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I wouldn't sweat it. This was speculation by the same poster who believes front-wheel drive vehicles (or 4-wheel-drive vehicles based on front-drive platforms) are incredibly dangerous compared to rear-wheel drive vehicles in slippery road conditions. Also, he has posted that there's a conspiracy among insurance companies to hide this "fact" from the public.
I agree that this is a good idea; it seems that under the "benign neglect" I mentioned earlier about NHTSA, it has become too cozy with the industry it's supposed to be regulating (not just Toyota, but all automakers). All you have to do is look at the glacial pace at which the agency moves, both on new or upgraded regulations and on defect investigations.
Of course, business-friendly interests and the tea party crowd would like NHTSA to continue to be hamstrung in this manner.
camry does not yet have that.
it's within the ( ) part of your post.
Toyota does have a fix -- 2 recalls, plus adding the brake-throttle override on some (most?) cars. Still people want/hope to believe there's a mysterious e-gremlin hiding in the electronics.
camry does not yet have that
I beleive Mr. Lentz said he couldn't absolutely guarantee the fix, not quite the same.
i think the brake-throttle override is a practical idea, but it does not correct the underlying issue.
You do know I own 2 Camrys (plus a Nissan Frontier) and have not hidden that fact. Both Camrys are too old to be included in the current recalls, but both are new enough to have throttle-by-wire.
I think it's a practical idea also, and it will nicely compensate for the still-sought-after "underlying issue," of which I believe does not exist.
What year was your Malibu?
But that is not the case if you are driving a Toyota.
Toyota - Just Try And Stop Us Now!
Those drivers should have listened to the tech writers at the stores who told them they just mixed up the brake pedal and the accelerator or that they had a floor mat that got swedged in between the accelerator poorly designed and poorly placed and the floor.
Even tonight I saw a story about the coziness between NHTSA folk working for toyota and they are checking into how many are involved. The suggestion is it compromised requiring toyo to report and handling of the problem when initially found.
Nope, nothing to see here. Move along folks. It was all a fake. Go drive your toyotas. They have all been fixed and cured of the false problem; that was just a placebo because there really has never been an unintended acceleration.
Nor was there sludge.
Nor are there defective head bolts on 4-cylinder engines.
Nor are there lagging shifts in some transmissions.
Nope, nothing to see.
Toyoda came all the way here to give questionable testimony through an attorney or interpreter and tell us they care about the safety of toyota drivers.
His other guy Inabba didn't really write a note saying they saved $millions over this--the one read by the congressman.
Nope. Nothing here.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Other cars don't have faults either?
En garde, Toyota haters!
Man, I bought some Pirelli high-performance, low-profile tires for my '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS in Dec. of '08 and those are probably the best tires I've ever had on any of my rigs. Good true balance and toughness and a very comfortable feel on the expressway for the compact Japanese car.
$813 installed for the four of them, so not exactly cheap, though. Pirelli P-Zero Nero M+S Pinna's is their name. Pirelli even goes to great pains to properly name their tires. :P
I wouldn't describe myself as a Toyota hater in any degree, though I do like the new performance division they have started up which is working on the new FT-86 for them right now. Put that new knowledge learned about the ECU malfunctioning...I...I mean the general public not driving our cars right...I mean those darned floor mats...I mean those nasty accelerator pedals malfunctioning...I...I...oh, forget it.
Toyota FT-86
I'm going to bed. All things automotive will continue tomorrow for this car nut.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Other cars don't have faults either?
I think there's a belief that GM is wonderful, so it is a joyous day when the (previous) #1 quality make has problems and warts. Toyota is nowhere near perfect, but statistically is still quite all right. You are still much likelier to have a better Toyota than a better GM. More people die from rollovers in SUVs than have died in accelerating Camrys. That doesn't excuse their negligence. But all makes have had problems, some many more than Toyota.
