Snow Cover On Roof Provides Wind Protection?

[Doug Miller]

Depends on the vehicle. In my experience, the overwhelming majority use the exact same set of pads/shoes.

[Doug Miller]

Only that small number of fools who make a habit of using the brakes and throttle simultaneously.

Absolute authority at any speed over, say, 5mph. Obviously.

[trader4]

And how many of these procedures does any reasonable person do with a RENTAL car, The Lexus death car driven by the CA highway patrol officer was a rental car. Is it reasonable for that driver to know that when the car is traveling the procedure for turning off the ignition is very different from turning it off when the car is parked? It takes pushing in the dash start button a full, continuous

3 seconds. Would you do that or would you do what many people might do, push it in for a second or two, then try again? Do you read the owners manual before driving off? Tell the truth now. In fact, most of the rental cars I've had didn't even have the owner;s manual in them. Even if you read it in the manual in your own car, would you remember it 3, 5 years later in the middle of an emergency.

I quite amazed at the superiority complex some folks have here. You assume you would do so much better at handling this than a trained CA highway patrol officer in a car with 3 other people who also had considerable time to come up with ideas on how to stop the car. I think in view of not knowing all the facts and with so many of these unexplained accidents, SA and I are not so willing to jump to conclusions. And I also think no matter what happened, from what we know a lot of the blame falls on Toyota because it's clear:

A - In the Lexus at least, it takes a continuous 3 sec push to turn off the ignition of the car while moving. That seems excessively long.

B - Toytota, unlike other manufacturers, chose to not have an interlock that disengages the throttle when brakes are applied

C - They knew about these increasing incidents for a long time and didn't do enough.

[trader4]

:

It's amazing how you can rush to judgement. The driver wasn't some kid, a guy half drunk or a partly senile old man. It was a CA highway patrol officer trained in advanced driving techniques. He had THREE other people in the car that could also come up with ideas how to stop the car. Have you analyzed the car and know how it operates? Already we know a good reason why they would not have been able to shut off the Lexus. It takes a full 3 second push on the start button. How long do you think 3 secs is going to seem to you when you're in a car in traffic going 90mph and accelerating? Would you be so knowledgable and rational under those conditions? Or would you wind up dead and being called stupid?

As for the rest of the possible ways of stopping the car, without carefully reviewing the design of the car and the crashed car, it's premature to rush to judgement.

[trader4]

Right

Yes, but you missed my whole point. You acknowledged that it's desirable to have some kind of interlock to keep the car from being shifted into at least Park while it's moving. OK, so I implement that system via an interlock system consisting of a solenoid driven by the computer. That's right, the same computer that is malfunctioning and has the throttle pegged. How do you know the computer isn't stuck in some erroneous program loop or state and isn't responding to ANY commands? Until someone has a definitive independent study of what happened in a lot of these cases, I'm not going to rush to judgement against the drivers.

[trader4]

I'll bet you didn't do it on one where the car was undergoing unintended acceleration, did you? You can do all the tests you want on a PROPERLY FUNCTIONING car. Without knowing how the car is designed and what is linked to what, you have no way of knowing what would happen when it's undergoing this unintended acceleration. How about the computer has the shift locked, the accelerator pegged and isn't responding to any commands?

[trader4]

Gee, I guess it isn't that bizarre then. Yeah, I over generalized suggesting it applied to all cars, but you were equally wrong suggesting that it's bizarre to find a manufacturer that designs them that way.

[trader4]

That's obviously totally false. Let's say I have a single computer that is running the throttle, the shift interlock, and the engine shut off via the start/stop button. Actually that doesn't sound that far fetched. Clearly you could write a program in such a way that the program under certain conditions goes into a program loop where it will no longer respond to either a change in throttle input or the stop button and will also not unlock the shift. That's a single program failure, not two simultaneous malfunctions.

I think it's arguable which are more reliable and which can be designed to better fail safely. However for it to do what it needs to do the interlock needs to be totally seperate from the computer commanding the throttle.

[AZ Nomad]

Actually not. Most cars with rear disk brakes use a small drum for the parking brake.

[LSMFT]

What makes people too god damn stupid to pop it in neutral and switch off the key? A woman testified to congress that she had both feet on the brake and was pulling on the steering wheel as her car climbed over

100mph for 6 miles. She had to hit a guard rail to stop. How fracking stupid can you get?

[salty]

I wasn't really sure how stupid people could get. Your post gave me a better understanding.

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

AFAIK, there's no indication there _had_ to be any dead bodies other than the drivers failed to take remedial action.

Can you find any indication anywhere that the simple expedient of turning off the engine ignition wouldn't have stopped the vehicle?

[Jim Elbrecht]

I don't know. But it proves false Toyotas contention that there were no problems with the electronics- 'because if there was an electrical problem a code would be set.'

Stray input, short, open- all possible. Apparently one of those was able to cause the problem without leaving a code.

Toyota should have known that it was possible as at least one customer got his racing engine to the dealer where the service tech observed it-- and was not able to pull a code.

Jim

[Harry K]

And what you are missing (seems to be a habit) is that there is a _vacuum canister accumulator_ that permits full brake assist under all conditions (if the engine was running at all) for a couple of 'pumps'. Try it yourself. While diving shut off engine and step on brake.

Harry K

[Harry K]

So you think operator's of equipment should not know how the thing operates or what simple things to do to stop it if it malfunctions? Strange.

Harry K

[Harry K]

In my case, I didn't have to 'replicate' them. I had each and everyone of them happen to me and knew enough about the vehicle to avoid an accident. It ain't rocket science although you seem to think it is.

As for skid pad. Didn't need one. Live in snow country and every kid had a ball learning spins and recovery when adults weren't watching on parking lots and country roads.

Harry K

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

Automotives don't use simply a single computer -- hence there is no "the computer". There are a multitude of very small (and some not so small) microprocessors. The likelihood of there being multiple systems on the same processor is small.

AFAIK there's discussion of firmware but no definitive data (released anyway) regarding the role in the acceleration incidents. There (again, apparently) may be some firmware issues w/ braking systems it seems...

Again, I've yet to see any indication there was/is anything that would have prevented shifting to neutral or turning off the ignition as effective countermeasures.

--

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

Turn off ignition...

As far as has been released and as afaict from Mr Toyota's remarks, the return to neutral function is mechanical linkage only.

--

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Makes total sense! motor vehicle operator vs. driver. Driver is in control of his car at all times. My friend who is a very good driver crashed his Volvo XC90 last winter on icy rural road. He very well knew what to do when his car started skidding but car's so called traction/stability control won't let do what he wanted ro do. Took the control off his hands.

[Harry K]

e:

The only way I would absolve the driver of blame is for someone to prove that that car cannot be put into neutral in that condition. I don't know of _any_ car that can't be shifted to neutral under power.

Harry K