On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

dpb wrote:
LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...

I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

On Mar 1, 1:39*pm, Tony wrote:
I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.-

She was too paniced to shift out of gear. She doesn't even belong
behind the wheel of a car.

What gets me are the people that plow into stuff at 90MPH, NINETY
MILES PER HOUR, after experiencing the uncontrolled acceleration
problem.

How the hell fast were they going in the first place that they didn't
have time to calm down and react to the situaiton before the car got
to 90MPH? Even from 70MPH, it takes several seconds to hit 90, plenty
of time for even the most bubble-headed driver to recover from the
initial shock and shift into neutral, or turn off the key. Romping on
the brakes until they get hot would buy you several more seconds to
figure out what to do.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:21:28 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

bulll****. There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.

Try it some time. Floor your car with one foot. Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. The car will stop. If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.

On Mar 1, 3:21*pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad





wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. *I don't know what that is. *Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. *This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. *The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? *People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. *It happens every week all the time. *The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:05:13 -0500, Tony
wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Loose it, or it becomes more difficult? That would be a shame if I
couldn't steer or brake my car because I ran out of gasoline. Are there
any vehicles like that?

When I taught my niece to drive, in a large empty parking lot, at about
35mph I told her I was turning off the engine. Then I told her to make
a left hand turn. She's a tiny little thing but she struggled and it
did turn. As far as the brakes, if it's vacuum assisted you still have
normal braking until you pump it too many times and runs out of the
vacuum. Don't pump them, apply pressure until you stop.

I told her that if her engine ever dies for whatever reason, that will
be the result, so be ready for it.
You loose the ASSIST. Means braking needs both feet and steering
needs some muscle. At speed the steering is not much of an issue,
while at low speeds it can be very difficult. Braking the
opposite.(sorta)

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:49:48 -0600, dpb wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...

Probability of blowing the engine is much less than 2% - the compiuter
shuts off fuel at about 4500 RPM in neutral.

DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 1, 3:21 pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad





wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500,
wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony
wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my
friend says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little.
!!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would
install an auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference
between the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same
****ing hysteria that struct audi ten years ago. The reports
vanished when audi installed an interlock so that the driver had
to have his boot on the brake pedal before putting the car in
gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without being in
neutral. the brakes won't stop the car if, in fact, it is in gear and
accelerating (or at least once the breaks start slipping due to
overheating), it won't.

AZ Nomad wrote:

-snip-

bulll****. There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/test...toyota-9917789

At about 1:21 Brian Ross says "Brakes don't work". At 2:50 he
expands on that a bit. The brakes did not work.


Try it some time. Floor your car with one foot. Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. The car will stop. If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.

And yet all these folks with runaway cars say [the survivors] they
stood on the brakes to no avail.

Put the car in neutral- then you should be able to stop quickly- then
turn it off. ?Easy to write-- probably takes some control to pull
off in real life.

Jim

On Mar 1, 4:48*pm, "chaniarts"
wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 1, 3:21 pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500,
wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony
wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my
friend says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little.
!!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would
install an auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference
between the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same
****ing hysteria that struct audi ten years ago. The reports
vanished when audi installed an interlock so that the driver had
to have his boot on the brake pedal before putting the car in
gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without being in
neutral. the brakes won't stop the car if, in fact, it is in gear and
accelerating (or at least once the breaks start slipping due to
overheating), it won't.

"that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without
being in neutral."

I'm not arguing whether the brakes will stop the car or not, but I
will argue that that is most certainly what the quote implies.

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine."

If indeed the brakes are stronger than the engine, then they will stop
the car even when it is in gear.

What would be the point of going on the radio and stating that "Any
brake system will stop a car that is in neutral."? That's pretty
obvious.

I can certainly see that as written in my post, you could take the
quote to mean the car must be in neutral. However, had you heard the
speaker speaking, with the inflections and pauses where they were, you
could easily tell that he was making 2 distinct points:

1 - The brakes are strong enough to overcome the most power engine.
2 - Here's the process to follow if you have a stuck accelerator.

Number 2 doesn't make Number 1 false.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 13:01:22 -0800 (PST), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Mar 1, 3:21*pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad





wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. *I don't know what that is. *Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. *This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. *The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? *People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. *It happens every week all the time. *The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

And false.

If you get the car in neutral, you will be able to stop it. If the car
remains in gear, Hulk Hogan couldn't stop it.

On Mar 1, 3:40*pm, wrote:
On Mar 1, 1:39*pm, Tony wrote:

I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.-

She was too paniced to shift out of gear. She doesn't even belong
behind the wheel of a car.

