This guy has been fishy since Day 1, but the police conspiracy seems like a bit of a stretch.

2 compelling reasons for my theory beyond what has been discussed about this being a hoax: San Diego is the one place in the world where 2 of 10+ million Toyotas take off and their drivers think the solution is to call the police. That same police department is now trying to breathe new life into Sikes' story after all other parties have written him off as a fraud.

Here's video footage of a Renault run-away, but I don't think changing the accelerator pedal or the ECU programming will help much in this case.
What surprised me is that, unlike the CHP, the British police were apparently uninterested.

Toyota hasn't written him off as a fraud, they only state that their findings don't match his claims. This is pretty much exactly what they told Ray's neice with respect to her story. Is she a fraud too?

Oh wait I know, Toyota is in on it too, right Toddikins?

I think that for any set of events, people will tend to connect the various data points according to how the ruts in their heads are laid out. Conspiracy theories are one way to connect the dots but a special set of ruts is required.

If I am following you correctly, your theory involves a criminal conspiracy among the California Highway Patrol, the Obama Administration, and the Department of Transportation. Hmm, it would appear you have stumbled into something big -- and really, who knows where it could lead. I wouldn't be surprised when, before your theory is complete, it will also include the Knights Templar and secret writing on the back of the Declaration of Independence. That's typically how these things go. In the meantime, I would be very careful if I were you. Some people cannot afford to let this kind of valuable information get out. I trust you have been keeping a close eye out for black helicopters overhead.

This theory just involves Jim Sikes and the officers that helped him. They know him well, have helped him commit insurance fraud in the past. They're motive is to try and go back and change history so that their dead fellow officer wasn't inept. No paranoia involved. They're not out to get me, just to influence how stupid people think about what happened here. Looks like it worked.

Fixed.

Just to lighten things a little, on the way home tonight in the bus the guy got a stuck throttle so what did he do?

Kept going of course!

Can you imagine in any Western country a bus driver driving with a stuck throttle driving on the key?

Not a bus driver, but an Aussie mate of mine and a few friends many years ago flew over to New Zealand watch a round of the World Rally Championship. (Way before it came to Aus)
They pooled some money together and bought a rattly old Mk1 Cortina so they could drive around to follow the rally cars through the forest at the various spectator stages. Anyway, deep into the forest one day the throttle cable broke. Well, being Aussies AND in NZ, they figured out what to do pretty quickly - To get all their shoe laces, tie them together, and connect one end to the carby and the other end through the driver's window so he could pull on it to make the car go. Turned out the car was so slow anyway, he just pulled the throttle full on and wound the window shut to lock the engine at full power, and then used the ignition to control the rate of progress.
It all worked okay but they got it fixed ASAP of course.

<thread hijack>

I recall that Reg Parnell performed the same trick on an Aston Martin DB3S in the Monte Carlo Rally. He wired the throttles wide open and drove on the switch.

USA: Call the depot and get another coach sent out to take over. Police escort to speed things up, two giant tow trucks on hand to retrieve the stricken bus.

England: Get the word to all other fleet drivers, they converge on the point and hold a union meeting.

Australia: Hail down passing motorist and fix the thing with his tools. Charge the boss overtime for the extra minutes on the road.

All at great expense of course - you know Ray in Oz more likely all buss'es would be taken off the road and services suspended while all were checked and the drivers would demand danger pay increase.

Here's an interesting op-ed piece about Toyota's admission of "a glitch with the engine's electronic control unit"

http://www.examiner.com/x-3721-Detroit-Aut...en-acceleration


On a different note, after 2 days of hearings in Ottawa, some Canadian politicians are mumbling about possible criminal charges against Toyota.

I was on a Car Rally(in Oz) in the early 1970's and one of the service vehicles,a Holden HQ ute,had a tree branch(IIRC) get caught in the engine bay and somehow jammed the throttle and the driver turned the ignition off,locked the steering and speared off into the scrub,happy ending,no one hurt.However a few Months later a similar thing happened to a family on the H/way,had an accident after locking the steering,then sued Holden for the faulty design of the ignition switch,from memory it failed,the court eventually ruling it was the Drivers fault for turning the ignition off whilst the Car was mobile.

