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Comments
Yes, but the CHP would have to admit he was fooled by Sikes.
I bet if he knew about Sikes' character prior to the stop, he would have been more skeptical and looked for more clues to evaluate this as Balloon Boy II.
Agree 100%.
At this point Toyota wants attention on Sikes because that's the easiest case to cast doubt upon.
Also, someone mentioned earlier that the dealer, and not Toyota, has liability.
Let's be careful here, I've been falsely accused twice already.
I said that but I was refering to the case of the police officer with the rubber mats from the wrong model installed in the loaner Lexus. I'm not sure if that investigation is completed, or can be since the car burned, but that one's on the dealer. I don't see how Toyota can be expected to make square pegs that fit in a round hole.
Let's just not take comments out of context, please.
The Lexus dealer is claiming to NOT be at fault in the Saylor accident. Bob Baker is a pretty large auto dealer at least here in San Diego. The recall does include changing the throttle pedal. That throws some of the weight back on Toyota. It will be interesting IF it ever goes to a jury. I don't think it will.
The 911 operator told him over and over to put the car in neutral and he just ignored these requests, saying later he thought the car would flip. You can't be serious, flip? He just didn't want to slow the car down until the right moment.
I understand that Toyota's finding were that he did hit the brakes, but what is to stop someone from brakes slightly then accellerating again?
Sikes is not a credible because of his past. He won't collect a dime and is lucky he didn't get a ticket for going 93 mph.
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This is being applied on Toyota vehicles, but from what I understand, not Lexus vehicles. Lexus uses the Denso pedals (not the recalled CTS pedals).
I believe the dealer has to be at fault, seeing as how they have already said it was pedal entrapment by the floor mat that cause the UA.
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sure it is, neutral will disconnect the transmission from the engine, just like any other car. This was not a panic situation as it took more than 20 min. Are you really saying that in 20 min, and after several requests by the 911 operator, he couldn't figure out how to put the car in neutral?
Do I believe UA is real? yes. What is at fault in most UA incidents? driver error.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/industry/4347704
I was referring to the recall to grind down the throttle pedal so it does not come close to the floor mats. It is part of the Floor mat recall that includes the ES350. I would imagine that Bob Baker Lexus points to that as contributing to pedal entrapment, that in all likely hood was the cause of the Saylor accident.
They do what other car companies do in regard to these systems, nothing "Toyota Funky" at all.
So what to make of the unintended acceleration cases popping up by the dozens? Not the ones explainable by problem sticky pedals, but the ones documented by people who claim their vehicle ran away on its own, with no input, and resisted all attempts to stop it? Some can probably be explained as an attempt to get rid of a car consumers no longer desire. SIKESSome are probably the result of Audi 5000 Syndrome, where drivers simply lost track of their feet and depressed the gas instead of the brake. It's happened to me: Luckily I recognized the phenomenon and corrected before it went bang. Others may not have the presence of mind.
But the possibility that a vehicle could go from idling at a traffic light to terrific, uncalled-for and uncontrollable acceleration because the guy next to you at a traffic light answered his cellphone? Or some ghost in the machine or a hacker caused a software glitch that made your car run away and the brakes suddenly simultaneously fail? Not in the least bit likely. Toyota deserves a better deal than the media and Congress are giving it.
Thanks for the link.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
No
Way
A
Floormat
Caused
The
Saylor
Wreck.
There Is NO WAY that TWO FULL GROWN, HEALTHY MEN in the front seat would have allowed a STUCK FLOORMAT to send them to their deaths.
Driver, "Hey, brother-in-law, I see the pedal stuck by the floormat. Hold this wheel while I put two hands down there and pull it loose before we DIE !!!"
NO WAY they went to their deaths because they couldn't pull a floormat out from under a stuck accelerator.
No. Way.
I was wondering just the other day what one of the pundits at Popular Mechanics felt about this problem. I could understand about Car and Driver and Motor Trend not having much to say, but I thought Popular Mechanics, the home of flying car predictions, cars running on water for fuel, etc., through 50 years, would have to say as the authoritative last word.
So we have a writer looking for an article to sell to Popular Mechanics comes up with the idea to have an opinion on toyota-lexus acceleration. His article is predicated on the concept that the computer is self-checking. But that's the problem; the computer goes bonco. The computer doesn't control the way it should be doing. That's the whole point. His argument is that there are two independent circuits for the Hall Effect sensor for the acceleration. Are there two circuits on the throttle body monitoring the butterfly opening? Are there two computers checking on each other? Nope. But he's an authority, in his own mind at least. :P
Anyone want to guess what kind of car he owns or has owned recently?