I think that alot of the car crashes over the last several years have not been investigated properly. I know some people are now coming forward and said that they claimed their car went full throttle all by itself just to have the accident report state that they must of got the pedals mixed up or how about the dead people who could not tell their story? I think the total number will be a lot higher than 34. It took people talking to 911 while their car was going out of control to get where we are today. But I got to love some of you Toyota lovers out there who keep pretending like its all OK but sometimes I wonder if you don't have some hidden interest in smoothing this all over. I have a 08 Tacoma that I will not let anyone drive now except for me and everyday I get in it I can only wonder if this is the day :sick:
Unfortunately, it will probably take another SUA crash in a car that has had floormats removed and accelerator pedal shaved. Kind of like the Avalon fatality with the floormats in the trunk that sparked the accelerator pedal recall and the guy who drove his avalon to the dealer with the engine revving out of control
.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/toyota-avalon-displays-unintended-acceleration-witho- - ut-floor-mat.html
The Toyota management team has totally fumbled the ball. I love the zero defects so far in our family lexuses and toyotas 1991 - 2009 ............. but not making any excuses for this ineptness. I have declined both the floormat removal AND the accelerator recall temporary fix. Will only allow reflash of the ECM to provide brake override ........... but who knows how they might screw that one up too !!!!!!!!
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
What the brake override does is take away the possibility of a driver blaming the car manufacturer. With this device there will be no more statements like , "I had my foot on the brake and was not touching the gas pedal". With this override, if you ram into someone or something else, everyone will know you had your foot on the gas and not the brake.
The Audi debacle is why the Europeans went to this system. They learned their lesson about being falsely accused.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
You're also correct. That won't alleviate possible UA. That will only give the driver an easy way to control their cars if it occurs (tap the brake pedal).
Toyota's still trying to get out of this the cheapest way possible....not totally fix their vehicles. Recalling 8.5M vehicles (under NHTSA threats, no less) is one thing. Recalling every Toyota with affected code from 2001 to the present is a much, much larger endeavor....and much more costly than the costly current recalls.
But, if they were as concerned with their customers safety, as they've stated, that's what they'd do. They won't, unless forced to.....and they look like they're going to be forced to.
What baffles me is if Toyota had done that from the beginning (reflash for brake over ride and/or reinstall ECUs/EPROMs), and co-operated with NHTSA (vs fighting them) they would have probably saved themselves at least part of the fines that are about to be levied on them (far exceeding the amount they say they saved in the infamous Inaba memo). They certainly would have limited the amount of negative publicity. And, just maybe, not have had to go in front of Congress to begin with.
Right now, the civil suits are piling up, even though they're trying to limit their liability. NHTSA's going to be so far up Toyota's posteriors that their TP will be emblazoned with the NHTSA insignia. And, their market share, that which they so coveted, may never be recoverable....let alone the reputation they've spent decades crafting for quality and safety.......POOF! GONE!
They're now back to the '60s, when their reputation was one of building junk cars.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
We know now from Toyota testimony they have had UA of one type or another since at least 1996. Some of the causes are faulty cruise control, floor mats, throttle controller, throttle body controller, various sensors and unknown. VW/Audi was accused of UA and did something about it. They have used a very effective Brake override system for at least 14 years. Toyota ignored the consumers and called them liars. The least the NHTSA should do to Toyota is demand a brake override system be installed on every DBW vehicle they have sold in the USA. If it costs them $Billions, it is their own fault. They could have listened to the customers and looked at the other automakers and been proactive. They believed they were above reproach and the number that have died is irrelevant. Their arrogance killed people.
demo of 1997 Passat Brake override:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzY6kT0YSXQ
I can see where the override would prevent UA if someone accidentally had their foot on the brake and gas at the same time or if something like a floor mat was holding down the gas pedal. But a lot of people allege that Toyota has an electronics problem so if there was an electronics blip this might not work either since it is based on electronics.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
That is true. Not sure how easy a separate over ride would be to install.
Since he obviously knew about a cruise control issue, if he's got even a tiny bit of sense, he's known that there's a relationship between brake over ride and UA.
In every car I've ever owned, a tap on the brake pedal automatically kills the acceleration when using cruise control. Apparently, Toyota's strategy is different (as was pointed out by Dr Gilbert's expert testimony), and probably saved them some dollars. Whatever their strategy is, it has not been well thought out and thoroughly tested.. And, presents the potential for uncontrollable UA that we've heard so much about...causing accidents, and at worst, even deaths.
