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JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

U.S. House panel wants Toyota acceleration details

Politics Mar. 06, 2010 - 06:53AM JST ( 12 )

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kyokenMar. 06, 2010 - 01:13PM JST
The safety measure is meant to prevent the unintended acceleration that has caused some Toyota drivers to speed out of control.

Lets step back for a second and evaluate some statements given in this report:
1. If this measure is installed by Toyota "to prevent the unintended acceleration", as noted in the report, then Toyota is not 100% confident their electronic is working correctly in all cirmumstances.
2. Toyoda 社長 and his peer claimed that "there is no way the electronic is at fault, based on extensive in house testing"; but now Toyota can not produce any evidence of their testing and in parallel they hire a consultant firm to check the electronic in question.
So what testing/evidence was the statement of the president based on? ... "I sware to tell the truth and nothing but ..."
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TahoochiMar. 06, 2010 - 01:21PM JST

A couple of points here:

1) Since Waxman, or Stupak, or any of these politicians are obviously not engineers, exactly who is saying that Toyota's tests are insufficient? An objective 3rd party group of engineers? NHTSA engineers? That bias "safety research group" funded by lawyers filing class action lawsuits against Toyota?

2) I've said this before... If the US Government really wanted to get to the bottom of this issue, they would have invited the actual engineers, designers, testers, and managers who ran and approved testing and evaluation of the parts/vehicles in question to the hearings in the first place. Instead, they only invited the top execs to the hearings only to scrutinize them in front of everybody to make themselves look good for the upcoming elections. Any idiot knows that top execs can only provide general statements and empty promises because they're not engineers either.
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TahoochiMar. 06, 2010 - 01:45PM JST

kyoken at 01:13 PM JST - 6th March

If this measure is installed by Toyota "to prevent the unintended acceleration", as noted in the report, then Toyota is not 100% confident their electronic is working correctly in all cirmumstances.

Kyoken: Maybe there are factors other than electronics that can cause SUA (sudden unintended acceleration), therefore the need for the brake over-ride? (Almost all other car makers have this function in their newer vehicles) ...and some of those other factors are beyond Toyota's control such as foreign matter jamming the throttle blade open? (it happened to me before with a pine comb and a Dodge pick up truck, so it can happen to anyone), or, dare I say, "Driver error"??? You know, anybody at this point who says "driver error" is cold, heartless, and ignorant, but that's exactly why it's not even being MENTIONED in the hearings or by the media. That's why Toyota can't even mention it. The truth is, it's as much a reality as SUA. Look at all the cases in Japan for example of people slamming through convenient store walls from the parking lot, and the driver admits that they mistook the gas pedal for the brake.

Electronics surely may be one possible cause too, but if the NHTSA, or this house oversight committee wants to really find out the exact cause for each and every one of those accidents, then we'll probably have to wait another ten years because each case is probably very unique.

Here are two pretty interesting articles I found on the topic of electronic interference:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4347704.html

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/23/abc-news-report-shouldnt-panic-toyota-drivers/
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stirfryMar. 06, 2010 - 02:47PM JST

toyota uses proprietary software in their car black boxes, which i linked to the other day and which was deleted for some reason...go to msn.com, an actual news site, for the real story
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Bebert61Mar. 06, 2010 - 09:01PM JST

Waxman and Stupak can hardly be considered objective interrogators. Waxman is a hyper-environmentalist from California, a state where Toyota is in the process of shutting down California's only auto plant, costing California thousands of union jobs. Stupak is a congressman from Michigan, home to America's domestic auto industry.

Toyota should have well over a million miles of on-road test data on the 8 models in question. If there is an electronics problem, they would have found it during testing. More likely, this is a manufacturing quality glitch. The 60+ new complaints sound suspect.
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BrandedMar. 07, 2010 - 04:47AM JST

The possible smoking gun ?

"A review by the Associated Press found that Toyota has been inconsistent—and sometimes even contradictory—in disclosing what the devices record and do not record, such as critical data about whether brake or accelerator pedals were depressed at the time of a crash."

The AP also found that Toyota:

-- Has frequently refused to provide key information sought by crash victims and survivors.

-- Uses proprietary software in its EDRs. Until this week, there was only a single laptop in the U.S. containing the software needed to read the data following a crash.

-- In some lawsuits, when pressed to provide recorder information Toyota either settled or provided printouts with the key columns blank.

"Toyota's "black box" information is emerging as a critical legal issue amid the recall of 8 million vehicles by the world's largest automaker. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said this week that 52 people have died in crashes linked to accelerator problems, triggering an avalanche of lawsuits."

Make no mistake, this isn't good for Toyota as layer by layer of this scandal is peeled away revealing a very long history of deception and hidden data. More shocking news to come I predict. Time for Toyota to come clean, face the musis, and regroup- maybe in Europe if they'll have them.
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gonemadMar. 07, 2010 - 09:58AM JST

Badsey, that report from Mr. Gilbert, which you posted, is unfortunately not too detailed. But what is clear is that he used two simultaneous error conditions to make the system fail. You can outsmart any system with double redundancy when you create two matching in-band errors. That's hardly news. The question is always whether you have a plausible fault model for that specific error condition. Mr. Gilbert is clever enough to admit he doesn't have it, so he suggests further research (guess where?). That popularmechanics.com article also contains an error: just because the throttle control has redundancy on the input and output sensors doesn't mean it has 4-fold redundancy. It's still double redundancy only.