What gets me are the people that plow into stuff at 90MPH, NINETY
MILES PER HOUR, after experiencing the uncontrolled acceleration
problem.

How the hell fast were they going in the first place that they didn't
have time to calm down and react to the situaiton before the car got
to 90MPH? Even from 70MPH, it takes several seconds to hit 90, plenty
of time for even the most bubble-headed driver to recover from the
initial shock and shift into neutral, or turn off the key. Romping on
the brakes until they get hot would buy you several more seconds to
figure out what to do.


I don't know, but in the case of the Lexus that killed 4 people in CA,
the car was going out of control long enough for a passenger to call
911 and be on the call long enough to tell what was happening. The
driver was a CA Highway Patrol officer, who you would think would have
enough sense and understanding of what to do so with that amount of
time you would think he would have tried all the obvious things.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:37:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:49:48 -0600, dpb wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...

Probability of blowing the engine is much less than 2% - the compiuter
shuts off fuel at about 4500 RPM in neutral.

Unless of course the runaway condition is being caused by a fault in
the computer!

Maybe it will shut off the fuel, and maybe it won't. Toyota insisted
that the computer would have thrown up an error code after an alleged
runaway incident. It has been proven conclusively that that is not
correct. An engineer has demonstrated live on TV that he can cause the
computer to go into runaway acceleration, and it does not throw up any
trouble codes as a result.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:48:34 -0700, chaniarts wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 1, 3:21 pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad





wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500,
wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony
wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my
friend says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little.
!!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would
install an auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference
between the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same
****ing hysteria that struct audi ten years ago. The reports
vanished when audi installed an interlock so that the driver had
to have his boot on the brake pedal before putting the car in
gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without being in
neutral. the brakes won't stop the car if, in fact, it is in gear and
accelerating (or at least once the breaks start slipping due to
overheating), it won't.

Yes it will, but probably no more than two times. The engine is no
match for the brakes.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:20:49 -0500, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:

-snip-

bulll****. There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/test...toyota-9917789

At about 1:21 Brian Ross says "Brakes don't work". At 2:50 he
expands on that a bit. The brakes did not work.


Try it some time. Floor your car with one foot. Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. The car will stop. If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.

And yet all these folks with runaway cars say [the survivors] they
stood on the brakes to no avail.

Correct. They were stomping on the accelerator as hard as they could
thinking it was the brakes. If they were stomping on the brakes, the
car would have stopped.

On Mar 1, 5:52*pm, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 13:01:22 -0800 (PST), DerbyDad03





wrote:
On Mar 1, 3:21 pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference between
the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same ****ing hysteria
that struct audi ten years ago. The reports vanished when audi
installed an interlock so that the driver had to have his boot on the
brake pedal before putting the car in gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

And false.

If you get the car in neutral, you will be able to stop it. If the car
remains in gear, Hulk Hogan couldn't stop it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


I'm curious about the truth here too. My thoughts for years were that
the brakes could stop the car, even under full throttle, either by
stalling the engine or possibly through failure of some drive train
component. However after reading so many of the recent run away car
stories, I'm not so sure. I did some googling and came up with this
newspaper article where they claim the brakes will stop it and that
Car and Driver Mag recently proved it with tests.


http://www.rgj.com/article/20100228/COL06/2280360
If it's an everyday vehicle, say a Camry, it will stop in little more
distance than if the throttle weren't stuck. Recent tests by Car and
Driver magazine confirm some I did for another publication years ago,
when Audi faced allegations of runaways. The March 2010 issue reports
that a test Toyota Camry stopped from 70 mph in 174 feet with the
throttle closed, 190 feet with it open. At full throttle, an Infinity
G37 needed just six feet more from 100 mph than with the throttle
closed.

You can test this yourself, though I'd use a borrowed car: Run it up
to highway speed (in a safe spot, with no responsibility falling on me
or the Reno Gazette-Journal), then simultaneously floor the brake and
gas. If you can ignore the mechanical suffering, the brakes will
impose stoppage sufficient to overcome the go-age imposed by the
engine."



This sounds like a good test for MythBusters on TV to do. I think
one major factor could be HOW you apply the brakes. To be
successful, you'd probably have to really stand on them with absolute
maximum force. That is probably not how the typical person will
react. I would suspect they would apply somewhat firmer pressure, but
being used to power brakes, not really go full force on them. And
then, if you start to try to use them without going to max right away,
at these kinds of speeds the brakes will quickly overheat, fade and
then not be capable of stopping the car.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:20:49 -0500, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:

-snip-

bulll****. There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/test...toyota-9917789

At about 1:21 Brian Ross says "Brakes don't work". At 2:50 he
expands on that a bit. The brakes did not work.