Edit..Ray from memory the key has to be moved on a HQ but thats the instinct when your trying to shut down a 'racing' motor.

I don't think I've ever struck a steering lock (of the integrated type...) that engaged without the key being removed...

Do they really have those?

On the other hand, those on the '36 Fords were apparently pesky. The late George Reed had one lock on him while racing down Conrod Straight at Bathurst back in 1938.

I believe Oz was the first with mandatory "can't remove the key in a single action" car legislation because of this or similar incidents (I think someone got killed actually).

Meaning we got those little plastic button you had to push to remove the key or had to 'double action' push the key inwards to remove it for the steering lock to become operational.

When did that happen?
My newest car is a '98 WRX, it doesn't have that.

Don't remember exactly but we are talking late 1970's. That was the bulk of the systems back then different manufacturers have different ideas about it now though or are you telling me you can turn off your Sub and pull the key in a single action while driving it? I certainly can't with my '05 Mazda - stop and select Park with your foot on the brake first.

If you can it is faulty. Virtually all cars can be turned off but they do require a secondary action of some sort to lock the steering and to remove the key.
When the key barrel and key wear lots of cars you can take the key out with the motor running!! Both 70s, 80s and even early 90s Ford and GM products are good for that.
As for the HQ incident they do have a similar scenario but it is weak[with no real positive feel] so you can turn the key right round to lock too easily.
Toyotas are generally pretty good, it is very hard to turn onto lock.
Some modern cars really give me the sh*its as it is so hard to put the car in park, get the ign turned off. You have to wobble the lever through gates, put your seast belt on, put your foot on the brake, push arkward buttons etc. That when you are backing the car out of the driveway!!

I haven't tried it when driving but certainly all i have to do to turn it off is simply turn the key all the way to the off position and then out it comes. Same for out 1994 Pajero.

Confirmed it with the Mazda today, can turn the engine off but can go no further until the car has completely stopped and Park is selected only then can you continue to turn the key and remove it.

Found it, ADR 25a 1978.. (ADR is Australian Design Rules for you Foreigners)

Refer you to ADR's 25a.2.6.1 and 25a.2.6.2

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca...vIlubiT5ip1R_mA





Sorry Mate in the interest of public safety I'm going to have to report you to the RTA to get those killer unroadworthy vehicles off the road.

.

Watching Money Programme: Total Recall: The Toyota Story on BBC2 now. Massively in depth look into Toyotas history, growth and subsequent crisis. I cant help but think manual gearboxes and clutches would avoid every one of these horrific crashes from the runaway Toyotas in America or SUA (Sudden unintended acceleration) The tales of cars accelerating up to 80, 100 or 120 mph before the accidents should be totally avoidable wether its the mat, the throttle or the computer by the driver being physically able to take the car out of drive at any moment. In a manual car with a key starter this could be done by

a) depressing the clutch
b) taking the car out of gear and into neutral
c) turn the ignition off at the key

The extra problem caused by auto cars is that they shift up, if your manual car was SUA you wouldnt shift up...

Im amazed and shocked the people driving these SUA cars were unable to slow the car down in any way. When modern technology goes bad.

Indeed. It would appear in some of the SUA cases that operator error is to blame (e.g. Prius in New York) ... accordingly these knuckleheads are probably the same types that "can't drive a stick."

I've got an issue of Quattroruote here with an article on the intricacies of learning to drive an automatic

Works for my auto.

I'm too old/lazy to go back to a manual and anyway I stuffed up my left knee years ago so driving in heavy traffic is painful after a bit.

I saw on the Canadian news tonight that the US is going to fine Toyota $16 million.
For a corporation the size of Toyota, that is peanuts.
But, it's a start.

The start came when this story was invented from whole cloth while Toyota trailed Ford by 300 complaints of Sudden Unintended Acceleration. The real story is Toyota's closure of the NUMMI plant, Toyota's only UAW organized final assembly facility and the only factory Toyota has ever closed. Incidentally, the major propaganda outlets barely mentioned the death of NUMMI on April 1st, and gave no context to the story whatsoever. The UAW owns Obama, and Obama runs GM. Toyota is a terrible inconvenience.

It was moider!

I see Toyota sales are on the up and up - just goes to show how much safer a car is when it's heavily discounted.

