Toyota Cleared - Driver Error

Demiurge

After all of the glee and hysteria, there are no threads?

"...after examining data from 75 fatal crashes which were blamed on “sudden acceleration” due to faulty electronics, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has come to the conclusion that only one incident was not related to driver error. The incident in question is the high profile crash involving a CHP officer driving a 2009 Lexus ES 350. The vehicle accelerated uncontrollably due to improperly installed floor mats which trapped the accelerator pedal. The crash resulted in the death of four people including the officer."

http://www.dailytech.com/NHTSA+Points+to+Driver+Error+in+Toyota+Sudden+Acceleration+Debacle/article19026.htm

Demiurge

I've read that this story is merely a Toyota plant, though.

gdb

I smell a cover-up & a payoff.:biggrin:

Jstas

You're over a day late there grandpa.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115195

gdb

That's OK "grandpa".....I won't post in any threads created by Psycho-Boy, so this thread was needed afterall.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Jstas wrote: »

You're over a day late there grandpa.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115195

I'm not sure if he linked the same story, but one key thing that I see that's different is that this one specifically says that only 1 accident was NOT due to driver error, and from what I gathered from the thread yesterday they were still pinning the accidents on a mechanical pedal problem and bad floormat design.

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting both correctly or if I'm missing something, but that's a key distinction to me, because it changes things from "Toyota made some bad design and people died as a result of it" to "People died due to driver error", again maybe I'm missing something.

I never understood anyway how someone could die from a floormat jamming on the gas pedal, it's not that hard to fix even while you're moving...

I will say though that having a bad floormat design is pretty lame, how do you eff up something like that? I almost WANTED this to be an electronic systems issue, because at least something like that is complicated enough that I can understand **** it up, but a floormat???

To me there are some things that just shouldn't be a problem because you've been doing it for so long. I had the same kind of reaction when we stood and watched a guy's house burn down because he had one of the Ford trucks with the faulty cruse control modules parked inside his garage and it caught fire (while it did not even have the key in the ignition) and burned the house pretty good before the fire department showed up. I remember standing there thinking "how do you eff up a cruise control module?"

stuwee

I saw this woman in tears on CNN, she made folks think it was a major F up, I wanted to puke! Stupid people shouldn't drive period. (.)

This crap didn't work on Audi, shouldn't work for Toyota either in my book! Floor matts my butt! In the words of my good girlfriend Jennifer Saunders from 'Ab Fab', "why not have a stupidity tax, lets just tax the stupid people" :rolleyes:

Jstas

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

lotsa stuff was here. Deleted for size, not to ignore

Well, Demi's link is to an article fro July of 2010. The Detroit news link I posted was updated with the new info from the NHTSA press release/conference last night at like 10pm.

gdb

I once had a beer bottle wedged under my brake pedal.......I digress. 75 fatal crashes caused by "driver error" is too much to swallow. Intermittent electrical problems are the hardest to diagnose because they are intermittent. and not easily reproduced. Do Toyotas cause driver error?:eek:

Jstas

stuwee wrote: »

I saw this woman in tears on CNN, she made folks think it was a major F up, I wanted to puke! Stupid people shouldn't drive period. (.)

This crap didn't work on Audi, shouldn't work for Toyota either in my book! Floor matts my butt! In the words of my good girlfriend Jennifer Saunders from 'Ab Fab', "why not have a stupidity tax, lets just tax the stupid people" :rolleyes:

How do you determine who the "stupid people" are? What are you going to do when you get a letter stating that you owe "stupid tax"?

AsSiMiLaTeD

gdb wrote: »

I once had a beer bottle wedged under my brake pedal.......I digress. 75 fatal crashes caused by "driver error" is too much to swallow. Intermittent electrical problems are the hardest to diagnose because they are intermittent. and not easily reproduced. Do Toyotas cause driver error?:eek:

Didn't they have the same thing with Audio some years back, where there was a similar issue and then they ultimately found it to be driver error?

They had the best engineers on the planet looking at this whole thing, I'm sure if there was an issue they'd have found it.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Jstas wrote: »

Well, Demi's link is to an article fro July of 2010. The Detroit news link I posted was updated with the new info from the NHTSA press release/conference last night at like 10pm.

Well then what the hell's the point of posting an article from over half a year ago???

Demi, wtf dude?

bobman1235

gdb wrote: »

Do Toyotas cause driver error?:eek:

(I am not saying that the following is the cause of the crash, it is just an opinion)

Toyota specializes in making cars that are as separated from the driving experience as possible, and thus attract people who do not really put a focus on teh act of driving. People buy Toyotas because they never break, and they're comfortable. They don't have performance or style, the types of things people who LIKE to drive gravitate towards. So yeah, Toyota attracts people who are probably more likely to not be good at dealing with a lot of situations. IMO.