Try it some time. Floor your car with one foot. Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. The car will stop. If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.

And yet all these folks with runaway cars say [the survivors] they
stood on the brakes to no avail.

People confuse the pedals all the time. I doubt they had time to look
down and verify the pedals while they were panicing.

Happens several times every week in a country the size of the U.S.
Only difference now is the hysteria over it. Just like 10 years ago
with the audis. The runaway audi's were all people stoping on the
wrong pedal.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:55:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:37:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:49:48 -0600, dpb wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...

Probability of blowing the engine is much less than 2% - the compiuter
shuts off fuel at about 4500 RPM in neutral.

Unless of course the runaway condition is being caused by a fault in
the computer!

Would need to be a compound fault, as the rev limiter has no
connection to the throttle. It shuts off injectors.
SO - even if the "unintended accelleration" problem IS a computer
glitch, it would still not blow up if put in neutral.......


Maybe it will shut off the fuel, and maybe it won't. Toyota insisted
that the computer would have thrown up an error code after an alleged
runaway incident. It has been proven conclusively that that is not
correct. An engineer has demonstrated live on TV that he can cause the
computer to go into runaway acceleration, and it does not throw up any
trouble codes as a result.


And how is he "throwing it into runaway accelleration"??????

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:42:42 -0800 (PST), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Mar 1, 4:48Â*pm, "chaniarts"
wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 1, 3:21 pm, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:01 -0600, AZ Nomad

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:15:57 -0500,
wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:44 -0600, AZ Nomad
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:39:39 -0500, Tony
wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my
friend says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little.
!!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would
install an auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

I would simply assure myself that I could tell the difference
between the brake and accelerator pedals. This is the same
****ing hysteria that struct audi ten years ago. The reports
vanished when audi installed an interlock so that the driver had
to have his boot on the brake pedal before putting the car in
gear.

Not even remotely the same thing.

And you were there in each and every case? People occasionally stomp
on the wrong pedal. It happens every week all the time. The only
thing different now is the media hysteria.

The only hysteria evident is yours.

The Toyotas, when they "run away" seem to do it while the driver is
just cruising along, sometimes already at highway speeds. Has nothing
to do with a foot hitting the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal.
In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle.

This has been widely reported.

The problem with Audis would happen when the car was being moved from
a standing position because of the size and position of the pedals
making it easy to push the wrong one without realizing it.

Also widely reported.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"In fact, part of the problem is that at 70-80 MPH with both feet
standing on the brakes, you can't stop the vehicle."

I'm admittingy tossing out "partial information" here, since I can't
cite the source.

The other I heard a gentleman who was being interviewed on the radio -
who I believe was a spokesman from some Auto Safety organization - who
stated:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)

that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without being in
neutral. the brakes won't stop the car if, in fact, it is in gear and
accelerating (or at least once the breaks start slipping due to
overheating), it won't.

"that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without
being in neutral."

I'm not arguing whether the brakes will stop the car or not, but I
will argue that that is most certainly what the quote implies.

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine."

If indeed the brakes are stronger than the engine, then they will stop
the car even when it is in gear.

What would be the point of going on the radio and stating that "Any
brake system will stop a car that is in neutral."? That's pretty
obvious.

I can certainly see that as written in my post, you could take the
quote to mean the car must be in neutral. However, had you heard the
speaker speaking, with the inflections and pauses where they were, you
could easily tell that he was making 2 distinct points:

1 - The brakes are strong enough to overcome the most power engine.
2 - Here's the process to follow if you have a stuck accelerator.

Number 2 doesn't make Number 1 false.


All you need to do is look at accelleration figures in comparison to
stopping distance figures. A car takes X number of feet to accellerate
from a stop to 100 KPH. The stopping distance is generally something
in the neighbourhood of X/4 feet, meaning the brakes are dissipating
roughly 4 times the power the engine is producing.

HOWEVER - the brakes must be applied HARD - and STEADY - NOT PUMPED -
to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. Lighter braking will give
the brakes too much time to heat up and fade - and pumping at WOT
looses your vacuum boot VERY QUICKLY.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:53:59 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Mar 1, 3:40Â*pm, wrote:
On Mar 1, 1:39Â*pm, Tony wrote:

I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.-

She was too paniced to shift out of gear. She doesn't even belong
behind the wheel of a car.

