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And, is there any evidence that what they've found is wrong?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Again, I'm not an engineer, but I am a scientist by training and a skeptic by nature.
Even Sean Kane himself admitted this was only a "bookend" in his words.
That's worked out real well eh?
I still would trust NHTSA over trial lawyers. At least they have engineers on their staffs. And they get paid on salary, not by "commission" so to speak. Plus NHTSA has a helluva job trying to suss out the huge number of complaints they get into real problems with real solutions. I know the anti-government types won't like it, but maybe they need more money and staff to examine all complaints more thoroughly. Not my idea of a fun job, but somebody's got to do it.
Yeah, they'll get paid whether they spend the time and effort sniffing out the potential causes or not. That's not a "free market" solution.
I'm not too wild about the adversarial legal system we have, but it has a way of getting to the bottom of stuff now and then.
"This is a lie," she said.
"Shame on you, Toyota," Smith said.
I just tried a little stunt yesterday. Starting from 40 mph on a back road, I punched the accelerator all the way to the floor on my '04 Camry 4-cylinder. The car began to take off. A split second later, I stomped down on the brake pedal with the left foot, keeping my right foot on the go-pedal. The car slowed down and stopped very quickly, even though the engine was straining and the tranny downshifted abruptly several times. I don't have a place to test this at 100+ mph, at least without a friendly visit by my local constabulary!
Shortly before this, while still on the highway, I floored the gas and then immediately tried to shift into neutral. The tranny did so easily, and the engine revs spiked to 6000 rpm before I let off the gas.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Well, to some extent it is. Especially in the case of class action suits, no one really gains anything except the trial lawyers. Their firms get hundreds of millions of dollars and each plaintiff gets a token for their injury or claim. We would never try to fix this inequity because the legislators themselves are trial lawyers.
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This agency need some teeth and fast. One our nation's most pressing problems is the unacceptably high number of deaths on the roads, on average over 100 a day. Yet we all shrug except for occasional bouts of hysteria like this one.
The agency is a shell of its former self in the late 60s when it was led by the pioneering highway safety expert William Haddon, Jr. Nowadays, most safety improvements are market-driven, led by the automakers themselves in cooperation with private groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
You give our California Highway Patrolmen way too much credit. I have found the CHP officer's to be inept, lack good judgement, and to have poor powers of observation. They are just ego hungry power driven maniacs that like to "control" people. Seriously, California would be better off if the CHP was eliminated as a department, that would solve our budget problems in this state.
The number of Pinto fire deaths was about on par with the number of alleged sudden acceleration deaths, in the high 20s for the former compared to 34 for the latter. Of course, the latter includes a far higher vehicle population.
At last count, Explorer/Firestone rollover deaths totaled around 270-280, way more than the Toyotas, and with a smaller vehicle population.
LOL, one owner, and a 10 degree slope. Did he measure the latter with his protractor, or is it just a wild [non-permissible content removed] guess?
That officer may have had some training in police vehicles which are probably Fords, but none in the Lexus. He was not qualified in any special way beyond an average citizen to be driving that Lexus. Lastly, if the floor mats were an issue, then he failed to do a proper inspection of the driving conditions of his own vehicle prior to driving it.
link title
One point that wasn't brought up, however, is the fact that NHTSA looked into the situation and found out that the Smith's Lexus, which they sold promptly after the incident, is still on the road. In fact, the new owners have racked up 27,000 trouble free miles without incident.
Classic. :shades:
Uh, the Pinto didn't need a hefty blow, more like a 20-30 mph impact from another car while the Pinto was stationary. (The later required 30 mph rear-impact standard was not yet in place. Now it's up to 50 mph, offset slightly toward the filler neck of the vehicle.) Rear-end crashes are by far the most common type, but usually not very injurious, producing whiplash only. People were trapped and burned to death in Pintos.
Ford, not the consumer, required a tire pressure of 26 psi, to make the vehicle less prone to rollover rather than re-engineering the vehicle to be more stable. Firestone wanted to use 30 psi but was overruled by Ford. Over 270 people were killed.
I hope the recalls (especially with the brake-throttle override fix) end Toyota's flaws, but some will never be satisfied until an elusive e-gremlin is found. Do you actually believe the car started just by shifting into neutral, after the wife and husband had been traumatized? How can anyone think and remember rationally in a moment like that?
Agreed, automakers can't pull an "Audi" and blame their customers. That didn't work out too well. So just apologize and look like you mean it, even if you don't deep inside. Only cars with brake overrides as of this moment: VW/Audi (!), Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, and Chrysler (I think). Not GM, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Subaru, and the sainted Hyundai, among others.
