$1M Prize For Finding Cause of Unintended Acceleration 690
phantomfive writes "Edmunds Auto has announced that it will be offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can find the cause of unintended acceleration. As Wikipedia notes, this is a problem that has plagued not only Toyota, but also Audi and other manufacturers. Consumer Reports has some suggestions all automakers can implement to solve this problem, including requiring brakes to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored."
Re:Right answer (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Turn the key off or put the car in neutral..... (Score:1, Informative)
The cars in question are all electronic no key just an electronic fob. No "off switch" just a start button. Even the gears are controlled by electrical signal.
Give us the source (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Idiocy. (Score:4, Informative)
Being able to shift to neutral is a required safety feature. I can't imagine where "he couldn't do it!!!1111oneoneone" got started.
The Lexus ES-350, the vehicle CHP Officer Mark Saylor died in, does not have electronic shifters. Even if it did, electronic shifters allow gear shifting under speed. In fact, they do so without the natural increase in force necessary for non-electronic shifters to shift gears while under speed.
This is something you can actually test, it won't hurt the vehicle if you don't let it revv for very long. Accerlate on the freeway, shift to neutral without ceasing acceleration. Most vehicles will require more than normal force to change gears but will do so without complaint or problem. The exceptions are the vehicles that will act entirely as they do all the time, because they're by-wire themselves. Do, however, stop accelerating before shifting back.
Re:All cars already have this system (Score:3, Informative)
Having BEEN in the situation myself, I can tell you that switching to neutral was the LAST thing I thought of. When you're sitting minding your own business at a red light and suddenly your car flares to life doing 60 mph in a couple of seconds, You're really much more focused on trying to stop the car, not the transfer of power from the engine through the transmission.
On a sidenote: Cutting power to the engine is ALSO a bad idea, at least if you happen to have power steering. Or so I discovered.
Re:You can NOT "just put it in neutral"... (Score:5, Informative)
For the millionth time, you CAN put these cars into neutral at speed. I've personally done so. Your explanation of how transmissions work is not correct.
Re:Right answer (Score:3, Informative)
If you have a car that has an automatic transmission, putting it into neutral while driving is a bad idea and it wouldn't surprise me if ALL automatics stopped the driver from doing so. The reason is that auto gearboxes have an oil pump that's driven by the engine. When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Try Googling "why can't i tow an automatic car" or something like that
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
First time was when the clip holding the outer at the carbie fractured; the outer pushed forwards into the throttle arm and opened it all the way when I lifted my foot off the accelerator. The second was a worn and frayed inner; it jammed when I accelerated away from an intersection. Both happened on the same stretch of road, oddly enough.
And then you presumably shifted into neutral or low gear and/or stopped the engine and stopped the car. After opening the hood you saw a broken clip so you knew why it happened and what to do to fix your car.
You can also inspect the parts to see if they are in good shape (I doubt that the clip broke suddenly and did not have any marks of a fracture before).
The cars with the problem described in the article could not be stopped by turning off the engine (looks like the engine did not turn off) or stepping on the brakes.
It looks to me like it's easier to design a reliable mechanical system than it is designing reliable software. For example, we accept software bugs and patches as inevitable but a mechanical device usually does not need any patches until something wears out. If you buy a new record player it works right the first time, you do not need to update it or anything. If the record player has some bug, for example it would horribly scratch every 5th record played, you would probably send it to warranty or return it and demand your money back. On the other hand, software that crashes and needs to be constantly updated "is just how it is".
Re:You can NOT "just put it in neutral"... (Score:3, Informative)
If you shift to neutral while driving a car that is not a run-away Toy-Yoda (never liked them anyway), and you pushing the accelerator, then the engine itself will rev up to its maximum rotations, it's true, but as long as the clutch is not engaged your engine will be fine for a while, or completely fine if the rev limiter kicks-in (either the carburetor or the fuel injector, or the actual limiter device) and will reduce the amount of fuel flowing to the engine or will even shut down the ignition. Just be careful not to drop the clutch into a low gear when the engine is in red, then you may have engine trouble.
Handbrake? (Score:3, Informative)
Requiring strong brakes? (Score:3, Informative)
However, that's assuming they are operating properly... If they're defective, doesn't matter how powerful they were designed for... I used to have a 300ZX with rather beefy brakes, and when the master cylinder started leaking the brakes got rather weak. I probably would have had a hard time holding back the engine in the 5 miles or so I drove it after noticing it but before getting it fixed.
Now, if the car computer can disable the foot and parking brakes, that's another matter entirely. Usually the parking brake is an entirely different system from the brake pedal, using a cable instead of hydraulics. Because there's no booster it can take significant effort to get a lot of braking force, but I'd expect you could overcome the engine with the parking brake unless there are mechanical issues, though some may find it difficult or impossible to apply enough force to a hand brake to overcome the engine, particularly if going down hill. So there still could be some cases, particularly with a computer in the mix, where strong brakes can't be operated effectively enough to overcome the engine.