Unfortunately, those savings have brought them to where they are today....both in hazardous safety oversights and declining quality.
As you mentioned, They didn't listen to their customer's complaints. And, it will cost them billions, on top of whatever fines are levied against them (which I expect to be record breaking), not to mention the lawsuits that will take years to resolve, which will cost them even more.. And, it is indeed their own fault.
No doubt the number will go higher, only because people are aware of the sudden acceleration problem. At least a few will take advantage of the publicity by falsely claiming their crashes were caused by the car rather than a dropped cellphone, for example.
But I got to love some of you Toyota lovers out there who keep pretending like its all OK but sometimes I wonder if you don't have some hidden interest in smoothing this all over.
All isn't OK, but there's a lot of hysteria and sensationalism going on with this situation. I have no connection with Toyota in any capacity, only that I'm a fully satisfied owner of 2 older Camrys (also I have a '98 Nissan Frontier). See my profile for other cars I have owned and my experiences with them.
Grover Walton repeatedly slammed on the brakes of his 2008 Toyota Prius on a road trip to visit his granddaughters in South Carolina last October. The car lurched back and forth, and gained speed.
"I can't get the cruise control off," he said to his wife, who was in the back seat.
Barbara Walton looked up from playing Scrabble on her laptop. She figured her husband's lousy driving was to blame.
Yet the hybrid kept zipping along the wet four-lane highway in tight traffic. "I was just praying he could get the car stopped," she told CNN iReport.
Waltons' ask: Are we driving a death trap?
Grover Walton rode the brakes and looked for the best place to pull over. He turned onto a dirt road and popped the car into neutral.
When the car stopped, the two front brakes "had a red glow to them," he said.
"My wife was panicking. She didn't know if she should take the stuff out of the car or what."
The incident began, he said, when he hit the "resume" button on his cruise control, thinking he'd speed back up to around 63 mph. The car got up to 75 mph.
Herb Kuehn of Battle Creek, Michigan, said the same thing happened to him in 2005 on a two-lane highway. He said he tried to resume cruise control at 58 mph.
"Instead, it just fully accelerated and kept going," Kuehn said.
He frantically pushed the power button. It didn't respond. The car wouldn't shift into neutral. His last hope: mashing on the brakes as hard as he could while speeding at 76 mph.
The car came to a stop on the shoulder of the road. An overwhelming battery smell wafted through the inside of the car, he said.
My complaint of hybrids early on:
Donald Friedman, an electrical engineer in Santa Barbara, California, has spent 62 years working on issues within the auto industry, including nearly two decades with NHTSA.
It's not surprising to him to hear of Prius owners complaining about possible cruise-control problems. The last 10 years have seen the production of more sophisticated automobiles built with an array of computer processors that control everything from anti-lock brakes to the throttle.
Hybrid vehicles are among the most complex. The cars have separate electric and gasoline engines and a regenerative braking system that uses energy from the car's wheels to help charge its battery.
The car's multiple processors "don't always know how to talk to each other in a coordinated way," said Friedman, who worked on the Lunar Rover and who helped developed an electric car in the late 1960s known as the Minicar.
"It doesn't happen all the time. It happens more frequently because of the extra processors in hybrids, and that's of concern."
Finding the root cause of the problem, Friedman said, gets tricky. "If you test them independently, they all work perfectly well."
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/11/prius.cruise.control/index.html
That's your opinion, not a proven fact.
But, if they were as concerned with their customers safety, as they've stated, that's what they'd do. They won't, unless forced to.....and they look like they're going to be forced to.
It's not going to go that far. To officially "force" a recall, the NHTSA has to establish clear evidence of a defect -- let's say software malfunctions for all you computer experts (I'm not one, I just use them). Then the manufacturer has the right to challenge the order in federal court.
I don't think anyone realizes that it's been nearly 30 years since a case like this occurred -- for the 1980 GM X-cars (Citation, Phoenix, Skylark, Omega) with overly aggressive rear brake linings. The cars could swap ends under hard braking (this of course was before ABS). GM challenged NHTSA, and the federal district judge (Thomas Penfield Jackson) took an unconscionably long time to reach a decision -- something like 2 years, maybe 3, as people continued to spin out of control in their cars. He ultimately sided with GM, and NHTSA decided not to appeal the matter.