Glad to hear that. Sometimes you want to use both gas and brakes, as when drying off your brakes after driving through a deeper-than-expected puddle.
BTW, VW/Audi didn't start using the brake-throttle override until around 2001, and the others started even later, about mid-decade IIRC.
Are people for toyota allowed to show thus while a labor union is not allowed to have an interest?
Congress is the People's Hall and anyone can attend a public hearing (after going through metal detectors and such thanks to Osama bin Laden). Toyota's plants are private property and they have the right to bar UAW reps on premises, the same as you do imid on your personal property.
If someone could post a picture of the shift gate and the way it is labeled it would be much clearer as to what I am talking about.
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I think that Congress and their staffers have the sole right determine who is invited to testify. Toyota can't simply bring in its engineers and ask that they be allowed to speak. A hearing is really more similar to a trial than a town hall session.
On a personal basis, I believe Toyota knows exactly what the real problem is. It's the electronics and software, as Mr. Kane and Professor Gilbert testified (and proved in a lab). It took Professor Gilbert 3 hours to replicate the problem. However, that would mean Toyota would have to recall, not only the current 8.5 million vehicles they've already recalled, but every make, model, brand the've put on the roads reaching back as far as perhaps 2001. Plus, they know that some of those vehicles have "hard coded" eproms, ECUs, etc. In those instances, it's not a simple reflash. It would mean a replacement of the eproms, and perhaps the entire ECU. That would mean a recall of 6x-7x, maybe even 8x the size of the ones they've already recalled.
I really don't think Toyota does know. It makes no sense to conduct "show" recalls that don't get to the heart of the matter and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, especially if the root cause is exposed later. They will really be raked over the coals.
As I said before, I wouldn't trust Kane if we were my own mother! And that goes double for his hireling.
Wow, that's damning! Anyone consider that the car was still in "accessory" mode (still possible with keyless ignition)? And at least the "door ajar" light comes on regardless of ignition position with one or more doors open.
Don't forget about their bad experience with electro-hydraulic brakes in the late 90s and early 00s with the E-Class and SL-Class. They were so failure-prone, M-B had to retrofit the cars with conventional brakes, as I recall. Their relationship with Bosch, the supplier, was strained to almost the breaking point.
The tea party movement lives! :sick:
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This should be true of ANY vehicle under a recall, unless it's something minor like a misworded owner's manual.
71K Really? The break pads on most cars tend to last that long.
44K really? Your probably still on your first battery?
You do, huh? You're right on the brake pads. Mine are untouched, and the front ones went to 109,000 miles on my former '97 Camry. We have 3 vehicles for 2 people, one of whom is retired, so the mileage doesn't accumulate very fast now.
Actually I'm on my second battery, but it was done proactively, as the first one was nearly 5 years old and was still going strong.
The average Camry will never get used up - the owners will grow tired of them and buy something new long before they become problematic- which is pretty much the case for any quality car which every automakers has at least one in their line up now days.
I won't get tired of them; I only replaced the '97 to get side curtain airbags on the '04 (and '05). Unless some significant future safety advance comes along, these cars are keepers. I kept my '80 Volvo 240 bought used in 1982 for 21 years and about 245K miles. Our third current vehicle is a '98 Nissan Frontier with, coincidentally, only 71K miles.
Of course not. And if you have a case of SUA, do you want LaHood going to bat for you or your own "biased" John Edwards? I'll take the biased bulldog, thank you.
210Delray, your point about class actions is well taken (link), but it does change corporate behavior and/or gets bad products off the shelves and roads. You can't bring the dead back, so all that's really left is the money hammer.
just tried a little stunt yesterday
I have a bit of trouble with your little science experiment. But maybe you're one of the lucky few that's never been turned away from the dealer with a little note on your service request that says "could not duplicate".
My computer maxed out the CPU the other day and got hung up. Can you bang on the keys for a couple of minutes and tell me what the problem was?
So, are you saying that Congress said it was OK to bring employees, as long as they aren't from your engineering dept?
Again, Toyota brought no engineering staff to defend, or justify their position. Either they viewed it unnecessary (which it seems like it was). Or, they didn't want their engineers questioned.
I stand by the rest of my posts. Toyota does know the issue(s). They don't want to tell of the issue(s). And, they don't want to have to pay for a recall to fix the issue(s)...at least, not on all the cars that would require the correct fix.
