Another unintended acceleration recall?

So, now Toyota recalls a few million vehicles link because of a defective throttle pedal that can stick?

This morning on the news they were talking about Toyotas last FUBAR situation with the floor mats. They covered the story about the California cop that crashed into an SUV with his whole family in the car and they all died. Naturally, that family is suing Lexus and the dealer for eleventy-billion dollars.
Here's my take. To the cop that died, sucks to be you. Sucks more to be your family. THEY died because, in the minutes you were ripping down the road in your lexus you never once thought to turn the engine off or pop it in neutral? You are a cop, did you not have training in vehicular dynamics???? Heck, that's common sense to turn the key off or pop in in neutral. Instead you have your brother-in-law call 911? What are they going to do?
Years ago I was on a test drive of a Conquest TSI, automatic. To make a long story short the problem was that the trans was starting in second gear. So, I was screwing around with it. I pulled onto a gravel shoulder and brake-torqued it to see if it would even break the rear tires loose on gravel. Well, as soon as boost came on the transmission shifted to 1st. The car jumpd!! I jumped off the gas pedal but it was stuck under the floor mat. So, now this TSI has rotated 90* and is shooting across the road. I was off the gas and on the brake by the time I was crossing the double yellow. The engine was off before I got to the other shoulder. I didn't think "uh, the gas is stuck, I need to call 911. Heck, I didn't THINK at all. I shut it down, started breathing again, changed my underwear, moved the floor mat to the back seat and drive it back to the dealership and fixed the trans.

I believe that some of these cars will not allow that. Engine control button has to be held down for several seconds to shut engine off, nanny will not let you shift into neutral if engine is not idling. Punching that button will not do anything. Shades of HAL.

Do some research Dr Boost. For you would have died in the car as well. For unbeknownst to you, you couldn't shift to neutral, it locks you in gear and holds it there. And the notion of turning the key off, there is no key. You have to press the start button and hold it several seconds to shut the engine off. Things you don't know and therefore wouldn't have succeeded at either.

I'll freely admit I thought it was a case of remarkable incompetency on the part of the cop when I first heard the story. But then I learned more about the car. Ye-gods.

Well, since I"ve never owned (nor have any interest in owning) a gussied-up 'yota I didn't know that. IF that car does not allow the shifter to be placed in neutral at speed and the key cannot be shut off then I hope the tax agents (oops, cops) family sues Lexus and 'yota for all they are worth.
Cars have become technologically advanced just for the sake of being technologically advanced.

im afraid thats the world we live in, now everything is so technologically advanced now, there is no over-ride for an electrical fault. Ive been saying BOO to drive-by-wire for years. Something about having a cable throttle keeps me at ease, not having to worry about a Terminator Malfunction..

DukeOfUndersteer wrote: im afraid thats the world we live in, now everything is so technologically advanced now, there is no over-ride for an electrical fault. Ive been saying BOO to drive-by-wire for years. Something about having a cable throttle keeps me at ease, not having to worry about a Terminator Malfunction..

There are two sides to that, actually. A cable can hang up, too- been through the analysis... What needs to be done is recognizing a problem, and doing something about it. It's quite possible that Toyota didn't finish their homework on the failure analysis of this system, and also didn't complete the reaction analysis as well.

And it makes ME think- if they don't do their homework on something this important, what else did they miss???

(and I can state another non ETC related technical "solution" that shows this issue as well)

Eric

alfadriver wrote:

DukeOfUndersteer wrote: im afraid thats the world we live in, now everything is so technologically advanced now, there is no over-ride for an electrical fault. Ive been saying BOO to drive-by-wire for years. Something about having a cable throttle keeps me at ease, not having to worry about a Terminator Malfunction..

A cable can hang up, too

Oh, i know all about that, had that happen to me in a 1969 Road Runner when the return spring snapped and all i had to do was turn off the ignition...

Now it seems that there are sticky pedals as well,caused by corrosion.

DrBoost wrote: .....Cars have become technologically advanced just for the sake of being technologically advanced.

We may have to ad an axiom along the lines of:

"Fix it until it breaks"

I guess it would be:

"Make it safe until it kills people"

Do we have to rehash this again?

He could have hit the brakes

http://www.caranddriver.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/original/application/b9ee4a000afdecbc8d36dee64c216012.pdf

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept

It's not a rehash, and if Toyota is admitting that there's a problem with the pedals, then lets not blame the drivers.

This is a new recall- as of today, not realted to the orginal 4M cars.

We can shift focus toward the idea that Toyota's quality isn't as precieved. I'm game with that!

eric

Makes me glad the only toyota car I'm interested in is the MR2 Spyder, and thats been out of production for a few years now

tuna55 wrote: Do we have to rehash this again? He could have hit the brakes http://www.caranddriver.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/original/application/b9ee4a000afdecbc8d36dee64c216012.pdf http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept

If you are quoting C/D, then this wouldn't be a rehash since this is GRM.....

We already talked about this before - hence the rehash

I am pretty sure at this point Toyota is being forced to "admit" to a problem. It's a plea bargain.

And I am not a Toyota fan - not at all - but I will continue to blame the driver.

tuna55 wrote: We already talked about this before - hence the rehash I am pretty sure at this point Toyota is being forced to "admit" to a problem. It's a plea bargain. And I am not a Toyota fan - not at all - but I will continue to blame the driver.

No, we talked about the 4M recall, this is a NEW 2M car recall. They are saying that there are issues with the pedal, corrosion apparently?

While it is true that the driver should be able to drive around this, it also should NOT BE AN ERROR state that a driver needs to deal with.

