1213 replies to this topic

[Ray Bell]

What I want to know is how he explains that my father took out the floormats...

That's what he did, because a Toymotor dealer told him that was the cause of his little bit of excitement that day and he knew it wasn't true.

Sure, my sister put them back in, but she definitely observed that the mats were several inches from the pedal less than half a mile before the car rocketed away from her.

[Magoo]

Personally, I never understood the floor mat-as-excuse reasoning --- as in oh, it's just the floor mats. never mind.

In the first place, it's not that difficult to design an automobile in which the floor mats don't get tangled up in the pedals. Also, picking out a pair of floor mats should not be a life-or-death decision for car owners and if you design your cars that way, maybe you are doing it wrong. Murdering and/or scaring your customers to death is probably not a sound strategy for building brand loyalty.

At the end of the day, does it really matter if a specific safety defect is due to an obscure electronic throttle control issue or badly designed floor mats? I tend to take the view that there is greater shame in the latter. Again, it's not rocket science.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

That doesn't make any sense. How can the OE floormats be a cause of unintended acceleration/not be a cause at the same time?

If you look for a problem for long enough, eventually you'll find it. Even if that problem would've never manifested itself in a million years of actual usage.

[TF110]

That doesn't make any sense. How can the OE floormats be a cause of unintended acceleration/not be a cause at the same time?

You must have misread. My reasons listed aren't the only ones, just main causes.

Edited by TF110, 30 December 2012 - 22:40.

[Lee Nicolle]

Oh dear, spec series Mum and Dad saloons.
Brings a whole new aspect to 'win on Sunday, sell on Monday'.

As a person who drives different cars regularly it can be bloody dangerous. Get filled in and hit the turn signals instead of the wipers.Or just hunting to use the washers, or manage to turn the wipers off again. Or the other extreme go to change lanes and get stupid, stupid as the wipers bounce across the screen. And a honk from whoever you just drove in front of.
If you are used to a car fine, if you are not it is and always will be a potential accident. And that is millions of people a day.
And as for the moronic push button starters that you have to hold down for seconds to turn off. Yeah, real cutting edge moronocy!

[Magoo]

If you look for a problem for long enough, eventually you'll find it. Even if that problem would've never manifested itself in a million years of actual usage.

That hardly applies to the floor mat cases under discussion at the moment. which are comprehensively documented.

[Ray Bell]

Mac, you say you don't understand the floormats being used as an excuse...

They were because they were easy. They were something the customer couldn't question once the car was in the workshop and the mechanics had played with it a bit... they bought Toymotor time and could be shrugged off with a very easy 'fix'.

If my father had lived they would have had hell to pay, I can tell you. He took the mats out and was just waiting for the thing to run away on him again, he would have been to the dealer, sat there and demanded to see someone in authority and called them all liars.

Unfortunately the car was in my sister's hands before it launched itself into unwanted acceleration again. Three times it did it in her hands, the first two she mistakenly thought she had done something wrong, but when it was clear there was no mistake she wanted to be out of that car and never sit in it again!

[John Brundage]

well at least they wont buy any other brand in the future, if you manage to do what you propose - just kidding for a bit
Happy 2013 to anyone on the TF.

On a more serious note
What surprises me a bit in this whole saga/context is the "throttle strategy" (for lack of a better word) Toyota seems to use in their
DBW (drive by wire) setup.

I will admit, that I have never driven a Toyota with DBW throttle, so that maybe the reason for my ignorance, but in any VAG (VW,Audi, Skoda, Seat) model I have driven over the last few years, the moment you touched the brake pedal, the engine would go to idle.
Meaning, that a.) you cannot "left foot brake" these cars (not in the sense that you can balance power vs. braking) [that's what I tried to do, when I discovered this setting], and b.) that even if your throttle pedal would stuck open mechanically (floor mat or pedal linkage defect or whatever), the engine would go to idle as soon and as long as you touched the brake pedal.
Therefore you would never fight, the engine power with the brakes, avoiding the brake fluid boiling and other issues mentioned earlier in this thread

The brake input (I guess brake light switch) would have higher authority in the ECU algorithm then any throttle position input, and would overrule the later, resetting the throttle body (butterfly) at the engine to idle in the event that the brake pedal is touched.
I find it rather interesting/strange, that Toyota would not apply a similar strategy, both for safety and for fuel consumption reasons, in their DBW setup/layout.

My Volvo VR70 has throttle by wire, but I can heel and toe. The throttle does not cut out when the brake is applied on this car.

[Lee Nicolle]

well at least they wont buy any other brand in the future, if you manage to do what you propose - just kidding for a bit
Happy 2013 to anyone on the TF.

On a more serious note
What surprises me a bit in this whole saga/context is the "throttle strategy" (for lack of a better word) Toyota seems to use in their
DBW (drive by wire) setup.