Iacocca was a marketing genious! After fighting airbags with Henry Ford II (the 2 were recorded on Nixon's infamous tapes) for many, many years, he pulled a switcheroo and outfoxed his rivals by embracing driver airbags for nearly the entire domestic Chrysler lineup in the late 80s. Things have never been the same for safety since, and I mean that in a positive way.
Anecdotal. Transmissions just don't work like that...........
So, are you saying that Congress said it was OK to bring employees, as long as they aren't from your engineering dept?
The lawyers are there for advice, not testimony, because the speakers are under oath. This is SOP at congressional hearings. The employees were among the spectators, not allowed to speak. Who knows if some were engineers?
Not surprising at all, because he was "one of them." Yes, he was a Congressman (a Republican too!) from IL when Obama chose him for DOT secretary.
That would be stretching things if Toyota agreed to it. It would certainly be a nice gesture, but what about precedent? And not just for Toyota. Has any manufacturer ever paid medical and funeral expenses of crash victims in the absence of lawsuits, even if the vehicle was primarily at fault? Thinking people would have auto, health, and life insurance for this kind of thing.
Just ran across this Washinton Post chat with Edmunds' Phil Reed where he says this:
"A friend that worked at Toyota said in Japan the engineers are terrified of our legal system and will just clam up in some cases."
In other news, "The Senate Commerce Committee looking into the massive Toyota recalls has taken a new tack. Now it wants a tougher review of whether the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is too close to the auto industry to look deeply into whether possible electronic defects are present in Toyota vehicles."
NHTSA May Have "Internal Deficiencies" That Hamper Toyota Recalls (Inside Line)
LOL!! This brings back memories of a Chevy Malibu that I owned.
Under certain weather conditions the interior lights would blink in unison with the turn signals. Looked like a christmas tree. Embarrassed my wife so bad she refused to ride in the car. My Chevy dealer never found the cause and finally asked me to not bring it back because they did not know what was causing it.
After I poked around the wiring harness in several places, the blinking stopped.
When I sold that car I vowed to never own another GM product.
I have had Hondas and Toyotas since and have had good service from both. So far no "coud not duplicate" from either.
But, a 61-year-old driver WAS able to stop the same loaner car a few days before the Saylor crash. He found that a rubber mat (from a different Lexus model) was placed atop the factory mat, interfering with the gas pedal. He pulled the mat back out of the way after stopping the car. He even complained to the dealership, but nothing was done, as the SAME incorrect mat was found in the Saylor crash, still unsecured. Gary knows this quite well and asks why on earth are rubber mats put in cars in the first place in SoCal, where it hardly ever rains.
wwest posted that under load the transmission might now attempt to disengage the parts, I assume that's likely to damage parts in doing so therefore the transmission control doesn't allow it.
The key words here are "might" and "assume." As I stated earlier, I just repeated the scenario (although at 40 mph) and there were no problems whatsoever in shifting the tranny into neutral, even when the gas pedal was floored. The 2007 Camry uses the same 4-cylinder engine as my '04 and '05. The tranny is the same as my '05.
Oops, you have one of those too. My bad.
No doubt he's keeping that close to the vest. He doesn't want the public to know what a shyster he is.
The trooper's car didn't have a key to turn. And I don't think the one in Sevierville did either (also a Lexus, no key - just the push button).
You are correct for both cars -- push button only. I actually like it; my son's Prius has one. Of course a Prius can't accelerate like an ES V6!
You need a lot of space for this -- I'd assume a racetrack would have to be used. I don't think CR's track is long enough -- no need to test at 120+ mph for their normal test regimen.
Good post BTW!
In my case, very, very rarely. Probably only with my first car, a lemon '75 Rabbit. Also my '80 Volvo once stalled out for no apparent reason, right after dealer routine maintenance. It was towed back to the dealer. I was told it started up and ran fine, and in fact had been running for a couple of hours when I got there. But it never stalled again like that, so no harm done.
I got smart early on and signed on with reputable independent shops, for VW, Volvo, and now one that handles all makes. They have all been good, never making excuses like that.
Sorry, can't help you with computers. I just learn as I go along.
Mine is "knock on wood" thus far not among the recalled TCHs.
I tested mine anyway. It will shift to neutral at WOT at around 65.
The only fear I have is resale value !!!
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The woman who cried in that ridiculous testimony sold hers, and the new owners have driven it without a problem. What a coincidence eh? :shades:
Know a lot of personal injury lawyers who shy away from publicity eh? That right there tells me that Kane probably isn't one himself; otherwise he'd be waving his degree around. But I am curious.