Toyota sudden acceleration

This could get really ugly, and very expensive for the Big “T”. As any tractor or computer guy knows, it is often difficult to find a gremlin in the wiring.

“””””The Los Angeles Times on Saturday again reported that the onboard computers and electrical controls, installed in most vehicles built by Toyota since 2002, may cause throttles to race out of control, causing runaway cars and trucks.

But the automaker, whose U.S. headquarters is in Torrance, insists the problem with 4.26 million cars and trucks is floor mats that the company says can jam under gas pedals. An off-duty California Highway Patrol officer and three family members were killed last summer near San Diego in a runaway Lexus, prompting public scrutiny.

The Times says the problem is much more serious than jammed carpeting, and notes that thousands of federal traffic safety incident reports show sudden acceleration reports shot up almost immediately after Toyota began installing "drive-by-wire" system that use sensors, microprocessors and electric motors to connect the driver's foot to the engine, instead of the traditional steel cable.

The Times says electronic-only throttles are susceptible to electronic interference that can trick an engine into thinking the driver has floored the ignition pedal, and that power braking on Toyota and Lexus vehicles diminishes if an engine is racing at high speed.

"With the electronic throttle, the driver is not really in control of the engine," Antony Anderson, a UK-based electrical engineering consultant told The Times. "You are telling the computer, will you please move the throttle to a certain level and the computer decides if it will obey."””””””””

get real. if the times was such an authority on vehicles then why hasn't Mr. Prez appointed them to fix the other major companies problems.

The media elite are "experts on everything, and knowlegeable about nothing".

Remember how NBC fabricated the 'evidence' to get the results they wanted on their exploding fuel tanks story, they did on GM pickups, or how CBS experts got the 'facts' totally wrong about the "unintended acceleration" of Audi vehicles, or how Consumer Reports went out of their way to MAKE Isuzu vehicles tip over during their unbiased 'tests'?

The filth of the media constantly employ New York Times methodlogy in fabricating, distorting, or hiding the facts, in order to promote their socialist agenda, in this case, it further reveals their anti-automotive agenda.

Maybe the jap car computers are becoming 'Self Aware'. Reminds me of the old jap motorcycle's spring loaded fuel caps. Upon impact with something, they would spring open, but not in a way where your forward sliding body would push them shut. They sprung open the other way, potentially castrating you as you slid foreward. Rumor was, it was a jap engineer's little joke.
Jack

Hang on; that's coming next.

Sadly, and ONLY in the US, any large commercial entity or wealthy person is a lucrative target for the plaintiff's bar. This condition adds staggering costs to the cost of doing business in the US vis-a-vis doing so in other countries.

Though this condition could easily be eliminated with the stroke of a pen by making contingicy fees unethical and/or requiring the loosing party to pay the legal fees of the winning party (as is the case in nearly all other industralized countries), such will not happen here with the nnalert in the pockets of the trial attorneys.

Dean

Aren"t we missing the point here??
The media blowing something out of proportion, and/or creating an illustration to raise their ratings, doesn"t really apply to the question of whether the problem really exists...
The Corvairs did tip over, the Pinto gas tanks did leak and the doors jam on rear impacts, the Firestone tires did blow out; the fact that not every Corvair tipped, or that not every Pinto turnrd into a firebomb, or that not every Firestone blew, didn"t mean there wasn"t a problem that the public should be aware of...
Problems, incidentally, that the respective companies involved didn"t seem overly anxious to do anything about...

I thought all new vehicles had electronic throttles... It's not a new technology.

If the throttle sticks, does the gear shift also stop working? I learned to drive on cars with sticky throttle cables, when the engine races I always moved the shifter to neutral. Of course that might require a level of awareness that most drivers lack...

sounds like the nnalert are starting to make cars the American way! Don't suppose turning off the key would help?