Sean
That's not how an automatic works (Score:3, Informative)
If you have a car that has an automatic transmission, putting it into neutral while driving is a bad idea and it wouldn't surprise me if ALL automatics stopped the driver from doing so. The reason is that auto gearboxes have an oil pump that's driven by the engine. When you stop driving the gear box from the engine and start driving it from the wheels, the gear box quickly heats up and I suppose could even seize with potentially nasty consequences.
Try Googling "why can't i tow an automatic car" or something like that
Nonsense. No such rapid heating occurs.
The pump on an automatic transmission is driven directly by the torque converter shell, which is driven directly by the engine crankshaft.
So, the only way to stop the pump is to stop the engine. Shifting to neutral does not do that.
Even if the engine were stopped, the transmission doesn't suddenly lose all of it's lubricant - there is still fluid in the bearings and bushings and you're safe to coast for many many miles. The rules about not towing an automatic without the engine running specify a limited distance, not that you can't do it at all.
Re:The Chinese (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AWESOME CONTEST!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Like many onboard automobile sensors, they are also completely isolated from the vehicle ground. To reduce the potential for interference or mistakes, they operate at different voltages. The first sensor, known as ACCEL POS #1, has a nominal voltage range from 0.5 volts to 1.1 volts at idle and 2.5 volts to 4.5 volts at wide-open-throttle (WOT). The second sensor, ACCEL POS #2, delivers from 1.2 volts to 2.0 volts at idle and 3.4 volts to 5.0 volts at WOT. Why such a wide range of permissible voltages? The engine computer (ECM) recalibrates the sensor regularly, every time you start the car and the ECM goes through its power-on self-test.
Both accelerator-pedal-position Hall-effect sensors have to agree fairly closely, or the ECM will go into its limp-home mode, which turns on the Check Engine light and sets a trouble code.
There's more. If Toyota's engine-management scheme is anything like that of most other car companies, firmware inside the ECM also monitors the airflow into the engine, the throttle blade position and engine rpm, and calculates backwards to what the throttle pedal position should be. Any discrepancy, and a trouble code is set, the Check Engine light on the dash goes on, and you're dialing the service manager to make an appointment.
Bottom line: The system is not only redundant, it's double-redundant. The signal lines from the pedal to the ECM are isolated. The voltages used in the system are DC voltages—any RF voltages introduced into the system, by, say, that microwave oven you have in the passenger seat, would be AC voltages, which the ECM's conditioned inputs would simply ignore. Neither your cellphone nor Johnny's PlayStation have the power to induce much confusion into the system.
These throttle-by-wire systems are very difficult to confuse—they're designed to be robust, and any conceivable failure is engineered to command not an open throttle but an error message.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4347704.html [popularmechanics.com]
Re:Requiring strong brakes? (Score:2, Informative)
Every time this story keeps popping up, everyone keeps getting this detail wrong. The requirement exists for a vehicle at rest. Brakes must be able to prevent a vehicle from starting to roll at full throttle. The physics involved when a vehicle is traveling at 50-80 mph and at full throttle are completely different. On many vehicles the brakes can not stop a vehicle in this situation; which is completely different from holding a vehicle at rest.
Think about this people - you can still do burn outs in modern cars; its just a lot harder to get started and get right. I don't know why everyone keeps getting this soooooo wrong. Plus, if everything could be made right by simply pressing the brake peddle, chances are very high we wouldn't be reading about this problem today.
Sp please stop spreading this misinformation. It largely does not pertain to the greater context.
But the fact of the matter is that EVERY proper test that has ever been done has shown that the brakes can stop the vehicle even one traveling at speed with the throttle wide open. See http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept [caranddriver.com]
It seems you are the one spreading mis-information.
Re:Brakes! (Score:2, Informative)
Uhhhh... I believe you fail at basic physics. If you can plonk both feet on the pedals and not accelerate, then the breaks can excerpt more force than the engine can (otherwise you'd be accelerating). Given that force equals mass times acceleration, breaks that can excerpt more force than your accelerator will obviously decelerate you faster than your accelerator will accelerate you.
Physics fail yourself. You're forgetting that acceleration is traction and drag limited, while deceleration is traction limited with drag helping you slow down. There's plenty of cars that in the absence of traction control will quite happily spin the drive wheels and produce lots of smoke when you press the gas. There's also plenty of cars (pretty much all) that in the absence of ABS will quite happily lock up the wheels while moving and produce lots of smoke when you press the brakes. The force required to lock up the wheels isn't necessarily more than the engine can produce, it is however all the force required to stop the car if the engine wasn't outputting maximum power.