I agree with Tahoochi that driver error is indeed the most reasonable cause for most of the complaints. That's because there are no complaints outside the US - despite all the noise which the Toyota case makes. And the fact that the complaints cover a wide range of models and manufacturing years. You'd expect to see a bunch of different engine control systems with different behavior. Last but not least, there are the well-known sudden unintended acceleration tradition in the US (can I say it exists since the invention of the automobile?) and the just as well-known lack of quality of driver education. Yet, there remain some few cases, where neither driver error nor floor mats nor gas pedals look like reasonable explanations.
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gonemadMar. 08, 2010 - 01:49AM JST

Toyota's recalls have hit 3 continents and dozens of countries ! Get with the program ! This is not simple "driver error".

Branded, the fact that Toyota recalls cars all over the world does not mean that there have been problems with sudden unintended acceleration worldwide. Please don't mix up things. There have been some reports in Europe about sticky pedals but there seems to be not a single report about cars going mad, motors erratically running with wide open throttle and people not being able to stop their cars. That only seems to happen in the US. What is your explanation?
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BrandedMar. 11, 2010 - 12:19AM JST

Gonemad- "Branded, the fact that Toyota recalls cars all over the world does not mean that there have been problems with sudden unintended acceleration worldwide. Please don't mix up things. There have been some reports in Europe about sticky pedals"

So what consitutes "World-wide" ? Lets see, America, Europe, Asia- have all experienced unwanted acceleration problems.

"motors erratically running with wide open throttle and people not being able to stop their cars. That only seems to happen in the US. What is your explanation?"

Good question- and the center point for the house congressional hearings in Washington. Just why is Toyota producing, manufacturing, designing, engineering so many defective cars for the US market ? Don't they realize that 52 lives (and climbing) have been lost ? What about the hundreds of injuries ? The thousands of reports that went ignored or were coverd up ? Why did Toyota send employess, some who previously worked at the NHTSA, over to NHTSA headquarters to squash many investigations into defective autos ?

My explanation is simple. Toyota has put so much emphasis on becoming the world's number one auto maker, that they would stop at nothing to reach their target. And some "collateral damage" is acceptable in attaining that goal. What's a few million in lawsuits if you rake in billions ? It's a numbers game to them- "lose the battle, win the war" seems to be a more appropriate slogan for Toyota these days. Now that the cats outta the bag, Toyota wants the American public to "understand" their intentions. To give them time to right this wrong- to "forgive and forget". What a load of crocodile tears we have here ! Toyota needs to go under for this! They need to pay dearly- be forced into bankruptcy so they can purge the organization of their "win at any cost" corporate mindset. Let's hope the US House Panel- "throws the book at em" !
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AreciboMar. 14, 2010 - 02:58AM JST

Branded,

You've completely missed the point. This exact issue has happened on multiple continents, so Toyota isn't "engineering... many defective cars for the US market." Except for small differences to account for local safety laws, the cars are identical worldwide. They use mostly the same parts manufactured from countries outsourced worldwide, like every manufacturer. They often assemble different models in different countries in the same geographic region, then cross-ship them to their dealers. And finally, again, the underlying acceleration problem IS happening everywhere, not just in the United States.

The real question is, why does the United States have so many so-called "uncontrollable" acceleration problems compared to the rest of the world? Considering we're using, by and large, the same parts - which is why the problem is fairly widespread in the first place - why are Americans seemingly the only ones who are taken on 30-minute joyrides? Why are Europeans able to brake their cars to a stop safely during these exact same problems? Why are fatalities wholly disproportionately skewed toward Americans even though the problems are identical worldwide? These aren't rhetorical questions. Why, when given the same vehicles as everyone else, are Americans unable to cope with issues drivers from other countries are able to? I live in Canada, where the vehicles are literally identical except for dash metrics - why have Canadian drivers been able to handle the several dozen reports of unintended acceleration over the past several years without fatality? Your answer will, of course, run along the lines of, "There's something they're doing to American cars they aren't doing everywhere else," and that's simply false.

Of course, you clearly have no idea about Toyota's mindset - they don't run like an American company. They have an open process that allows employees at any level to take initiative and halt production of vehicles if they perceive any safety issues - no permission required, so higher-ups can't simply "squash" problems. This would be why they've been able to keep consumer satisfaction so high in past years when American companies have been repeatedly and thoroughly vilified for their shoddy workmanship and design. They shorten development cycles to allow safety issues to be more quickly integrated into the manufacturing process. They were making billions when American companies were flopping around, so there was no financial reason to not be safety-conscious. They have done everything that the American companies should have, but were too entrenched in the "win at any cost" corporate mindset to change their process.

It's clear that you're simply easily manipulated by the latest overhyped, underscrutinized news stories that enrage the average, ignorant person. Luckily, Toyota is much too large to fail in the ways that American car companies can (and should). Every decade needs its witch hunt - in the 70s, it was the Pinto, which wasn't as accident-prone as was once thought, though if you want to measure it in the same way as we're doing with Toyota, they killed about as many people as Toyota has per year. In the 80s, it was Audi with claims of identical "unintended acceleration" issues, later proven false - after the media had already branded it as a fact in everyone's minds. So far, we haven't reached the 119 deaths which occurred in the 90s in Fords due to rollover problems they were aware of when testing vehicles. In the 2000s, we have Toyota - subject to a problem that, while serious, is being blown out of proportion due to American drivers' complete inability to handle emergency situations, and a love of sensationalism over skepticism.

In a sense, I hope you get your Toyotaless world - and that every other company you get enraged over and want to fail does as well. You'll find you'll be riding a horse everywhere in no time.