There hit team even found that this defect caused unintended acceleration in a customers car, after the toyota dealer failed to fix the car but reported it fixed. The fine was ridiculously low. We all knew most UIA were driver error. Toyota hiding facts about the ones that were not was in the toyota documents given to congress.

 

I've also tested the other buttons at let's say 'higher' speeds.

• Pushing to Neutral disconnects the wheels from the power source
• Pushing the Park button shuts off the power source but steering is easy to maintain
• Pushing the Reverse button also shuts off the power source with steering also maintained

Any of the three will work, I'd go for the Park button in any emergency.

 

This recent finding concerned the electronics of the vehicles. Thus far no errors can be found.

However the fine concerned the sticky pedal issue which was real and which Toyota did drag its feet in notifying the US authorities after it had already reacted in Europe. In this regard I think that the Feds were right in fining them.

The mat issue was dealt with ( twice ) under the direction and guidance of the NHTSA.

The alleged electronic gremlins which all the supposed experts were certain were the true problems apparently don't exist.

 

Dude! You'll flip the car!