Eric

alfadriver wrote: While it is true that the driver should be able to drive around this, it also should NOT BE AN ERROR state that a driver needs to deal with. Eric

Agreed.

I'm surprised about the Lexus locking the trans in drive, I thought there was a NHTSA requirement against that to safeguard against this type of thing. In fact, from Toyota's own website, here's a NHTSA report talking about a complaint from an owner of a 2007 ES350 (the cop was driving a 2009 - same engine and trans as the 07) where the owner specifically states he shifted the car into neutral when his throttle got stuck.

http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/document/NHTSA_Filing.pdf

NHTSA declined his request for a recall on his car because they could find no faults in the computer, nor reproduce the problem. I guess they eventually got enough complaints to warrant further action.

Regarding the cop in the Lexus, the vehicle had exhibited prior uncontrolled acceleration. NHTSA also reports: "The NHTSA had also learned from a previous ES350 investigation that, "the Lexus ES braking system loses power-assist when the throttle is fully opened, increasing braking distance fivefold. ... Rotors [on the ES350 the officer was driving] were discolored and heated, had very rough surfaces, had substantial deposits of brake pad material, and showed signs of bright orange oxidation on the cooling fins consistent with endured braking."

I wonder if the brake pads were so trashed in that car that they simply couldn't haul the car down from speed after losing vacuum assist, and in the panic that followed, the officer thought he was putting the car in neutral he was actually telling the car to change gears using the "manumatic" controls.

It's tough to know exactly what happened without being there.

Regarding the current recall, I wonder if the floor mat recall was just Toyota's way of buying time to come up with a solution for the real problem (sorry, I like conspiracy theories)? It makes them look pretty dumb for having to recall the cars again to fix the same problem again.

Bob

from what my friends at the lexus dealer tell me, a grand portion of the first round of problems had to do with the pedals getting stuck behind the leading edge of the floor mats (in some cases, the wrong floor mats are being put in the cars)

i'll be interested to see what the cause of this second round is.

anyone else find it odd that 2 ton cars get drive by wire and are impossible to shut down while motor cycles still have return cables on the twist grip and kill switches?

Drive by wire is fairly new to cars but they've been in trucks and buses for years. Somehow when it went into cars it became a much more complicated and troublesome system.

tuna55 wrote: I will continue to blame the driver.

In which case, I will continue to discount every statement you make on this topic from now on until you decide to be reasonable.

People with a superman complex often die because of it.

If this car did indeed lock the trans in drive and not allow the ignition to be shut off then I put the blame squarely on Lexus' shoulders. Immagine you are in a car with a few hundred HP, it starts accelerating at, let's say 50% throttle. The brakes aren't stopping it (it appears they were applied though). At some point the speed of the car in urban traffic will make your reflexes too slow and/or the abilities of the tires/suspension not enough to keep the car under control.

1. its not that it was "locked" per se, but its not a simple PRNDL...its a hybrid trying to incorporate the feel of an H pattern into one of those "manu-matics". It may be difficult to move from drive to neutral when in panick mode.
2. Most any car loses its power assisted brakes when WOT is achieved because theres almost no vacuum in the manifold. Theres not too many people aside from the governator, Chuck Norris and Lou Ferrigno who can overcome 270 V8 horses without power assist. Apparently, the brakes on the loaner Lexus in the story of the cop were visibly flaming and shooting sparks as he attempted unsuccessfully to overcome the acceleration of the death sled. Not to mention the fact that most TBW cars have a feature that shuts the motor down if the brakes are held down for 3 seconds at the same time as the throttle (a feature of Bosch TBW if Im not mistaken- but I may be). I guess Lexus used some 3rd world child labor device built by the lowest bidder - see the Buschemi quote from the movie Armageddon please...
3. Indeed, lexus that are built with push button start cannot simply be shut down. You must hold the start/stop button in for at least 3 seconds...hard to do when your adrenaline is at "ZOMG i can has lazerz from my eyeballsocketz" because youre certain death is imminent.

Lexus, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, killed that poor bastard and his family by selling fancy gimmickry that solved non existent problems aside from the Jonses need to put themselves on a pedestal. Too many people "display" their self worth by driving the fancier appliance than the next guy. Lexus cashed in on the suburban seventy-thousandaire mantra that you should have no self esteem until youre better than the family next door, and we all know how much people like to prove how much better they are by driving home a lease they cant afford, right?

Very few cars are actually capable of pulling down to a stop when under full throttle. I've tried it many times with many different vehicles. Only a few could do it, and that was on the first try only.

Try it yourself. Especially on oem brake pads.

Lexus isn't the only one who gives a 3 second delay to shut the car down while the engine is running. Nissan does it as well.

My daughter has a Nissan that does the same thing and rightly so. If you didn't have the delay then you'd have cars unintentionally stopping in the middle of the freeway when people accidentally hit the start button as they reached for something else.

We've practiced full throttle stops on both cars and it is very anticlimactic. It works is the best thing to say.

We haven't tried the hold the brakes down forever and see if the computer finally kills the throttle trick mentioned above.

With the time the policeman had and the number of people in the car it just simply isn't possible they got confused about shifting into neutral. It's not the PRNDL transmission pattern but there is nothing to hold the shifter in the manual mode. And if he was in the manual mode already he knew what it took to get out of manual. I have trouble keeping mine in manual mode, my hand keeps giving it just a little bit of sideways motion and it slides out into the fully auto mode.

I think we can all agree on a few things here. First off, this is a sad event. Secondly, having knowledge of the workings of your car (even if just a loaner) is important. Thirdly, there is a very serious flaw that needs to be addressed, and should never have been allowed out on public streets. Can we all calm down now?