Got it! It was Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. Toddikins needs to get a Clue.

Way it should be too, how many GM's are sold in Japan?

And to think: That makes more sense to you than reality.

Is reality the latest word to become a target for redefinition by you lefty chancre sores?

Enjoy some right wing propaganda from National Public Radio: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-arch...isode/403/nummi

Heard it last week. Pretty good story, I think. I would recommend it to anyone. One lesson from NUMMI only alluded to toward the end of the piece is that Japanese manufacturing is not totally portable into the American industry as a hunk -- adjustments must be made. For example, I can't picture you gathering with the rest of the workforce in the cafeteria each morning for jumping jacks and all five verses of the company song.

...Wait a minute, I thought you said the major outlets were ignoring the story. NPR is a major outlet, I would say.

What color is the sky on planet hippie?

A bigger problem than any prejudiced views of who can take part in exercises before doing a physical job was the issue that US parts suppliers are organized by the UAW and therefore still take an adversarial approach to contractually defined minimums. If we're ever to become a manufacturing country again, which is more important than most think, we'll need each phase of production to be performed by people acting in enlightened self interest instead of a socialist sense of entitlement. The element of Toyota production that didn't translate to GM was that you need good parts to make good cars. Every factory was a battlefield, and victory for the UAW meant inefficiently produced piles of garbage sitting on Pontiac lots. This is what Obama is trying to revive by bringing down Toyota.

From the other side of the world it seems that the US will soon export all its manufacturing to China [and SE Asia] as we have done in Oz. That will solve the problem with the UAW. I am sure it is already happening to a large degree, more and more imported parts making GM, Toyota, Ford US assembled Chinese cars. Ofcourse the quality is still crap.

The Holden China dore here has Chinese wiring, electronics, transbodys, heads, A/C, seats and a 1001 small parts that were made here by local suppliers who have largely gone by the wayside. And they have the recalls and QC problems to prove it!! And the Commodore currently is the only car assembled here and Holdens have lost at least one shift per day.

And that includes big operators/ suppliers like tyres, radiators, batterys, belts, pistons, bearings, gaskets. None of apart from specialist stuff will be made in Oz from the end of the year. And the US market has long had South American manufacturers undercutting local. I often buy US brand parts made in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and the like.

A few years ago Nissan built cars and assembled others. GONE. Mitsubishi built cars and assembled some others. GONE. And Toyota< Ford and Holden still build less models with a far higher imported component.

Plus we had assembly of several other makes in the past, all gone.

It is becoming alarming the number of Renaults, Citroen, Benz, and other Euro cars on our roads who have no local content. And ofcourse when the economy changes they are gone making the cars worthless. Even the renters are often Euro prams.

And once you have lost your manufacturing sector it is very hard to retrieve it

I agree Lee. The reason that up and coming economies are very keen to start an auto manufacturing industry is that the whole ecology required to support it is so big. As an example of what will happen when local auto manufacturing shuts down completely - tooling suppliers, which Oz has a lot of, will find it hard to keep going. That means the local aircraft industry will source its tooling overseas. That's a fair old whack of money, and skills that decades to build up will evaporate.

Ford's president has observed that if one local manufacturer shuts down, the other two will follow in short order.

However, as a free market capitalist (as opposed to right wing loon) I find it hard to argue in favour of subsidies or whatever for an industry that is frankly broken. There seems no sensible reason why we as a society should pay Australians $25 an hour to bash cars together from Chinese parts when we can pay Chinese or Thai assemblers $5 an hour to build a car from the same parts.

By the way Todd, GM had an SUA problem for a few model years, and solved it. Ford had an SUA problem for a few model years and solved it. Toyota have lead the charts for SUA reports per 100k vehcile sold since MY2002 and seem to have a particular problem with all sorts of Lexuss. And they seem to have gone about solving it in an odd way, including that memo crowing about their suppression of recalls. That is a couple of reasons why they are getting such attention, I don't think it is just schadenfreude.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...oryId=124235858

Even with all the fakes of the last year, it seems amazing that VW-Audi still has a much higher rate of SUA complaints. Surely, VW-Audi is incredibly cautious about their systems designs after 60 Minutes set Audi back a decade in 1986 with this exact same witch hunt. Somehow, VW-Audi products were still 53% more likely to produce an SUA complaint than a Toyota-Lexus in the middle of this character assassination. Demographics and hysteria.