And he's not credible because he can't even keep the proper foot on the accelerator and brake; he admits it at the end. How can he be knowledgeable?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
PS
You keep denying the sheriff's finding on the Saylor tragedy. So you think it was electronic failure and not the floor mat?
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yet they couldn't figure out that by putting the car in NEUTRAL, it would disconnet the tranmission from the throttle?
Your engineering degree is in what field?
the facts stare you right in the face, yet you still deny them? come on.....
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The only findings I know about from this story was the the NHTSA said it was floormat entrapement. What did the sheriff find?
>the facts stare you right in the face, yet you still deny them? come on.....
Please give us your analysis of the article and contents thereof instead of trying to personalize the discussion.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
If you have a link to the NHTSA findings on the Saylor Lexus wreck I would like to see it. They have not said anything that I can find. Only the Santee Sheriff's report said the throttle pedal was fused to the floor mat which was the wrong one for the ES350.
The 61-page sheriff’s report found off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor, his wife, Cleofe, both 45; their 13-year-old daughter, Mahala; and Saylor’s brother-in-law Chris Lastrella died Aug. 28 when the wrong-sized floor mat in their loaner car trapped the Lexus ES350’s gas pedal.
The Lexus was going about 100 mph on northbound state Route 125 through La Mesa when it slammed into the rear of a Ford Explorer, plowed over a curb and went through a fence before hitting an embankment and going airborne. The
vehicle then rolled several times before bursting into flames in the San Diego River bed at Mission Gorge Road in Santee.
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-12-09/local-county-news/lexus-dealership-on-th- e-defensive-after-report-finds-fault
My analysis of that PM article, and most others, is it's geared to the 6th grader. I loved the magazine when I was a kid. I lost interest when Popular Electronics came out and have not followed PM since. I would recommend it for middle school children.
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/autos/1004/gallery.ireport_mega_mile_cars/10- .html
Thank you.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
This is just a generalized piece about DBW systems, not a Toyota specific article despite its heading and theme in the magazine.
Take note of the following (my emphasis):
"There's more. If Toyota's engine-management scheme is anything like that of most other car companies, firmware inside the ECM also monitors the airflow into the engine, the throttle blade position and engine rpm, and calculates backwards to what the throttle pedal position should be. Any discrepancy, and a trouble code is set, the Check Engine light on the dash goes on, and you're dialing the service manager to make an appointment."
The author is writing without any knowledge of the firmware in the Toyota ECM, yet he draws conclusions based on the assumption that the Toyota used the same setup as other auto manufacturers.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/NHTSA_Santee_Inspect.pdf
"Toyota has routinely engaged in questionable, evasive and deceptive legal tactics when sued, frequently claiming it does not have information it is required to turn over and sometimes even ignoring court orders to produce key documents, an Associated Press investigation shows."
Toyota’s legal tactics: Deception and evasion
Edit...either that, or they will turn their attention to China and focus squarely on increasing Asian (and European?) market share, and Toyota will be on a permanent downslide in North America.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
actually he credited it with about 150,000 bonus miles that weren't real, since the cars engine was replaced long ago. He's also probably on his 20th transmission and 12th air conditioning system/compressor.
What does driving skill have to do with technical/engineering knowledge? Nothing. That's like saying a smart person that knows fantasy football would play better than Brett Favre.
Sounds absurd when you think about it.
gagrice wrote: "It sounded like PM was looking for an advertisement from Toyota."
Do you honestly believe the editor would risk his automotive career to help the mag meet quarterly advertising targets?
Meanwhile you've speculated about power lines interfering and he explained specifically about how two voltage levels are used to prevent that specifically.
mac24 wrote: "This is just a generalized piece about DBW systems, not a Toyota specific article despite its heading and theme in the magazine."
Yet the article specifically talks about the "two discrete Hall-effect sensors in the Toyota/CTS pedal".
That's about as specific as you can get.
Weaksauce.
Sadly I hope this is not common practice in the industry, to hide defects and delay/stall on fixes for them, but I'm sure it is. Sealed settlements are common practice for all auto manufacturers.
The "Book of Knowledge" should be published and I bet it would be a best seller. It would be naive to think that other automakers don't have similar systems in place, however.
NHTSA needs to be reformed and perhaps given more power to demand documentation relating to defects that put people's safety at risk.
None of this makes Sikes any more credible as a witness, or discredits editors at Popular Mechanics, by the way.
