$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."
Unnecessarily (Score:3, Interesting)
Misleading summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost all cars generate braking forces far in excess of whatever the engine is capable of putting out. Adequate brake torque isn't the problem here. If the brakes have to resist the the torque input, then their effectiveness will obviously be diminished.
The proposal of having engine power being cut off when the brakes are applied seems to be sensible, however there are certain situations where you will need both the engine power and brakes on at the same time. Such as starting from a stop on a hill. So the solution isn't that simple. The easiest thing would be to either install an switch that trips past an certain amount of brake travel, or to sense the line pressure. They can use that data and determine how hard the operator is trying to brake, along with the vehicle's current state, is it stationary, or moving, and if so, how fast? They can use that to generate parameters to decide when and if to cut out engine power. At high brake pressures, and moving at high speeds, one would not be expect to continue to accelerate. At low to moderate pressures and being stationary or barely moving, engine power should not be cut off.
Another thing they could do is install a sensor and determine if a foot is present on the accelerator or not, specifically in non-cruise conditions.
Some people apparently had trouble shifting into neutral, but that should not happen at all. I don't know if it's an issue with the transmission trying to block that action, or if it was not able to mechanically disengage due to the engine accelerating. In either case, they should change the shifter from an mechanically controlled operation to an electronic one. Being controlled electronically also makes it easier to move the shifter. If the car is shifted into neutral, that's a fairly clear indicator that the ECM should override the pedal and drop to idle, and shift into neutral.
I think it would help if there was a verbal and textual feedback system to aid the driver along with a command system.
Steve Wozniak Already Knows (Score:1, Interesting)
It's the cruise control software [latimes.com]. Pay the man his one million, please. Not that he needs the money, mind you.
Re:Kill Switch? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen numbers in the tens of millions of lines of computer code being bandied around as indicators of their size and complexity - WTF does a *car* need all that computing power for?
Having spoken to a friend who writes embedded automotive code for a living, it seems almost all of that is for diagnostic purposes. It's so that any idiot at a garage can plug in a machine that'll tell him precisely what's wrong with your car.
I also think that's a severe overestimate. AIUI, most modern cars have either 2 or 3 processors onboard, and each processor typically has around 20-100K of flash. You don't get tens of millions of lines of code into that little memory.
Re:You can NOT "just put it in neutral"... (Score:2, Interesting)
The sticky gas pedal on the Toyotas is a mechanical issue, not an electronic one
Actually, that's being called into question now. Toyota owners with "fixed" pedals are starting to report that the problem still persists. Failure analysis experts are starting to support the notion that electronics are at the root of the problem [cnn.com]
Re:Million Dollar Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what i'd be putting my money on for 99% of the cases of short unexplained bursts of acceleration. The longer ones (eg where the driver has enough time to call the police) might actually be faults with the car, but incidents of that are so rare compared to other deaths on the road that it's hardly worth spending time on.
I've done the opposite before - I put my foot on what I thought was the accelerator but was actually the brake. The car didn't go faster so I pressed harder and nearly planted my face on the steering wheel! I can easily understand how the more unfortunate case would happen for a few seconds (which is plenty enough time to have disasterous results).
An easy fix would be to have a 'dead' spot on the accelerator right at the end of the travel, so that the 'foot to the floor' situation would just result in the car idling, and it wouldn't accelerate again until the pedal was fully released. There would be an initial surge of acceleration if they did the accelerator-instead-of-brake trick, but as the driver panicked and pressed harder, they'd just go back to idle instead. To take the idea a bit further you might make the car brake instead of idle, but while it would be funny to watch, I suspect that that would cause more accidents than it would avoid.
Re:Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to learn to properly use the techniques described, I'd recommend joining an advanced driving group, such as the Institute of Advanced Motorists [wikipedia.org] Their testing is performed by a serving or retired police officer who holds a Police Advanced Driving Certificate.
You should note, however, that this does not make you any more qualified a driver. It is not an "Advanced Driving License", but may be considered for a reduction in car insurance premium.
It's the computer (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that long ago an Airbus plane flying from Brazil disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean due to uncontrolled acceleration.
Several years ago a BMW model that runs on an embedded version of Microsoft Windows screwed up so bad it locked the passangers inside the car, and people were blaming Microsoft for the mishap.
Problem can happen anywhere --- from bugs to deficiency in programming language (embedded programming included), to the lack of thorough verifications (verification itself is extremely complicated by itself), to node clashing within the network, to stampede problem, and so on.
Having 50, 60, all the way above 100 computers in a car or an airplane is always a disaster in waiting.
For more than 30 years I've told people that computers are not 100% proof, and should never be trusted when lives are at stake.
But are they listening?
Re:"The" cause (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note, Moto Guzzi found that I had purchased had unintended accelertation issues back in '03. The trottle return spring wasn't strong enough, or had a tendancy to break or something. I was active on a forum for the bikes, Moto Guzzi sent out a letter about the problem before anyone mentioned it in a forum.
There are indeed responsible manufacturers out there. Strangely enough its the ones who are small enough to know that losing $1 billion in sales and lawsuits will more than bankrupt the company.
Re:AWESOME CONTEST!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be more interested in seeing the wiring diagram. My guess is that there is no redundancy in the throttle position system and it's not closed loop. There should be 4 throttle position switches, 2 in the gas pedal and 2 on the throttle body. The ECU should do a consistency check between the 2 signals coming from the pedal and a check between the 2 signals coming from the throttle body. If it detects two different signals coming from the pedal, or two different signals coming from the throttle body, it should go into limp mode.
This is how all VAG (Volkswagen Audi Group) cars are designed.
From what I have read, the Toyotas work on the honor system. The ECU trusts the signal coming from the pedal with no way of knowing if the signal was generated by a short circuit, interference, etc.
Re:Huh ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm....the only problem with neutral is that in a lot of vehicles the transmission is no longer physically connected to the shift lever either. The electronics in those fail as well and then what do you do? It happened to me; luckily I was just starting off and the tranny was stuck in 1st, even though I had it in drive.