I have a set of the Firestone exploding tires on my '90 Ranger, never got notified of the recall so I didn't take 'em in, but I verified they were on the recall list. Love the tires, they were on the truck when I got it, looked to have about 15-20K miles at that time, and I've put another 60K on the truck and they still have good tread.

The story I saw on this was that the accelerator petal was a bit to long and it was getting stuck on the floor mat. I believe there was a letter sent to owners telling them to temporarily remove the driver side floor mat until a replacement pedal could be installed.

I don't own a Toyota and this was according to the local news so I take it with a grain of salt.

I have a Toyota Tacoma truck which is on the list and I got a letter from Toyota which basically warns me to not have loose or aftermarket floor mats placed where they can jam the accelerator. The factory floor mat is hooked to the floor, there is no way it can move and jam the accelerator, there is plenty of space under the accelerator, and there is no way I am going to take out a perfectly good floor mat. If they want to give me a new one that I can install when that one wears out, fine.

The rest of the letter basically said they would notify me if and when they decided to do something.

The truck has a key ignition/starter switch and a straight drive, neither of which has given a bit of trouble. I don't know about the eletronic accelerator linkage, but I will try to check on it. Modern vehicles are too complicated, I haven't even been able to fine the spark plugs on this one or even a distribitor.

KEH

Meanwhile they fail to report that the NTSB has investigated this allegation 6 times and agrees there is nothing wrong with the electronic controls on Toyota cars and trucks. Some Toyotas were sold with the wrong size floor mat and that has been found to be the culprit when driver error was ruled out.

Much like the Audi claims in the 1980s (thanks to 60 Minutes) nothing has been found that links uncontrolled acceleration to the electronics (or mechanics) on the car.

Really sad that a CHP officer, supposidly trained to handle dangerous stressful situations and another adult male front seat passenger could not in several minutes time hammer down hard on brakes capable of absorbing 800 HP and stopping the car before they turned red hot and useless. Could not shift the transmission into nuetral or turn off the ignition by pushing the "power" button for 3 seconds. Maybe even dig your heel into the stupid aftermarket floor mat and drag it away from the gas pedal.

Might have been the gene pool flushing itself.

Toyota will waste millions protecting themselves from a few brain dead drivers.

In 1988 I was the parts manager at a new Hyundai dealership. At the time, Hyundai offerred a dealer-installed factory cruise-control package. They sent us 10 kits in the initial parts shipment, and we had sold and installed 6 of them when Hyundai decided to recall them.

Apparently, they discovered that the radio would feed back through the engine control computer, and cause "uncontrolled acceleration" randomly on these vehicles. We sent the unsold units back to Hyundai for a refund, and Hyundai refunded the price of the kits, as well as paying the labor to remove the cruise kits from the cars.

We had several unhappy customers who had to give up their cruise control, but I never did see news of that voluntary recall hit the newspapers or TV networks.

Pretty much all the electronic "Drive by wire " controls have a triple redundant feature . They have minimum of 3 sensors in the throttle pedal . If anyone of them glitch , they go into default or limp mode . For most cars this is Idle only , or limited RPM . It's sad that peopl ehave died over this , but lack of common sense is more to blame than the Throttle controls .

"contingicy" should be "contingency."

Sorry for the typos.

Dean

It's not the Japanese or the American vehicle designers. It's the lawyers.

Dean, Esq., who is both a former design engineer for a major US automomobile manufacturer and an attorney.

All i have to say if you bougth a toyota, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha

Uhhhhh, Dean....nearly all other industrialized countries have some form of near universal, low or next to no cost health care; here, in the (formerly) richest country on Earth, if you're suddenly a para or a quad because your Buick swallowed the O-ring in the power brake (resulting in instantaneous no brakes) you and/or your family is faced with thousands upon thousands needed for care...
If you wish to continue, email is open...

would a floormat exert enough pressure to do this?? 4+ million cars I think I would come up with something which was not my fault.

We saw about that on TV
Are people too dumb to shift into neutral and
turn off the key?