What gets me are the people that plow into stuff at 90MPH, NINETY
MILES PER HOUR, after experiencing the uncontrolled acceleration
problem.

How the hell fast were they going in the first place that they didn't
have time to calm down and react to the situaiton before the car got
to 90MPH? Even from 70MPH, it takes several seconds to hit 90, plenty
of time for even the most bubble-headed driver to recover from the
initial shock and shift into neutral, or turn off the key. Romping on
the brakes until they get hot would buy you several more seconds to
figure out what to do.


I don't know, but in the case of the Lexus that killed 4 people in CA,
the car was going out of control long enough for a passenger to call
911 and be on the call long enough to tell what was happening. The
driver was a CA Highway Patrol officer, who you would think would have
enough sense and understanding of what to do so with that amount of
time you would think he would have tried all the obvious things.


CHIPPY or rocket scientist doesn't make any difference . He wasn't
smart enough to stop the car - doesn't say much for his intelligence.
He obviously did NOT do the obvious things - like put it out of gear
or shut it down.
Getting into a car and not knowing how to operate the controls is just
plain stupid - particularly for a "professional" driver like a COP.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:30 -0500, wrote:

HOWEVER - the brakes must be applied HARD - and STEADY - NOT PUMPED -
to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. Lighter braking will give
the brakes too much time to heat up and fade - and pumping at WOT
looses your vacuum boot VERY QUICKLY.

People forget they have a parking / "emergency" brakes? What a crazy
world.

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:05:13 -0500, Tony
wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:
My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!
If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.
And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.
Loose it, or it becomes more difficult? That would be a shame if I
couldn't steer or brake my car because I ran out of gasoline. Are there
any vehicles like that?

When I taught my niece to drive, in a large empty parking lot, at about
35mph I told her I was turning off the engine. Then I told her to make
a left hand turn. She's a tiny little thing but she struggled and it
did turn. As far as the brakes, if it's vacuum assisted you still have
normal braking until you pump it too many times and runs out of the
vacuum. Don't pump them, apply pressure until you stop.

I told her that if her engine ever dies for whatever reason, that will
be the result, so be ready for it.
You loose the ASSIST. Means braking needs both feet and steering
needs some muscle. At speed the steering is not much of an issue,
while at low speeds it can be very difficult. Braking the
opposite.(sorta)

The good part about braking is you will have full power assisted braking
until you pump the pedal a couple times... so Don't Pump it!

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:55:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:37:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:49:48 -0600, dpb wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:
My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!
If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.
And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.
Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...
Probability of blowing the engine is much less than 2% - the compiuter
shuts off fuel at about 4500 RPM in neutral.
Unless of course the runaway condition is being caused by a fault in
the computer!

Would need to be a compound fault, as the rev limiter has no
connection to the throttle. It shuts off injectors.
SO - even if the "unintended accelleration" problem IS a computer
glitch, it would still not blow up if put in neutral.......

Maybe it will shut off the fuel, and maybe it won't. Toyota insisted
that the computer would have thrown up an error code after an alleged
runaway incident. It has been proven conclusively that that is not
correct. An engineer has demonstrated live on TV that he can cause the
computer to go into runaway acceleration, and it does not throw up any
trouble codes as a result.


And how is he "throwing it into runaway accelleration"??????

My question too!!!!!! Is it on you tube? I saw the one where a
professor basically shorted two wires and the car went into runaway
mode. The brakes could not stop the car but putting it into neutral
then using the brakes worked. I question the odds of that same short
circuit happening, but I saw that on the code reader it showed no errors
after its runaway test.

On Mar 1, 7:38*pm, AZ Nomad wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:20:49 -0500, Jim Elbrecht wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:
-snip-

bulll****. *There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/test...toyota-9917789
At about 1:21 Brian Ross says "Brakes don't work". * *At 2:50 he
expands on that a bit. * The brakes did not work.

Try it some time. *Floor your car with one foot. *Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. *The car will stop. *If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.
And yet all these folks with runaway cars say [the survivors] they
stood on the brakes to no avail.

People confuse the pedals all the time. *I doubt they had time to look
down and verify the pedals while they were panicing.

Happens several times every week in a country the size of the U.S.
Only difference now is the hysteria over it. *Just like 10 years ago
with the audis. *The runaway audi's were all people stoping on the
wrong pedal.

" The runaway audi's were all people stoping on the wrong pedal."

Just so I'm clear on this...

Are you saying that there is no problem with the Toyotas? It's all
user error?