And that's not meant to be offense to Toyota drivers here; obviously statistically, if any of what I said above were actually true, it would be a TINY percentage of overall drivers, but I would venture to guess, if such a thing were measurable, a proportionally LARGE percentage of Toyota vs other manufacturers.

JimKellyfan

There are actually more lawsuits forthcoming that Toyota has an extended court date.
I don't much of the details, but I do know more charges are coming, but not for a few years, for obvious reasons and economy impact, not necessarily justice.

JimKellyfan

Nonetheless, my Toyota is sold, mostly.
I got 7k down last Sunday, and the remaining this Tuesday.
And the truck was replaced on Super Bowl Sunday, as I called a dealer friend and said cash right now and he opened @ 3 so I could take one of his clunkers in need of repair.
But, still cheaper than the Tacoma payment.
No more new ones for this guy.

billbillw

This whole thing has always had me scratching my head. If you ask me, all of them are driver error, no matter what fault the car had.

If the accelerator was stuck, I just don't know who out there doesn't realize that you can always throw a car up into neutral by pushing the selector back to N and brake safely. If its a potentially fatal accident or a blown engine, I'd take the blown engine.

scottyboy76

haha, thats a hell of a feeling to get a beer bottle under the gas pedal, even worse when its something big enough to block gas and brake, do you let the car slow down or start trying to reach down and clear it.

Animals can really screw up a nice drive too.

By the way, i never once heard anyone say if drivers tried to put the car in neutral.

The horrible 911 audio of the accident that killed the highway patrolman and his family, went on and on, neither the driver or passengers or the 911 operator thought to say, shift it into neutral.

Never heard anty reportage about whether that can be done in all toyotas, it can in our 2004 highlander, we tried it after hearing about all this and i went over it with my wife, so if something happened, floor mats or otherwise, shift it.

Demiurge

bobman1235

Re : the neutral thing, this came up about a billion times when all this stuff first came out. I believe that some of the affected vehicles could not switch into neutral when the throttle was wide open, to avoid "damage". While I doubt that ANYONE tried to do it, it likely would have had no effect. Kind of like if you took your modern automatic and threw it into reverse on the highway - nothing would happen. Hooray for electronic controls..... :rolleyes:

cokewithvanilla

I find it funny that everyone but a police officer doesn't know how to drive... all in the same manner... all in a Toyota... all in a small time frame.

I wonder how they managed this "study".

bobman1235

It's more likely thtat things like this happen all the time, and people just come out of the woodwork when they hear about it on the news.

Kinda like everyone always has random symptoms, but they flock to the emergency room when those symptoms match something they saw on 'House'.

People are sheep and beleive anything the TV tells them. If TV says "Toyotas cause accidents," everyone with a Toyota who had an accident thinks "hmm, maybe it wasn't because I was texting and putting on makeup, but because my car is faulty!!"

AsSiMiLaTeD

bobman1235 wrote: »

It's more likely thtat things like this happen all the time, and people just come out of the woodwork when they hear about it on the news.

Kinda like everyone always has random symptoms, but they flock to the emergency room when those symptoms match something they saw on 'House'.

People are sheep and beleive anything the TV tells them. If TV says "Toyotas cause accidents," everyone with a Toyota who had an accident thinks "hmm, maybe it wasn't because I was texting and putting on makeup, but because my car is faulty!!"

This.

tonyb

cokewithvanilla wrote: »

I find it funny that everyone but a police officer doesn't know how to drive... all in the same manner... all in a Toyota... all in a small time frame.

I wonder how they managed this "study".

How many do you hear of now ?? I would guess a good portion were trying to jump on a class action lawsuit, or one of their own.
People are sheep for the most part as Bobman points out. We seem to have this mob mentality lately. Thats the bad guy....lets get him....regardless of waiting for facts to come out.
The media is a whole nutha story.

Jstas

tonyb wrote: »

How many do you hear of now ?? I would guess a good portion were trying to jump on a class action lawsuit, or one of their own.
People are sheep for the most part as Bobman points out. We seem to have this mob mentality lately. Thats the bad guy....lets get him....regardless of waiting for facts to come out.
The media is a whole nutha story.

Well, the media fuels it because of the shock and awe style of reporting now. They also brow beat you with it. You could be watching The Simpsons and you'll see a "FOX News Break" where they say something like "Are Toyotas careening out of control and killing passengers? Find out TONIGHT! At 10!" Then they run similar news breaks every half hour. When you get to the news time, they go over a bunch of "breaking news!" Then some local stories and then they hit the "hard hitting expose" where some arrogant, self-important twit in an expensive get up, holding a microphone shoves their obnoxious pie hole in to some poor schmucks face and gets all pushy.

