To the best of my knowlege this may still be true. However, the early Citroen D19 had a full pressure hydraulic braking system where a "buuble" on the floor actuated a valve that controlled the brakes. Also, electricall brake operation would be no less "positive" thanthe current hydraulic system - which has NO mechanical linkage from the foot to the wheel.
What the law DOES require is 2 totally independend brake actuating systems - the service brake and the "parking" or "emergency" brake. The 1949 VW did NOT technically pass this requirement as the same cables operated all 4 wheels when the pedal was pushed OR the handle pulled.
And also this. Full Servo steering IS used on construction equipment and farm equipment.
When the throttle is jammed, the advice to NOT pump the brakes is correct. Nothing to do with ABS. The brake booster runs on manifold vacuum - and at full throttle there is NO manifold vacuum - you only have the vacuum trammed in the "reservoir" of the brake booster. That is good for 2, MABEE 3 applications of the brake before loosing ALL boost.
I had a DS21 with the same brakes. Best car I ever had. Too bad they don't import them. The new ones get 80mpg. Something American car makers are incapable of producing. This IS a dumb country.
On the news today they were still talking about the pedal "sticking". If they were referring to the computer not failing in safe, closed mode, or anything remotely like that, I would think they would say the pedal "malfunctioned". That makes their language even more confusing.
Hey, like the '55 DeSoto, with the push button transmission.
Cutting off the air supply would kill the engine also. Stuffing a rag or your shirt in the air inlet may be faster than finding something to pinch a line fully closed.
A good driver also thinks about what can happen. Every once in a while, I'll be driving and think to myself, "what would I do if xxx happened"? Play it out in your head and if that time ever comes, you'll be able to react faster. It is the same type of exercise top athletes use to enhance their performance. It trains the brain.
I don't know whether they are suffering from 'we never had this problem before' syndrome, or if it is a culture or language thing-- but Toyota has certainly blown the PR end of this whole fiasco.
Mid 60s dodge's had that too. When I was 16 my girlfriend's dad said 'take my car' one day. At about 50, I went to downshift to pass a car [because I was that cool] and hit the reverse button by mistake. We came to a rather abrupt halt & the car stalled. After I cleaned the crap out of my pants I got the nerve up to see what the damages were. It started up & was none the worse for wear.
The case where the guy called 911 because he was accelerating was crazy, he was a lame-ass driver, what the hell is a phone operator supposed to do? (The car was later T-boned in an intersection and all died I think).
Here's a quote from today's NY Times
"The Lexus ES 350 sedan, made by Toyota, had hit a sport utility vehicle, careened through a fence, rolled over and burst into flames. All four people inside were killed: the driver, Mark Saylor, an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer, and his wife, daughter and brother-in-law."
There is the concept in the law of comparative negligence. In Jim's example, if the defense can show that it's very likely that crash injuries were significantly worse because someone was not wearing a seat belt, which is a violation of law in many states, I would not be surprised to see the judgement reduced.
No, but it could turn an accident that would have cost $10K in medical bills into one that costs $1mil. Why should the defendent have to pay the entire difference if the plaintiff was violating the law?
You don;t think not wearing a seat belt can have an effect on the severity? In the case under discsussion, the occupants were ejected from the vehicle.
Ever hear of a punitive damage award? If someone is flagrantly violating a law and causes damages, the award can contain a component for punitive damages that is above and beyond the actual cost of the injuries.
Wrong
"Countering The Seat Belt Defense By: IRA H. LEESFIELD Leesfield Leighton & Partners P.A.
2350 South Dixie Highway Miami, Florida 33133 (305) 854-4900
Introduction If you are injured in a car accident, and it is not your fault at all, you expect a full recovery. You may not get one because of the seat belt defense. This defense can reduce the amount of damages plaintiffs can recover for failing to wear their seat belts in car accidents. In most jurisdictions, a successful seat belt defense allows plaintiffs to recover only for damages they would have incurred if they had been wearing their seat belts.
Few topics in tort law have been as controversial as the seat belt defense. Perhaps that is why the following 31 jurisdictions have definitively rejected it: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.(1)
On the other hand, the following 15 jurisdictions clearly allow for the possibility of at least some reduction in a plaintiff's damages for failure to wear a seat belt: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Two jurisdictions are still not clearly decided,(2) and three others do not have fully developed laws addressing the issue.(3)
Within the jurisdictions that allow for application of the seat belt defense, a plaintiff's damages could be reduced under a "comparative negligence" or a "failure to mitigate damages" theory.
Ed Pawlowski wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
any EFI motor would just shut off the fuel injectors or kill the ignition once the RPM limit was reached.
I think my Nissan kills the ignition,it's rather abrupt at the redline. I'd rather the EFI just held the fuel injectors at a limit than the motor start dying like it does now.
I believe DIESEL was mentioned. If a deisel starts sucking engine oil when hot, shutting off the fuel won't do anything - and stuffing rags in the intake can have a minimal effect. A chunk of 3/4" plywood over the intake of a diesel loader engine HAS proven effective in the past.