"AZ Nomad" wrote
that quote doesn't imply the brakes will stop the car without being in
neutral. the brakes won't stop the car if, in fact, it is in gear and
accelerating (or at least once the breaks start slipping due to
overheating), it won't.

Yes it will, but probably no more than two times. The engine is no
match for the brakes.

That has been my understanding in the past, but I'm not so sure about some
of the newer cars from all that I've read. I'll have to try it on my
wife's car since it won't work on mine. When I push both the gas and brake
at the same time, the engine goes to idle no matter the speed. When stopped,
it it like being in neutral if I hold the brake down.

Jim Elbrecht wrote:
AZ Nomad wrote:

-snip-
bulll****. There is just about no car and certainly no toyota that
can't be stopped by the brakes in normal working order even if the
engine is under full throttle. The engine isn't 1/20th as powerful as
the brakes.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/test...toyota-9917789

At about 1:21 Brian Ross says "Brakes don't work". At 2:50 he
expands on that a bit. The brakes did not work.

Try it some time. Floor your car with one foot. Stomp on the brakes
with the other foot. The car will stop. If it is a manual tranny,
the engine will stall.

And yet all these folks with runaway cars say [the survivors] they
stood on the brakes to no avail.

Put the car in neutral- then you should be able to stop quickly- then
turn it off. ?Easy to write-- probably takes some control to pull
off in real life.

Jim

I had an experience with a stuck throttle one time. It was on my 55
chevy Bel Air (2door hardtop) :-) . I had it floored in 4th gear and
the flat back road was getting to the bumpy section and I let off the
throttle. It stayed at full throttle. First instinct was to pound on
the throttle a couple times to see if it would release. No good.
Second was to stand on the brakes, well the car was sitting to long and
just when I needed brakes the most, the pedal went to the floor! No
brakes! Next I turned off the ignition and it started slowing down but
still to fast for the upcoming road. I pumped the brakes and the master
cylinder came to life and the car stopped. My buddy following me
finally catches up and runs up to start beating at the open headers to
put out the fire underneath me that I didn't know about. He said that
when I turned off the ignition it looked like the Batmobile with flames
coming out the back. I suppose the gas from the wide open 4 barrel was
ignighting in the hot headers? I unstuck the throttle linkage at the
carb and drove the rest of the way without going past half throttle.

On Mar 1, 6:01*pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:

"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)- Hide quoted text -


While there may be some sort of unsolved interface problem that causes
an unexpected acceleration one does wonder how many genuine instances
there are? And maybe how many litigiuos one!

There may be also be something to the allegation 'Here's chance to
take a bite out a none North American auto producer'.

But how many 'incidents' are due to driver error or insufficient
competency in dealing with something unusual.

Every driver SHOULD, although one doubts whether many do, know what to
do if/when their vehicle acts in an unexpected manner.

For example when we started towing a trailer with a 1976 Chev. Impala
we reviewed what could happen if, for example we lost the car's power
assisted hydraulic brakes (no dual braking then!) and/or the engine
stopped and we had no power assisted brakes or steering. With engine
off we then practiced bringing the whole rig to a stop by using the
foot operated parking brake. Never had to do it for real but knew we
could and with the family and all gear on board.

In another instance we had a V.W diesel 'take off' (running on it's
own crankcase fumes on a warm day). Having read about the probable
cause we depressed the clutch, disconnecting the engine which started
to race uncontrollably; pulled into side of the road, stopped, and
then stalled the engine, hoping not break anything! It stopped and
when the engine had cooled bit we drove to the dealer.

Many years before, in 1953/4 we had a wheel break off the rear axle of
a 1926 Daimler! But again somehow we knew which way to turn the wheels
and brake (manual rod brakes no power assist at all) to bring the
vehicle to a halt without turning over.

Included in the above axiom of "Think about what COULD happen and
rehearse what to do about it", is that all members of this family
(except one) prefer manual vehicles and state a preference for a
proper hand brake lever located centre console. Which also means that
in certain emergency situations the front seat passenger could also
operate the handbrake!

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:19:32 -0500, Tony
wrote:

I had an experience with a stuck throttle one time. It was on my 55
chevy Bel Air (2door hardtop) :-) . I had it floored in 4th gear and
the flat back road was getting to the bumpy section and I let off the
throttle. It stayed at full throttle. First instinct was to pound on
the throttle a couple times to see if it would release. No good.
Second was to stand on the brakes, well the car was sitting to long and
just when I needed brakes the most, the pedal went to the floor! No
brakes! Next I turned off the ignition and it started slowing down but
still to fast for the upcoming road. I pumped the brakes and the master
cylinder came to life and the car stopped. My buddy following me
finally catches up and runs up to start beating at the open headers to
put out the fire underneath me that I didn't know about. He said that
when I turned off the ignition it looked like the Batmobile with flames
coming out the back. I suppose the gas from the wide open 4 barrel was
ignighting in the hot headers? I unstuck the throttle linkage at the
carb and drove the rest of the way without going past half throttle.