It's all designed to make you feel uncomfortable about it and guide your opinion about the news story. Then they will give you an update the next day with a fancy name like "Toyotathon 2010: Beigepocalypse!" where they harp on each little detail that is either unfounded or has no solid evidence yet to back it up.

When the story loses it's ratings luster, it goes away, never to be heard form again because reasonable and sane resolutions don't get ratings. Meanwhile people are running around with a very incomplete story and shouting at the tops of their lungs about it and running on pure emotion about how the news said you should be worried about it.

billbillw

bobman1235 wrote: »

Re : the neutral thing, this came up about a billion times when all this stuff first came out. I believe that some of the affected vehicles could not switch into neutral when the throttle was wide open, to avoid "damage". While I doubt that ANYONE tried to do it, it likely would have had no effect. Kind of like if you took your modern automatic and threw it into reverse on the highway - nothing would happen. Hooray for electronic controls..... :rolleyes:

Sorry Bob, but my research shows this is not true. All of the cars in question will shift into neutral. Car and Driver did a test with a V6 Camry that was on the recall list. It shifted into N with no problems. The Lexus does not have any system that prevents shifting into N either.

In addition, C&D showed that the brakes alone were more than powerful enough to overcome the engine, even at highway speeds if you just stand on the brakes continuously. The problem comes when people pump the brakes instead of standing on them. Pumping depletes the vacuum assist.

An issue with shifting into N might also arise in a panic if the driver has the manumatic type shifter slid over in the manual gate instead of in D. Its not that it won't shift into N, but the driver gets confused.

bobman1235

billbillw wrote: »

Sorry Bob, but my research shows this is not true. All of the cars in question will shift into neutral.

Meh, I've been pushing that this whole debacle has largely been driver error anyway, so I'm glad that's the case. I just remember hearing that stuff about neutral when it came up before, but there are so many conflicting stories about all this stuff I never saw a definitive study.

I did see the thing about the brakes though.

tonyb

Jstas wrote: »

Well, the media fuels it because of the shock and awe style of reporting now. They also brow beat you with it. You could be watching The Simpsons and you'll see a "FOX News Break" where they say something like "Are Toyotas careening out of control and killing passengers? Find out TONIGHT! At 10!" Then they run similar news breaks every half hour. When you get to the news time, they go over a bunch of "breaking news!" Then some local stories and then they hit the "hard hitting expose" where some arrogant, self-important twit in an expensive get up, holding a microphone shoves their obnoxious pie hole in to some poor schmucks face and gets all pushy.

It's all designed to make you feel uncomfortable about it and guide your opinion about the news story. Then they will give you an update the next day with a fancy name like "Toyotathon 2010: Beigepocalypse!" where they harp on each little detail that is either unfounded or has no solid evidence yet to back it up.

When the story loses it's ratings luster, it goes away, never to be heard form again because reasonable and sane resolutions don't get ratings. Meanwhile people are running around with a very incomplete story and shouting at the tops of their lungs about it and running on pure emotion about how the news said you should be worried about it.

Exactly John, they have become a Hollywood style newscast along the lines of E-news. We saw this with swine flu, bird flu, flu shots, flu anything. Instead of real journalism, we get the latest escapades of Charlie Sheen, Cyrus, or Kim Kardashian. The country is on fire in so many ways and we get stories about steriods in baseball, and hall their butts infront of congress. You would almost think they want to fill your head with meaningless stories designed to capture your focus on one hand, while failing to report news that matters on the other. Like a magician, watch this hand. Eh...it is what it is, won't be long before we have to bail out the news organizations too. Or have we already by way of G.E. ?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are we actualy agreeing on something ?:biggrin:

cnh

Personally speaking. My wife drives a Prius, but I commandeer the LONG Highway journeys in it. We had the recall done and the floor matting replaced, gas pedal, etc. After two years of driving (before that), I did notice that my gas pedal stuck, momentarily, on I-95 N.H. but I just hit the break and slowed down no problem. I can't say I remember this being a continuing problem and my wife, who is hardly the greatest driver I've seen never had a problem.

Having driven in the Great White North for two decades I'm not in the class of drivers bobman describes. Used to driving in ice, snow, blizzard-like conditions, fog, and high winds and downpours with almost no visibility. BTW, Prius not a particularly good car in BAD weather! Not enough control as described above!

But I've now gotten a NEW recall notice concerning "water-pumps" or something of that variety?

