Due to people being either idiots or money hungry scumbags who figure making their Prius go out of control will be equivalent of hitting the lottery and getting out of bankruptcy.
Feds find majority of Toyota unintended acceleration cases were people hitting wrong pedal
The U.S. government’s ten-month probe into Toyota validates the initially unpopular argument we at Jalopnik put forth at the start of this unintended acceleration witch hunt: This was a case of people pressing the wrong pedal. In every way, this was Toyota’s beige-ification of cars biting them back, and hard.
The probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and NASA scientists examined 280,000 lines of Toyota software, 3,054 complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles and several dozen individual vehicles. “There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas. Period,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
(The NASA team did find one theoretical way for a Toyota’s electronic throttle control to screw up and open wide even when the brake was depressed. But doing so requires two inputs at a precise electrical resistance; any variation and the car’s warning lights come on, and NASA reviewed Toyotas own warranty data and found no evidence of any such faults.)
NHTSA officials said the causes were the ones they suspected all along — bulky floormats, sticking gas pedals and driver mistakes. “We found that when a complaint alleged the brakes didn’t work, what most likely happened was pedal misapplication,” said deputy NHTSA administrator Ron Medford.
Yet the proposed solution? More electronics and more regulations. NHTSA officials say they’ll now push forward with three new rules for vehicles, requiring brake-override software, electronic data recorders and new rules for keyless ignition so that people don’t get confused when they have to shut down a car by holding a button for one-Mississippi two-Mississippi. NHTSA will also study pedal design, to see whether vehicles need to be designed with podiatry standards in mind.
In the heat of the recalls last fall, everyone who complained of sudden acceleration had the benefit of the doubt, and even today, LaHood tried to claim that “nobody up here has even insinuated the term ‘driver error.’” Why not? We know what Toyota did wrong: it’s mechanical and business mistakes led directly to four deaths and several injuries, and it faces hundreds of lawsuits and a dented reputation for ignoring defects. We know what’s wrong with Toyota’s software: Nothing. Why avoid discussing what many drivers did wrong — mistake the gas for the brake?
Human nature suggests some of those who claimed sudden acceleration problems without a defect will likely go on believing the government just overlooked something rather than admit a smidgen of responsibility. New rules for safety technology will take several months, if not years, to put into place, while the technology on vehicles will require several more years to filter into production. Even then, it will only protect those who buy new models, not the ones on the road today.
Where’s the call to improve American drivers? Where’s the charter to make driving an essential skill rather than a chore which should be handed off to computers as much as possible? If part of the Toyota imbroglio stems from people becoming disconnected from driving their vehicles, part of the answer should be to restore that connection — rather than making every vehicle as somnambulant as the worst Toyota.
And
Federal documents obtained by Jalopnik through a Freedom of Information Act request support today’s conclusion by the federal government and what we’ve said all along: unintended acceleration events, like the infamous “Runaway Prius” were not caused by electronic boogeymen.
At the height of last year’s “unintended acceleration” fever, a driver in San Diego named Jim Sikes made headlines when he called 911 claiming his Prius was out of control for 38 miles and required help from California Highway Patrol to stop his murderous Prius. The tape of him freaking out made national news and added to the paranoia surrounding Toyota vehicles. While appearing on national news he told a story we were skeptical of and, upon research, we discovered Mr. Sikes declared bankruptcy twice and had a very shady past.
Sikes never admitted he’d faked the incident, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigated and said they’d found no evidence of a malfunction.
Shortly after the events Jalopnik filed a Freedom of Information Act request in order to obtain the documents from this investigation. Approximately 11 months later we received them, and after rifling through hundreds of pages of analysis, we came to what NHTSA and the Department of Transportation said today after its thorough study: there’s no proof of any electronic error. This was primarily a case of people who lack proper driver’s education pressing the wrong pedal. In every way, this was Toyota’s beige-ification of cars biting them back, and hard.
While the release of today’s study indicates there is the possibility of pedal entrapment and sticky pedals (both previously known incidents), there’s no evidence of either situations occuring in the case of Mr. Sikes. Images from the investigation show the floormats were in their proper place and, after recreating the journey, they couldn’t find a similar flaw with pedal stickyness (nor is this an issue for his Prius model). NHTSA Investigation 3/31/2010 Conclusion:
Initial assessment does not indicate any physical evidence of pedal entrapment or sticky accelerator pedal… Test drive conducted, same route as Sikes incident. Could not simulate runaway situation.
Further, the California Highway Patrol report places the time of his high-speed journey at 23 minutes, whereas it only took NHTSA engineers 21 minutes driving a steady speed of approximately 75 miles per-hour to cover the same distance. What the tests and evidence seem to indicate is that Mr. Sikes was repeatedly on the brake pedal as the car was moving forward, but not because the car was moving under its control but under the control of Mr. Sikes.
Bloomberg believes the total cost of the Toyota recall campaign will be upwards of $2 billion, assuming people ever forget images of smashed Toyotas and Mr. Sikes recalling his scary, but almost certainly exaggerated, journey.
Today’s report from the DoT and NASA only confirm what NHTSA was able to conclude in their own on-the-scene study a year ago about the causes of unintended acceleration, namely that outside of a physical problem with the vehicle there’s no magical radiation that causes these incidents. Either the driver makes an error or, as increasingly likely in the case of the bankrupt Mr. Sikes, makes up a story.
http://jalopnik.com/#!5755213/government-documents-prove-runaway-prius-was-a-hoax
In other news, old people who are the biggest demographic for Toyotas and are in the majority of “unintended acceleration” cases are a death hazard as seen by a guy going 75mph THE WRONG WAY and crashing