Good one. It was easy to fix linkage at the carb in those days. On
other rare occasions there might be a damaged rubber grommet at the
gas pedal for other cars models?

We *needed* fire one day to light cigarettes. Stuck 20 miles in a
swamp in a Model A Ford. Okay, dip a rag in gas, pull muffler, run the
engine and turn off the key. Turn it on again and the backfire flame
from the exhaust lit the rag.

We could have blown the piston top (S) off :-/

Those were the days..

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:39:30 -0500, Tony
wrote:

dpb wrote:
LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:

My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!

If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.

And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.

Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Absolutely. My previous car had a fast leak in the power steering,
and I drove it maybe 10,000 miles with no fluid or power assist, and
it was fine over 15 mph. Below that it took some effort, increasing
as I got close to zero. I'm 5'8" and no more than average strength
(although maybe driving without power steering was good for my upper
body strenght. )

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...

I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.

Yes. And some of them won't turn off either, some of the ones with no
keyhole.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:53:59 -0800 (PST), wrote:



I don't know, but in the case of the Lexus that killed 4 people in CA,
the car was going out of control long enough for a passenger to call
911 and be on the call long enough to tell what was happening. The
driver was a CA Highway Patrol officer, who you would think would have
enough sense and understanding of what to do so with that amount of
time you would think he would have tried all the obvious things.

At the time, I thought it was the driver's fault, but I don't think so
anymore.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:52:19 -0500, Tony
wrote:

wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:55:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:37:24 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:49:48 -0600, dpb wrote:

LouB wrote:
Tony wrote:
mm wrote:
My friend had a Rav 4. I don't know what that is. Today my friend
says it has unintended acceleration, but only a little. !!!!
If I owned one of those Toyota vehicles affected, I would install an
auxiliary engine kill switch before I drove it again.
And when you kill the engine you loose both power steering and power
brakes.
Better than uncontrolled acceleration, undoubtedly.

Unless they're fully hydraulic steering (of which I know of no autos; do
have such a tractor), it's only the power assist that's lost, not
steering. Same w/ the brakes, it's only the power assist.

The actual recommendation is to shift to neutral and let it over-rev;
what possibility/likelihood of blowing an engine is I've not firm
estimate but if that happens you're in same boat anyway...
Probability of blowing the engine is much less than 2% - the compiuter
shuts off fuel at about 4500 RPM in neutral.
Unless of course the runaway condition is being caused by a fault in
the computer!

Would need to be a compound fault, as the rev limiter has no
connection to the throttle. It shuts off injectors.
SO - even if the "unintended accelleration" problem IS a computer
glitch, it would still not blow up if put in neutral.......

Maybe it will shut off the fuel, and maybe it won't. Toyota insisted
that the computer would have thrown up an error code after an alleged
runaway incident. It has been proven conclusively that that is not
correct. An engineer has demonstrated live on TV that he can cause the
computer to go into runaway acceleration, and it does not throw up any
trouble codes as a result.


And how is he "throwing it into runaway accelleration"??????

My question too!!!!!! Is it on you tube? I saw the one where a
professor basically shorted two wires and the car went into runaway
mode. The brakes could not stop the car but putting it into neutral
then using the brakes worked. I question the odds of that same short
circuit happening, but I saw that on the code reader it showed no errors
after its runaway test.

That was his big point. Gilbert is his name. that it didn't set a
code, when Toyota insisted it would.

His other point was that shorting two wires made it accelerate. That
might have been a lesser point, because I don't know if in practice
those two particular wires could short. But he wasn't claiming to
have found the actual problem, just showing that he could have runaway
acc. with no code.

"mm" wrote
Yes. And some of them won't turn off either, some of the ones with no
keyhole.

You have to hold the button for something like three seconds. That sounds
like a very long time if you are accelerating in traffic.

On Mar 2, 5:55*am, "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:
"mm" wrote

Yes. And some of them won't turn off either, some of the ones with no
keyhole.


You have to hold the button for something like three seconds. *That sounds
like a very long time if you are accelerating in traffic.

Apply brakes, shift into neutral.

No more acceleration.

