Re: "No Safety Problem" -- Toyota accused of 'not being frank'

Can't down play the people who died, runaway Toyotas.If those people had been driving something other runaway Toyotas, would they have died anyway? I think Not. cuhulin

Think we can get john to buy a US made Camry? He's so clueless he won't last 5 minutes...

Driver incompetence has been linked to those deaths, a sticking accelerator may have provided the opportunity for those incompetent drivers to kill themselves and others, but ultimately it was the driver incompetence that caused the deaths. A sticking accelerator pedal may increase stopping distance, but it does not make stopping impossible and if the drivers were competent and reacted appropriately, there might have been a crash, but it would have been far from fatal.

For those bashing the "drive by wire" electronic accelerators, they have been standard equipment on medium and heavy diesel trucks for many years, and you haven't heard of any "unintended acceleration" issues on those trucks have you? The reason is that the drivers of those CDL A and B trucks are *competent*.

Toyota To Ship West Virginia Made Engines to Japan.

A local lady almost killed herself, and certainly wiped out the front of her house, with a runaway Cadillac.

The same has happened for other makes as well.

And do you remember the rollover problems with Ford Expeditions, perhaps?

I used to have a Thunderbird that would accelerate wildly when you turned the steering wheel to the left.

I had a Buick Regal, 1989 model, that would die stone dead when exiting freeways, leaving me with no power brakes nor steering. That could easily kill a person (and this WAS a defect in factory parts).

Even small issues can become life threatening on any car.

Whether Toyota is directly responsible or indirectly responsible is yet to be worked out.

This is turning into a witch hunt.

My Scion tC has the drive by wire system. I don't like it. I have NEVER, EVER stalled a car as much as this one!

So I got out the tools and the VOM and got under there (after reading in a Scion group) and adjusted the pot so it was just under the end of travel.

For about a week the engine idle was a little higher, but then the computer compensated for it and idle returned to normal, but the very slight hesitation was gone and I'm hardly stalling at all any more. Once in a great while, but I did that with wired throttles, too...

And usually at a stop light or intersection where the traffic is lined up a mile back. When there's NO ONE in sight...not a problem! :)

More like someone who spends a lot of time on the road with stupid-ass drivers.

I LOVE it when someone puts on their LEFT turn signal, and then pulls to the RIGHT! WTF?!?!?!

The girl singer in our band has an '04 Corolla, US (Or Canada) made. I told her, if this happens, put the transmission in Neutral, turn the key back 1 click and stop the car, both feet if necessary.

She understood it, I knew she would.

What the hell are these people doing when the car doesn't slow down?

I had this happen with a Corolla many years ago....I put the car in neutral...turned the key back 1 click...and stopped the car.

I think I was 19...

The steel throttle cable had become rusty and stuck an open position. Big Deal.

Quite the opposite. I'm a Dell Factory Rep and drive 200-500 miles a week, all local, but on the road 6 hours or more a day. I see it all...

Unbelievable. I have already told about a dozen people, "There's always the BUS!"

I didn't say throttle by wire was perfect, nothing ever is and fine tuning helps things both mechanical and electronic. My point was that it wasn't a fatal flaw, driver incompetence was.

I once witnessed a stupid chain reaction accident. A car was sitting a few cars back at a red light when another car came in a little too fast and tapped it. This was clearly just a tiny tap as there was no visible damage to the tapping car or the rear bumper of the tapped car. However, due to an inattentive / incompetent driver in the tapped car, I watched for a full three seconds (yes, I counted) as that car rolled forward and hit the car in front of it causing visible damage to both.

Toyota's bad throttle may have provided the tap, but driver incompetence provided the fatalities.

Yes, I've seen that quite a bit and have no explanation for it other than driver incompetence. I'm so glad I work from home full time now and don't have to deal with daily commuting with these idiots any more.

It's pretty clear that in these cases the incompetent drivers are simply going blank and not taking any action to correct / contain the problem. (class C) Drivers are so clueless and poorly trained these days that they barely have control of the vehicle under ideal conditions, one single vehicle fault and they loose it entirely.

We all know the other driver is incompetent. The State Trooper driving the Lexus may or may not qualify. I don't know why he didn't shift it to neutral. But he didn't know how to shut it down. That 3 or 4 second shutdown button is pure bullshit. The car was a loaner. Should everybody using a strange loaner or rental car be required to read the owner's manual before they can depart with the car? Remember before there was standardization of file and other common operations with computer apps? Buttons all over the place. Cars should have some standards. At least the loaners and rentals. You should be able to shut it down by turning the key. Or by hitting a big red emergency button. Or by instruction from the rental/loaner outfit if shutting the engine down is made all fancy dancy. If you drive a strange car from the rental agency, and hit a black downpour, can you find the wipers and lights? Something to think about. Aside from the shift to neutral issue, which I don't know about, this guy and his family got killed by Toyota. And it's going to cost Toyota big time. The plaintiff(s) will exclude you from the jury if it isn't settled out of court.

--Vic

Vic Smith wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

He accidentally moved the lever over into the "Sport" gate, where all it would do was toggle between up and down in Drive. In his panic he didn't realize that and never thought to push the lever back into the regular gate, where Neutral was available.

You can thank liability regulations for that.

The delay was originally a half-second, but people were inadvertently shutting the engine down in traffic, leaving Toyota open to liability claims if the stalled car was involved in a collision. The delay was therefore increased to 3 seconds.

The Start button might look really kewl, but personally I think it's a dubious idea for automobiles used by the general public.

I'm thinking automakers should go back to keys again, even if the "key" is just a straight shank with no teeth on it. /Everybody/ knows how to turn a key.

It ought to be SOP for ANYBODY getting into ANY unfamiliar car to make sure he knows how to operate it. That's what I do, anyway.

I for one don't presume that a state trooper is any more vehicle (or firearm) competent than the average civilian. Certainly some are, but I don't think it's a majority of them.

I don't know about requirements, but I never just jump in a rental or loaner and take off, I spend the time to review where everything is, adjust the seat and mirrors and generally acclimate.

Most things on a car *are* pretty well standardized, only a few variations in transmission controls such as the increasingly rare manual, and the column or console automatics (or the super rare column manual).

I certainly can, since that it one of the things I review in an unfamiliar vehicle before taking off. I think most people's reviews of unfamiliar vehicles begins and ends with the radio controls.

If I were in the jury pool, they would have a difficult time excluding me from the jury. I have spent a *lot* of time with trial lawyers and am pretty familiar with their games.