What baffles me is if Toyota had done that from the beginning ...and co-operated with NHTSA (vs fighting them) they would have probably saved themselves at least part of the fines that are about to be levied on them...
Again this is speculation. I think the problem is NHTSA got too cozy with Toyota (and other manufacturers) under its long decade of "benign neglect." It could also be argued that NHTSA had an ingrained bias against vehicular-caused sudden acceleration --after all, they'd been dragged through this morass with the Audi 5000 case, only to conclude the main problem was driver error, papered over as "pedal misapplication."
There have been many, many other investigations of sudden acceleration, and the vast bulk were closed because of no evidence of a vehicle defect. I mentioned before that way back in about 1986 or so, NHTSA's oldest open investigation (an "engineering analysis") was for alleged sudden acceleration in ALL 1973-current GM cars with automatic transmissions. We're talking millions of cars. I had a '77 Impala (automatic, natch, at the time) so I was a little concerned. But that investigation also was closed with no defect finding, and I never had my Impala go wildly out of control.
Barbara Walton never uses the cruise control any more, and she stays in the right lane just in case she needs to pull over quickly.
She and her husband always bragged about their Prius. But ever since the October incident, she worries, "If that happens again ... what will I do?"
The dealership that fixed the car blamed the problem on floor mats. "Initially, we thought Toyota would be pretty receptive," her husband said. "But they were pretty poo-poo about it. They wanted to say it was the floor mat and driver's error."
Herb Kuehn said he got a similar runaround. He said the dealer initially told him they replicated the cruise-control problem. "That's great news," he responded, "because I don't want to be called an idiot."
The *dealer later said its employee who ran the test was not qualified to make that assessment. Kuehn said he was then told the problem was with the floor mat -- "which is complete, utter nonsense."
Nearly five years later, he's put more than 100,000 miles on his hybrid. The problem has not resurfaced.
"With a good conscience," he said, "I cannot sell this car to anybody nor can I put this car back at the dealer because if something happened to somebody, I couldn't forgive myself."
*Very convenient way for the Toyota dealer to evade the issue. So why was an unqualified Tech working on the problem?
A little revisionist history, no? Audi was accused back in 1986, and their sales plummeted dramatically from the prior calendar year. It took them 15 years to get back to where they were in '85. Audi also essentially called the drivers liars, with one German executive saying "Americans don't know how to drive." He was sent packing to Germany from the US after that gaffe. Rule #1 is never insult your customers, even if it's true. Audi's first response was in about 1989, when they were exonerated by NHTSA, to put in the brake-shift interlock, now in all automatic transmission cars. (You have to step on the brake to shift out of Park.)
The brake-throttle interlock came much later, in 2001 as you note. Other manufacturers added the system even later, but not Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, Mazda, Subaru, and others. So it's not like Toyota is way out of step with the rest of the industry. And now they will make the interlock standard across the board by the end of this calendar year and retrofit a good portion of the recalled cars.
This is a very valid point. Most police are not trained in the fine details of crash investigation. When a crash occurs, they are (rightly) concerned making sure the injured are treated by EMS crews on the scene, clearing the wreck from traffic, and assigning blame (which means deciding which traffic laws were violated, not anything resembling careful engineering analysis). A perfunctory report is written up (not always very accurately), and this has to be done under trying conditions -- bad weather, moving traffic around the scene, screaming victims, you name it.
We would be better served if more of the injury-producing and fatal crashes could be studied in depth at the police level, but this isn't done because of budgetary concerns and lack of staff time and training.
I don't blame Lahood over what looks like a cozy relationship between Toyota and the NHTSA. I don't believe for a second that there wasn't some "negotiations" between previous NHTSA employees who are current Toyota employees. I believe that former NHTSA employees were highly desirable for Toyota to hire, for the exact purposes we've heard about.....negotiating with the NHTSA over safety related issues (and saving Toyota millions in the process).
LaHood can state that those former employees aren't allowed to discuss NHTSA business with their current Toyota employers. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, however. Further, if I were a former NHTSA employee now working for Toyota, I'd be looking for my own lawyer.....like yesterday.