On Mar 1, 11:47*pm, terry wrote:
On Mar 1, 6:01*pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:



"In any passenger vehicle, even the weakest set of brakes is more
powerful than the strongest engine. There is no reason that a driver
should not be able to stop a Toyota when it exhibits the run-away
problem. The key is to not panic, apply the brakes, shift into neutral
and pull to the side of the road."

Sounds easy enough. ;-)- Hide quoted text -

While there may be some sort of unsolved interface problem that causes
an unexpected acceleration one does wonder how many genuine instances
there are? And maybe how many litigiuos one!

There may be also be something to the allegation 'Here's chance to
take a bite out a none North American auto producer'.

But how many 'incidents' are due to driver error or insufficient
competency in dealing with something unusual.

Every driver SHOULD, although one doubts whether many do, know what to
do if/when their vehicle acts in an unexpected manner.

For example when we started towing a trailer with a 1976 Chev. Impala
we reviewed what could happen if, for example we lost the car's power
assisted hydraulic brakes (no dual braking then!) and/or the engine
stopped and we had no power assisted brakes or steering. With engine
off we then practiced bringing the whole rig to a stop by using the
foot operated parking brake. Never had to do it for real but knew we
could and with the family and all gear on board.

In another instance we had a V.W diesel 'take off' (running on it's
own crankcase fumes on a warm day). Having read about the probable
cause we depressed the clutch, disconnecting the engine which started
to race uncontrollably; pulled into side of the road, stopped, and
then stalled the engine, hoping not break anything! It stopped and
when the engine had cooled bit we drove to the dealer.

Many years before, in 1953/4 we had a wheel break off the rear axle of
a 1926 Daimler! But again somehow we knew which way to turn the wheels
and brake (manual rod brakes no power assist at all) to bring the
vehicle to a halt without turning over.

Included in the above axiom of "Think about what COULD happen and
rehearse what to do about it", is that all members of this family
(except one) prefer manual vehicles and state a preference for a
proper hand brake lever located centre console. Which also means that
in certain emergency situations the front seat passenger could also
operate the handbrake!

How do you explain the fact that over the last 5 years or so Toyota
has a rate of these incidents happening that is 2X or 3X the rate of
other car manufacturers? If it was just people doing something
wrong, the rates should be about the same. They are not. I saw a
chart comparing them and GM was low, at like 1/3 the number of
Totyota. And Toyota was similar to other manufacturers before they
moved to the new fly by wire system. Which is not to say that proves
it's an electronic problem, it could be something mechanical in the
design too, but it does tend to support that it's an electronic
problem.

On Mar 1, 9:13*pm, Oren wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:30 -0500, wrote:
HOWEVER - the brakes must be applied HARD - and STEADY - NOT PUMPED -
to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. Lighter braking will give
the brakes too much time to heat up and fade - and pumping at WOT
looses your vacuum boot VERY QUICKLY.

People forget they have a parking / "emergency" brakes? *What a crazy
world.

Not sure what your point is but if it's to suggest that the parking
brake could be used to stop a car while it's under near max power,
that won't work. They are intended for parking only, the brake pads
are smaller than the main pads, not hydraulically driven and only on 2
wheels. They could bring a car that is not under power to a stop,
but even then only in a much longer distance than the regular
brakes. Under full power, they would not have a chance. They would
probably be useful in getting some additional stopping power, but
whether they could make a significant difference is doubtful.

wrote:


-snip-
All you need to do is look at accelleration figures in comparison to
stopping distance figures. A car takes X number of feet to accellerate
from a stop to 100 KPH. The stopping distance is generally something
in the neighbourhood of X/4 feet, meaning the brakes are dissipating
roughly 4 times the power the engine is producing.

I'd love to see a physics class [or Mythbusters] take out the words
like "a car" and "x number" and "generally in the neighborhood" and
"roughly". throw in a few things like inertia and the difference
in a drive train and brake pads. . . and find out why none of the
reports that I've heard have said "The engine was at full throttle, I
was going 50 miles an hour and was able to get the car stopped with my
brakes."

Even the guy who drove to the dealership with a full throttle engine
who had the presence of mind to go to neutral, brake, go back in gear,
accelerate. . . then back to neutral for control said his brakes would
not slow the car while it was in full throttle position.