There are other things afoot as well - Honda for example are good at keeping secrets, book your car in for a service and the service department may notify you later that theres a "minor problem, need to get a small item in and sorry for the inconvenience but your car may have to stay in overnight do you require a loaner Sir"?

In the mean time they replace major components on your car that you are not aware of and Honda avoid a recall. This keeps a good quality reputation but is sneaky although admittedly better than a car company who denies/avoids the cost.

Anyone who believes there such thing as a reliable car manufacturer producing cars without problems is kidding themselves, it's just the way they go about it later that makes the difference.

You have inadvertently stumbled into the core issue, which has nothing to do with "socialism" or entitlement. Japan is a far more socialist country than ours, where workers have much greater job security (they invented the jobs bank) with comparable, even superior pay, and better benefits, including national health care. And yet they still built better cars.

On the traditional American production line, the "enlightened self interest" you speak of doesn't mean a thing to a worker at the bottom. He or she has no control over the quality of the product -- not even the fastener he or she is installing. By nature humans want to do good work, but when they have no control over their work quality, they stop caring. They have to stop caring or they will go crazy. The classic American assembly line job is not just tedious, it's futile. You are building crap, you know you are building crap, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it but quit or get drunk. (This is why alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant in manufacturing.) It's not about entitlement, it's about empowerment. In the Japanese system, all workers are empowered to do quality work.

Best single example: the andon cord. On a Japanese assembly line, any worker can pull the andon cord and stop the line for any reason, at any time. GM managers were astounded to find this feature at NUMMI; they couldn't believe it. But really, the andon cord is absolutely mandatory for product quality for all the obvious reasons. In typical GM fashion, andon cords were then installed on other GM assembly lines and in typical GM fashion, workers were not empowered to pull it. The goal was production, not quality.

But don't things like andon cords speak of deeper social issues in the 'identity' of the respective nations, rather than simply work environments? You can't really just import one idea into another country and expect it to fit. The hardest thing for me about living in other countries isn't adapting to their system but trying to maintain my own 'American personality'.

Sure, as I noted earlier, there are parts of the Japanese system that will not work in American manufacturing -- and vice versa. In Japan, team concepts carry a lot more weight, for example, where American workers tend to be more individualist... obvious differences in socialization/culture. But the andon cord is absolutely necessary in any manufacturing process. Otherwise you get the Lucille Ball cake factory scenario. The worker must be able to stop the line when he gets a batch of bad widgets or the widget jig is bent. The worker must not only be authorized to pull the cord but encouraged to do so -- genuinely empowered.

What is management's objection to the andon cord? There could be many: when the line stops, a problem must be identified -- and someone/something is responsible for that problem. Oops, some people might not like that. The idea is to install accountability at the place where something can be done about it, not when the car is already built. At the end of the day, there is one central reason not to have an andon cord: production is more important than quality.

I listened to the entire NPR show and understand the implications of the andon chord. I've seen the same union mentality in other industries though. I used to supervise union electricians during comm room buildouts and move weekends at Bear Stearns. We had the best hardware on hand. The electricians had more than enough time to do the job right. All they cared about was their personal bottom line and how little they could do for us to get it. They were slowly walking filth. I've seen similar behavior in public education, other state employees, and transportation. Unions turn people into an impediment, at least in this culture.

Unions are set up for one kind of person - Three words: Lowest Common Denominator.

Unions are a natural reaction to unfettered capitalism - both trying to make the maximum profit with the minimum effort. The two go hand in hand with each other with everyone trying to screw each other. The "free market" isn't self-guiding, at least not in any fashion that puts human health and decency ahead of profit. As long as The yardstick is profit, corners will be cut.

There is one difference between you and me: I tend not to regard people as "filth." I believe most people will operate toward their best rational self interest according to the information they possess at the time. They may be mistaken but they are not filth. They're human beings, to be accorded exactly the same respect and regard as yourself. How can you successfully supervise people you regard as "filth"? I don't see how that could work.

I learn from my experiences. Try it.

This thread is starting to sound like the plot for the movie 'Working Class Man' which starred Michael Keaton