I haven't heard anything about stick shifts regarding this. Yet I'm sure the pedal is the same. Maybe they are better at putting it in neutral.
I probably would use neutral too. I say that because I used to have a car that stalled even at 60 sometimes, with an automatic. I would put the car in neutral, restart it while coasting at 58mph, and put it back in drive. It took 5 seconds and even the first time it may have only taken 10, allowing time to wonder what to do. I think that would have been good training for this.
I'm still bothered by the use of pedal to mean, apparently, pedal assembly.
Guys with cars might call the whole thing an assembly, but it's the nature of corporate types to use formal, technical language, even when it sounds stilted and silly. Here, where it really makes a difference, I'm really surpised they call it a pedal. Where is their stuffy language when we need it? Yet I too heard, on the radio while almost awake, about humidity. Plainly, the rubber pad one puts his foot on and the steel plate behind it aren't influenced by humidity.
They had two years to solve this. I don't know what they were thinking.
Of course it can. I mentioned below that in calculating damages, the other party's failure to wear a seat belt is relevant. But in deciding liability for the accident, failure to wear a seatbelt by D** isn't relevant unless it somehow helped to cause the accident, or make things worse for P afterwards. It's very rare that not wearing a seatbelt will *cause* an accident. And not wearing one by D*** is likely to cause greater injuries to D, not P, unless D's body slams into P and P is injured that way.
**P = plaintiff, D = defendant.
***D is the defendant and very likely to be the driver. It's possible but pretty rare that something a passenger does or doesn't do causes an accident.
Right. We heard nothing about P's body being injured by D's body.
But punitive damages won't be awarded for failing to wear a seatbelt. It's like driving without a license. That's illegal too, but it's not what causes an accident, and it's not what causes injury. Driving badly, perhaps because someone doesn't even know how to drive, perhaps to the point where he can't pass a driver's test, is what causes accidents. Not failure to have a license, and in all but some strange situation, not failure to wear a seatbelt.
Here's an unusual situation where it might. If one is hit, not stopped but thrown off course, and then he drives into something or over a cliff, maybe someone could argue successfully that if the driver had been wearing a seat belt, he would have regained control of the car and avoided the second collision or going off the cliff. In a case like that failure to wear the seatbelt can be relevant to liability, but in 99% of accidents the seatbelt can't prevent the accident. Or maybe failure to belt one's child or dog could let them run wild and interfere with the driver, but that's very rarely a cause of an accident afaik.
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What you posted below is unrelated to *contributory negligence* rules. You'll note that "contributory" is not used in your quote below, because it is a term of art with a special meaning^^. Many states that once had the contributory negligence rule have moved to comparative negligence, because it seems more fair. I think it's more fair too. That's what is described below.
I said that.
I said that.
The reasoning behind this tends to support what i've said. These states reject the seat belt defense, because failure to wear a seat belt is not what causes accidents. Although it often increasess the injury, these states have decided that the person should be free to ride safely with or without seatbelts.
^^^
I agree with that, and I suggested that it might happen.
^^More about contributory negligence:
formatting link
"At common law, contributory negligence is an absolute defense. If a defendant successfully raises the defense, he would not be liable for the tort. An undesirable result may occur when a plaintiff is completely barred from recovery even if his own negligence was slight.
"Most jurisdictions in the U.S. have modified the doctrine, either by court decision or by legislation, to comparative negligence. Under comparative negligence, the jury reduces the award to the plaintiff by the extent of the plaintiff's contribution to the harm."
^^^Although it's not relevant to this thread up till now, fwiw, I take the opposite view about seatbelt laws. I think that neither drivers nor passengers whould be required by law to wear seatbelts. It's not the place of the government to tell us what to do do in order to protect us from ourselves. And the idea put forth that the government
*may* have to pay medical bills for someone injured could also have them regulating what we eat, what we dont't eat, how much we exercise, and much of entire lives. It's no good.
OTOH, I do think a driver's liability for injury to others should be reduced for the ones who weren't wearing seatbelts, if they would have been less injured if they were wearing their belts. AFAIK "mitigation of damages" has always referred to things done afterwards, so I wouldn't use the term to refer to wearing seatbelts in advance of any accident, but I still think it should limit liabillity.
So, to lessen injuries in the first place, I insist that hitchhikers wear the seatbelt in my car. It's enough I'm giving them a lift, I don't want to be sued later.
Just now for the first time I heard the news refer to the "pedal assembly". They are shipping to dealers a small metal bar that will attaches to the pedal assembly and decrease "surface tension and friction", and this they expect to fix the accelerator pedal.
There is surface tension in the pedal assembly? "Ain't nuthin' simple anymore" but I have no idea why there would be surface tension in an accelerator pedal assembly.
Why wasn't the old system good enough? A pedal on a lever, connected to some rod and pivotrs, or to an accelerator cable, with a spring to pull things back. Didn't this work fine from 1920 to 2000? I know I sound like a codger, but if they were going to make things more complicated, they sure should have been diligent when complaints came in.
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