Posted: March 25, 2010 at 7:56 am | Tags: Toyota, Unintended Acceleration
Data Recorder from car indicated there was no application of the brakes, and the throttle was fully open.
No big mystery here. Of all the hundreds of thousands of vehicle accidents each year the vast majority are caused by driver error. And a smaller present weather related. The weakest link in the car is the nut that attaches the steering wheel to the drivers seat.
Yet you are supposed to believe the current hype and buy the very unlikely situation where these cars are suffering full throttle acceleration BUT also complete failure of the brakes. AND all this without trace of this double system failure in the cars involved. Nobody has seen this happen to these cars under controlled observable conditions, often using the same cars that drivers have said suffered the event. And these test are not just being performed by the government and the manufacturers but also by organizations who would just love to prove the cars are at fault and yet even they can’t reproduce the claimed events.
Blaming the government and corporations seems to be very popular with a certain segment of the population, unfortunately popular opinion does not make the reality of the situation what they want it to be. And it only tends to make it harder to hold corporations feet to the fire when they really do something wrong.
The Punching Bag Hits Back: Prius Crash Was Driver Error.
Posted: February 27, 2010 at 11:52 am | Tags: Audi, Toyota, Unintended Acceleration
Team Unintended Acceleration
It’s been about fifteen years now since the issue of unintended acceleration was the big thing in the publics mind. At that time auto maker Audi was the one who got the majority of the blame for this supposed action whereby cars would accelerate away all on their own. Today it’s Toyota. But fact is nearly every car at one time or another have had reports of this happening. Quite frankly the issue is not with the cars but in majority of cases caused by drivers PUSHING ON THE WRONG PEDAL! In some really sad cases this error has caused injury and death. People didn’t want to accept this accident as driver error, especially if you were the one who’s momentary error caused an injury or death, it had to be a fault with the car and the big bad uncaring corporations who built them. I remember the woman who ran over her child with her Audi, you had to feel sorry for her as she described the accident and you could understand exactly why placing the blame on the car was far better for her mental well being than dealing with the reality of the event.
Well Toyota is now the maker suffering from this Unintended Pedal Confusion issue. The problem is the executives at Toyota have not learned from Audi’s mistake. They seem to be afraid to call the issues like it is, too afraid of offending customers and in the process looking guilty as hell. There also is no shortage of trial lawyers who will be glad to sue a major auto makers for $$$$$$$. Continue Reading
Posted: February 27, 2009 at 12:28 pm | Tags: Audi, Toyota, Unintended Acceleration
Team Unintended Acceleration
It’s been about fifteen years now since the issue of unintended acceleration was the big thing in the publics mind. At that time auto maker Audi was the one who got the majority of the blame for this supposed action whereby cars would accelerate away all on their own. Today it’s Toyota. But fact is nearly every car at one time or another have had reports of this happening. Quite frankly the issue is not with the cars but is caused by drivers PUSHING ON THE WRONG PEDAL! In some really sad cases this error has caused injury and death. People didn’t want to accept this accident as driver error, to them it had to be a fault with the car and the bid bad uncaring corporations.
If you know anything about cars you know no car with operational brakes can overpower those brakes. Even it the throttle sticks wide open you only need to step on the brakes and the car will come to a stop, it may take slightly longer but it will stop. If you push on the brakes pedal and put the car in gear and push the gas pedal to the floor, the car will go nowhere, you may damage the transmission in the process but the brakes will hold the car. it would take a car with very poor brakes and lots of power indeed for the engine to overpower the brakes.
This does not stop media hype from playing on peoples fears. Audi suffered a decline in sales in the USA because of a report on TV’s 60 Minutes which purported to show that Audi automobiles suffered from this acceleration problem. Independent investigators concluded that this was most likely due to a close placement of the accelerator and brake pedals on Audi’s automatic transmission cars. You see unlike 1970 era American cars with their wide brake pedal and small gas pedal, Audi used pedal placement more in line with European tradition and derived from it’s manual transmission cars. Many Americans were now buying these cars due to higher gas prices, and being used to the American pedal arrangement found they had a tendency when not paying attention to confuse the two. It’s not like Audi was putting the gas pedal on the left and the brakes on the right, you could make a case that do so would be negligent, but using a pedal placement that millions of drivers both American and Foreign have had no issue with is not reckless. Get into most cars today and you will find this European pedal setup is very common.
There is nothing wrong with this pedal setup and it is in fact preferred by drivers who like high performance manual transmission cars. In race cars and high performance driving, when manually downshifting under heavy braking, the accelerator has to be used in order to match revs properly so both pedals have to be close to each other to be operated by the right foot at once, a driving technique called “heel-and-toe”, with the toe on the brake and heel on the accelerator while the left foot operated the clutch.
Well Toyota is now the maker suffering from this Unintended Pedal Confusion issue. The problem is the executives at Toyota have not learned from Audi’s mistake. They seem to be afraid to call the issues like it is, too afraid of offending customers and in the process looking guilty.