Has anyone heard anything about that?

cnh

Jstas

tonyb wrote: »

Exactly John, they have become a Hollywood style newscast along the lines of E-news. We saw this with swine flu, bird flu, flu shots, flu anything. Instead of real journalism, we get the latest escapades of Charlie Sheen, Cyrus, or Kim Kardashian. The country is on fire in so many ways and we get stories about steriods in baseball, and hall their butts infront of congress. You would almost think they want to fill your head with meaningless stories designed to capture your focus on one hand, while failing to report news that matters on the other. Like a magician, watch this hand. Eh...it is what it is, won't be long before we have to bail out the news organizations too. Or have we already by way of G.E. ?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are we actualy agreeing on something ?:biggrin:

Well, I wouldn't be so ticked off about it if people used their heads for more than a hat rack. It's always an extreme response on either side of the coin. Nobody ever gives a happy medium.

That's why I get in to most of the arguments about it. I refuse to see Toyota as the deity they've been made out to be. It just so happens that in the past 5 years, the one manufacturer that has made the biggest turnaround is Ford. I like Ford. They've been good to me. Not because of the vehicles I buy but because when I was actively racing in my podunk amateur classes, they were supporting me and my compadres. Free shirts, hats and stuff at every event. Engineers would come from Dearborn to see how we were using their stuff and what we were doing to it. They got ideas and changed designs to improve things and make it easier for people like us to deal with and be successful. They cared, they still do and whether you won or just ran in a final elimination, they were standing next to thee time booth with a contingency check. They make it easy to go out and win with their stuff. If you aren't winning or breaking, they help out to get you going right. They were loyal to me, that's why I'm loyal to them. It's got nothing to do with brand bigotry and blind allegiance like many people think. It's far from blind, it's hard earned.

I don't discredit Toyota. They didn't get this big building junk. They will fall from their pedestal if they keep up the shoddy ways and abandon their quality control policies that got them where they are though. I'm not a fan of Toyota because I don't have any interest in what they sell. It doesn't interest me. Especially when I feel I can get similar products elsewhere for a better value. I've never been enamored with Toyota or Honda for that matter. I never thought they did that much better and I refuse to buy in to the hype. I look at Toyotas, Hondas, Ford, Chevies, BMWs, whatever brand you want critically. There stuff I don't like about Fords. Certain cars I've had from Ford were plagued with problems and I avoid them on the used market because of that. But lately, there isn't alot that Ford's been doing wrong. People are taking notice and I think it's good to see so much interest in what a U.S. company is doing again. They worked hard to get there and they deserve it.

But Toyoda is right. Toyota has lost it's way and they deserve every bit of bad press they get. It's going to take time to recover from it. But the incessant brow beating of the same damn story over and over and over again is tiresome. Especially when they only tell you the bad stuff on page 1 while what they are actually doing to change things gets relegated to either page 10 or never makes mainstream press and is limited to industry rags.

Some levity is in order. Ford has done wrong in the past, so has GM and Chrysler. Ford took great strides to fix that and Alan Mullaly is a genius when it comes to running a corporation. Dude has insight and vision that are unmatched. GM is working to change things too even if they are doing alot of chest thumping and grandstanding. At the same time though, the Asian makes like Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and so on can do wrong. But, like the American and European makes, it doesn't as much matter what they did wrong but how are they fixing it. That matters. Toyota responded but honestly, not fast enough. They are getting run through the wringer for it and justifiably.

The media though, they make it an emotional experience. When people get all emotional, they make it personal because they feel hurt. Even though they have nothing to do with whatever company is under scrutiny. But it gets people talking about it. Just like yesterday one of the news guys was saying "IT'S GONNA BE 0 DEGREES TONIGHT!" Which was a load of garbage 'cause it never dropped below 12 degrees unless you were up in the Poconos. Why do that? Why tell people a half truth just to get them all spun up? What purpose does it serve? None, that's what. It's just an excuse to goad the sheeple into watch one particular news broadcast over another but everybody was talking about what they said about how cold it was going to be!

BAH! The news pisses me off. I don't read much mainstream news except to see what's going on and then find another source to find out about a story that interested me. I find the aggregators like Slashdot, Digg and so on are much better at reporting news than the actual "journalists" if you can call them that anymore. Most times, the only time I don't get the feeling that someone is trying to snooker me is when I'm reading the sports news. It's hard to lie about statistics.

Earthy

I had an old early 60's ford when I turned 16 with a six cylinder. I drove the heck out of it. One day I dumped the clutch and the motor mounts broke, then engine twisted and dropped. The throttle was stuck wide open, the clutch didn't work. Even at 16 I was quick to figure out I could shut the engine off. I just used the key to keep my speed safe while limping home. Key off, brrrrrr, key on kaboom.. grrrrr, key off..... You get the picture.

The moral of the story s#%t happens, adapt and overcome!

Joe08867

It's amazing how sheepish people are. Sounds like the Audi 90 thing all over again. They found it was stupid drivers and not the cars on that also. But that wasn't until after a bunch of people tried to sue Audi for unsafe acceleration.