I would say the PM writer did a cut and paste from this engineers attempt to discredit Dr. Gilbert.
Toyota's Intended Rebuttal
Embattled Automaker Calls in the Engineers to Help Refute ABC News Report
From the March, 2010 issue of Motor Trend
/ By Kim Reynolds
Basically, these pedals contain twin, independent circuits for measuring pedal angle. Each one employs three wires, each its own voltage supply, ground, and a third wire that carries a signal voltage associated with the pedal's angle. Six wires in total. The two signal voltages vary linearly with throttle angle, but are intentionally different from each other (offset) with one ranging from 0.8 volt at closed throttle to about 4 volts at open throttle, the other going from 1.8 volts to about 5 volts. Each signal is monitored such that if either stays outside a certain (tight) voltage relationship to each other the system falls into limp-mode, letting you drive out of any dangerous traffic situations and registering an error code.
The rest was of the PM article was spin
I doubt that.
Dr. Gilbert's "test" is not possible to create outside the lab in a real-world situation.
Why is it that you tend to believe all the non-Toyota "experts and witnesses" and disbelieve anyone else producing common sense, rational rebuttals?
Is rationality in the eyes of the beholder, as is beauty?
I don't think so at all. It had nothing to do with the bucket-loads of problems Toyota is having right now with how they went about dealing with the defects.
They looked at the mechanics of the throttle, as you'd expect a magazine with that title to do.
First off, I am not the only one that is concerned about high voltage causing problems in DBW systems. Again the article in PM ONLY addresses the throttle pedal sensors. It does not examine the ECM and the sensors associated with the Throttle body controller. If everything is redundant it would be hard to explain all but mechanical causes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration now is investigating whether EMI could be a factor in Toyota's sudden-acceleration problems. It is NHTSA's first serious look at EMI in decades, and members of Congress will explore it in Toyota hearings beginning today.
"If these congressional hearings probe deeply enough, they'll discover that the car industry has known from the beginning that the most likely cause of sudden acceleration is internal electromagnetic interference," charges Tom Murray, a Sandusky, Ohio, attorney who has brought dozens of acceleration lawsuits and is writing a book on sudden acceleration.
Perhaps. Here's my current thinking.
Toyota had a reputation for quality.
Then the bean counters came in. Cut quality controls and you'll make more money.
Of course quality dropped. Fewer controls plus more volume = problems.
But...there is huge pressure from HQ (Watanabe) to produce results anyway. So it could have been the execs here in the USA who had the incentive to hide the problems. Note how Toyota USA was well behind their european counterparts in reporting these issues, hence the fines from NHTSA.
So it's possible the execs for Toyota USA felt pressure to maintain the quality ratings despite the cuts. The result was the cover-up and lies.
Whoever made that decision should be in jail. Hard to say who that was, but I bet Irv Miller knows. He knew they were not coming clean because he was the one who said they needed to.
Good luck actually finding those persons. But they are the guilty people.
Very good. You've finally caught on to the continual criticism passing off UIA as being caused by people who confuse their pedals as being the excuse to get toyota-lexus off the hook being silly.
I found it amazing the writer of the article was dumb enough to include that tidbit indicting his creditibility using his own logic level.
Even worse is that the article was mostly general yet still tried to sound authoritarian.
Popular Mechanics has NO TOYOTA-LEXUS ads this month. I haven't looked at back issues for ads but when the magazine editor even makes his Editor's Notes (page 10) about the toyota-lexus runaway acceleration and pimps the article for his free-lance writer, I become suspicious of outside pressure from Exponet or from toyota-lexus.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
What I got from Dr. Gilbert's experiment, is the fact that a problem can exist in the throttle system of a Toyota without putting out a diagnostic code. That was what he showed and the Toyota engineers did not do a good job of rebuttal. They claim infallible redundancy in the throttle pedal sensors cannot cause SUA. They do not venture into the real throttle control center, the ECM.
If you believe an electronic failure cannot be the cause of UA, there is no reason to debate anything but floor mats and broken pedals.
Pedals "could" be a problem in others, and driver error is the problem in MOST.
Let's not forget that Toyota is not the ONLY carmaker with SUA/UA problems. It's not unique to them, nor was it invented or perfected by them.
We agree
Let's not forget that Toyota is not the ONLY carmaker with SUA/UA problems. It's not unique to them, nor was it invented or perfected by them.
We agree again. The reason Toyota is in the hot seat on UA, is they have more complaints of UA than ALL other automakers combined. That and a Lexus ES350 killed a Cop and his whole family.