I will admit, that I have never driven a Toyota with DBW throttle, so that maybe the reason for my ignorance, but in any VAG (VW,Audi, Skoda, Seat) model I have driven over the last few years, the moment you touched the brake pedal, the engine would go to idle.
Meaning, that a.) you cannot "left foot brake" these cars (not in the sense that you can balance power vs. braking) [that's what I tried to do, when I discovered this setting], and b.) that even if your throttle pedal would stuck open mechanically (floor mat or pedal linkage defect or whatever), the engine would go to idle as soon and as long as you touched the brake pedal.
Therefore you would never fight, the engine power with the brakes, avoiding the brake fluid boiling and other issues mentioned earlier in this thread

The brake input (I guess brake light switch) would have higher authority in the ECU algorithm then any throttle position input, and would overrule the later, resetting the throttle body (butterfly) at the engine to idle in the event that the brake pedal is touched.
I find it rather interesting/strange, that Toyota would not apply a similar strategy, both for safety and for fuel consumption reasons, in their DBW setup/layout.

Not being able to heel and toe, or more importantly left foot brake in an auto says to me they are a lousy car, designed for mums and bowls hats types. That and all the other electronic gimickry makes a lot of these modern cars mechanised transport, not a car. Though that is all Corrollas and Camrys ever were. Though this has happened on the upmarket sportys too which are supposed to be a performance car.

[imaginesix]

This thread is from 10 years ago, yet today there are STILL some aspects of keyless/pushbutton ignition that the manufacturers haven't thought through from the perspective of behavioural analysis. It's mind blowing!

 

https://www.freep.co...ide/1419233001/

 

In this specific case it also happens to be Toyota, and again it's resulting in peoples' deaths. Just crazy.

 

The primary concern when examining different solutions for shutting down / disabling power has to be the nature of our intuitive interaction with the system, as established by the method of operation of ignition swiches over decades of automotive use. That is why, of all the solutions proposed so far, Greg's is the most relevant; a system "that people know how to use".

This perspective would have left Toyota with plenty of scope for a push-button ignition to satisfy the racy/techie image that they wanted without leading to a carbon-copy of power switches found on computers; push to turn on, hold for 3 seconds to turn off. Though this 'booting' method is true to the evolution of the nature of automobiles into compumobiles, it is not a truth that the general public have come to recognise yet, and even if they did it wouldn't help those septagenarian drivers of Lexii who are most likely to be confused by such simple concepts as right-clicking the mouse.

Though it's easy for me to be critical of Toyota now (being as I am outside the decision making process and with the full benefit of hindsight), I still think it is fair to ask what the hell they were thinking when they developed this ignition system. The lesson of accounting for human nature in the design of cars has to be very well learned by now in the industry, so the fact that they completely disregarded behavioral analysis in the course of implementing such a fundamental change to such a vital system is damned near unforgivable.

For example, here are a few common operating scenarios for the ignition system that I wager most drivers don't have the first clue about when applied to the new ignition systems without ignition cylinders. Yet they can be vital to the safe operation of the vehicle. If anybody knows the answers to any of these questions, I would love to hear them please.

• Does the 'start' button operate the starter discretely or does it merely send a start signal to the ECU, which then controls the duration of the cranking period?
• If the proximity-sensor equiped 'key' is thrown out of the vehicle while it is running, will it turn off the power (the equivalent of turning off the key in mechanical ignition switches)?'
• How does the driver go from engine running to engine off with accessory power only?
• How is the government-mandated steering interlock switch operated on these vehicles?

This is an absolutely fascinating topic to me.

 

[Greg Locock]

I've just gone to a hire car with a conventional ignition key, rather than the the remote push button affair in my car. I honestly can say I have not noticed the slightest inconvenience in using the ignition key. It is a BETTER system than the fashionable one.

 

Incidentally, off topic, the car is a Fiat Punto with 160000 km on it. Most of the car is in surprisingly good nick, but the poor old 2 pedal clutchless manual is probably the most hopelessly inept bit of mechanical engineering I have seen in production.  The 4 speed auto in my 1970s Mini was better.

[Zoe]

The most weird thing I experienced was - many years ago - a rental car with a clutchless manual gear shift. It actually worked quite well, but I could not re-program my firmware to shift without trying to use the clutch pedal. I can either work with an auto with 2 pedals, or a manual with three pedals.... Just watching me park the car was probably quite funny.

[gruntguru]

I've just gone to a hire car with a conventional ignition key. . . . Incidentally, off topic, the car is a Fiat Punto with 160000 km on it.

 

160,000 km on a hire car?

 

"Rent-a-Wreck"?

[Greg Locock]

Jucy! I think it works out at $22 per day. It's got aircon.