wrote in message
...
On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:02:47 -0800, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:38:17 -0800, "Bill McKee"
wrote:
"David Lesher" wrote in message
...
"Bill Noble" writes:
before you call the dead idiots, perhaps you could check your facts -
the
car could not be shifted into neutral, and to turn the ignition off
required
holding a particular button down for (if I remember) 90 seconds - there
was
no key to turn to make it go off -
4 sec.
If he'd thought of it, he could have tossed the RFID keys out the
window...
Get them far enough away and it stops.
Nope, the car keeps running. But when you turn in off, can not restart.
Learned this the hard way on wifes Venza. Dropped her off at the library
and then went to Subway a couple blocks away to get lunch to go. At
least
it was only 4 blocks away from the library. Called her on the cell and
said
start walking.
Precisely - those brilliant Spit! engineers didn't want to
possibly inconvenience the driver with the car inadvertently shutting
down on the freeway just because Mom's Purse with the key-fob in it
got thrown to the back of the car by playing children.
And the driver might want the car to stay idling as they walk around
to the tailgate to get something out of the ice chest, or get out to
go close and lock the gates as they leave home - we can't all afford
electric gate operators.
BUT they didn't think through the What If's, the emergency
situations. And I did the first time I saw an advertising slick with
that whiz-bang new Start button, and no Stop button nearby... Deja Vu
to the max.
-- Bruce --
Aren't these cars push to start, hold down to stop, just like most
computers? Faced with that in an unfamiliar car, and presuming that no
big button labeled "stop" was obvious, I'm pretty sure that the logic
of its operation would be instinctive. But if it wasn't, I'd expect it
to be my job to get out the owner's manual. I suppose one could make a
case that a person could say, borrow one of these cars and drive it
away without ever knowing how to shut it off, and that such a
situation must be prevented. I'm sure there's a way to further
idiot-proof such machines, but no matter how they're changed, a better
idiot will always find a way to defeat the best of intentions.
Consider how many accidents are caused by drivers standing on the gas
pedal when they intended the brake. Expect a LOT more of that with
aging, oft times barely conscious drivers who never did learn to use
their turn signal *before* slowing down.
It's one of my pet peeves that as a society we've accepted that no one
should be counted on to accept responsibility, even for the most
trivial of decisions such as wearing sensible shoes. I fear that the
majority reaction to the case at hand is just another example of
encouraging people to believe that somebody else is always responsible
for every mishap. The irony is that thousands of people who've
complained that cars these days are too difficult and expensive to
repair, will now join the chorus demanding yet another interlock
system taking up an additional page in the owner's manual that they'll
refuse to read. Plus 5 extra pages of the shop manual, which already
costs so much that few individuals can afford it. In case there's
anyone reading who'd like to review a shop manual for a modern
vehicle, here's a link to the one for my car.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8WC2QLY0 (300 MB download) For fun, try
to guess how many pages it might be before you scroll through to the
end. Prefer a paper copy? It's about $500 IIRC. We have met the enemy,
and he is us.
Wayne
In gear, and with the brakes applied, the engine turned off as soon as I
pushed the button on the wifes Venza today. Admitted I was not driving 100
miles an hour, was stopped in the Costco parking lot. So if the guy had hit
the start stop button while trying to brake the car, the engine would of
stopped, at least on a new Venza.