As LaHood said, "perception is reality". And, if the perception is, that former NHTSA employees are now on Toyota's payroll, the perception is that they're sharing information they shouldn't be sharing, whether they are doing it, or not. I also believe that the perception of Toyota in Congress is that they've not been very pro-active, forthcoming, honest and cooperative (obviously, a view I share).
Just listening to LaHood, and his past statements, I think he's going to come down on Toyota hard. He's going to finish the electronics/software investigation, and present his findings, and recommend probably the largest fine ever levied on an automobile manufacturer. I think he's also going to force Toyota to install brake over ride systems, not only on recent Toyota/Lexus vehicles, but on older ones, too. It depends on the model years he includes.
Regardless of how long other manufacturer's have had brake over ride systems, I think a case can be made by Toyota that going back as far as 2001, for example, brake over ride just wasn't something that was considered common. I think from 2004 going forward would be fair game, though....particularly given Toyota having to be forced to do recalls, as opposed to doing them willingly.
LaHood is going to send a message.....regardless of who you are, the amount of business you do in the U.S., be you foreign based, or domestically based, you WILL comply with the NHTSA. He just seems that forceful to me.
The image of the NHTSA is not good right now....all bark, no bite....and hints of collusion. LaHood is going to put "bite" back into the NHTSA.
As he said, he's not going to be anyone's "lapdog". Plus, I heard Congressman say over and over again, that if LaHood needed more people, more money, he'd get it.
Like you have done, and so have I, we're looking out into the future. We can't predict what's going to happen. Those are my predictions, however. We'll see how close I come.
My Toyota Camrys work the same way, as does my son's 2006 Prius. And your comments are based on Gilbert's, who was employed by the infamous Sean Kane, and on a couple of consumer complaints? I know Lentz let something slip out, but it was never fully explained.
Of course, I've never had a lick of trouble with the cruise control in my cars, nor has my son. Come to think of it, the ONLY cruise malfunction I personally encounted was on our former company car, a 1992 Crown Victoria. Its cruise started working only part of the time before conking out completely. We had it replaced. Little did we know at the time, it had the notorious Texas Instruments "cruise with self-contained space heater." :surprise:
Do you hold as much contempt for Toyota's legal department? It seems you despise this fellow Kane. As far as Dr. Gilbert. His preliminary tests were on his own Toyota. If he was a Toyota hater, as you would like people to believe, would he have bought a 2010 Tundra? And he took his findings to Toyota first, NHTSA 2nd and Kane 3rd. Sounds like Dr. Gilbert got the same response from Toyota and the NHTSA as the Woz. I suppose you want to disclaim him as a hack as well? Your approach does not seem to be with an open mind. As you consider customer complaints as unimportant.
As for the cozy relationship, I agree it's over and it's about time. But it's not just Toyota and NHTSA "kissing in a tree." All major manufacturers were part of the love fest. That's why they all have DC offices, for one. None will admit to having former NHTSA defect staff move to their teams, but there is a lot of back-and-forth of employees from government to industry and vice versa. I lived a good part of my working career in the DC area, so I know how the system works. It's not even a violation of any ethics laws for these career employees (as opposed to political appointees in the executive ranks of NHTSA).
I also think Chris Tinto, a former NHTSA employee hired by Toyota way back in 1994 is getting a bum rap. I actually know Chris personally, and he's a professional in every sense of the word. You'd think working for 16 years for Toyota would have put some distance between himself and any former NHTSA colleagues who might not even be with the agency today.
However, I don't know how anyone could possibly impeach Dr Gilbert. He had a lot to lose by coming forward (namely, free vehicles and 10s of thousands of dollars in Toyota donations). He had much more to lose than he had to gain by his testimony (what Kane paid him was really a pittance vs what Toyota donated).
It was telling to me that he was able to come up with possible UA scenarios that Toyota's supposed exhaustive research with a large engineering dept, couldn't.
I also believe that given enough time and money, he could dig up even more faulty code/electronics. My guess is he's got some money coming in right now from the NHTSA to do just that.
'Ya think Toyota is sending him any money right now to come up with some more research they could use? Highly doubtful (although they probably should).