Looking for more proof for *my* thoughts- I found some middle ground
in actual research by Car & Driver-
http://www.caranddriver.com/features...tion-tech_dept

In a nutshell-
"Certainly the most natural reaction to a stuck-throttle emergency is
to stomp on the brake pedal, possibly with both feet. . . . brakes
by and large can still overpower and rein in an engine roaring under
full throttle. With the Camry’s throttle pinned while going 70 mph,
the brakes easily overcame all 268 horsepower straining against them
and stopped the car in 190 feet—that’s . . . just 16 feet longer
than with the Camry’s throttle closed. From 100 mph, the
stopping-distance differential was 88 feet— . . . We also tried one
go-for-broke run at 120 mph, and, even then, the car quickly
decelerated to about 10 mph before the brakes got excessively hot and
the car refused to decelerate any further."

Maybe by the time you got to 10MPH you'd have the presence of mind to
put it in neutral-

Don't know why they didn't try a Lexus. Would have loved to see what
happened if you first tried the brakes-- then applied full power.
Seems like that would have been human nature.


HOWEVER - the brakes must be applied HARD - and STEADY - NOT PUMPED -
to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. Lighter braking will give
the brakes too much time to heat up and fade - and pumping at WOT
looses your vacuum boot VERY QUICKLY.

If you are going slow enough, and your brakes are good enough, I
agree, you have a chance by mash 'em and hold 'em. Problem is-
it isn't a perfect world. In the Calif crash, the car was a loaner
whose brakes were already compromised. [still- it looks like
shifting into neutral should have saved the day. but we don't *know*
that they didn't try that.]

Audi & a couple other manufacturers have a shut off on their
drive-by-wire vehicles, so hitting the brakes kills the throttle. I
hate the idea of software on throttles, brakes, or steering-- but that
one seems like common sense. OTOH- if this is a computer problem,
what's to say that would work anyway.

Jim

In article , wrote:
How do you explain the fact that over the last 5 years or so Toyota
has a rate of these incidents happening that is 2X or 3X the rate of
other car manufacturers? If it was just people doing something
wrong, the rates should be about the same. They are not. I saw a
chart comparing them and GM was low, at like 1/3 the number of
Totyota. And Toyota was similar to other manufacturers before they
moved to the new fly by wire system. Which is not to say that proves
it's an electronic problem, it could be something mechanical in the
design too, but it does tend to support that it's an electronic
problem.

The thing that really stood out to me was the statement by Toyota's president
that they're going to look into programming a brake override for the throttle.

I have only one question: WHY IN GOD'S NAME WAS THAT NOT THERE FROM THE
BEGINNING?

In article , wrote:
On Mar 1, 9:13=A0pm, Oren wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:30 -0500, wrote:
HOWEVER - the brakes must be applied HARD - and STEADY - NOT PUMPED -
to stop the vehicle as quickly as possible. Lighter braking will give
the brakes too much time to heat up and fade - and pumping at WOT
looses your vacuum boot VERY QUICKLY.

People forget they have a parking / "emergency" brakes? =A0What a crazy
world.

Not sure what your point is but if it's to suggest that the parking
brake could be used to stop a car while it's under near max power,
that won't work. They are intended for parking only, the brake pads
are smaller than the main pads,

Not true. The parking brake uses exactly the same pads that the service brake
uses, except (as noted) on only two wheels instead of all four.

not hydraulically driven and only on 2
wheels. They could bring a car that is not under power to a stop,
but even then only in a much longer distance than the regular
brakes. Under full power, they would not have a chance. They would
probably be useful in getting some additional stopping power, but
whether they could make a significant difference is doubtful.

On Mar 2, 5:13*am, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:07:57 -0500, wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:53:59 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Mar 1, 3:40 pm, wrote:
On Mar 1, 1:39 pm, Tony wrote:

I thought I heard someone being interviewed and she said she couldn't
shift out of gear, but I could be wrong.-

She was too paniced to shift out of gear. She doesn't even belong
behind the wheel of a car.

What gets me are the people that plow into stuff at 90MPH, NINETY
MILES PER HOUR, after experiencing the uncontrolled acceleration
problem.

How the hell fast were they going in the first place that they didn't
have time to calm down and react to the situaiton before the car got
to 90MPH? Even from 70MPH, it takes several seconds to hit 90, plenty
of time for even the most bubble-headed driver to recover from the
initial shock and shift into neutral, or turn off the key. Romping on
the brakes until they get hot would buy you several more seconds to
figure out what to do.

I don't know, but in the case of the Lexus that killed 4 people in CA,
the car was going out of control long enough for a passenger to call
911 and be on the call long enough to tell what was happening. *The
driver was a CA Highway Patrol officer, who you would think would have
enough sense and understanding of what to do so with that amount of
time you would think he would have tried all the obvious things.

CHIPPY or rocket scientist doesn't make any difference . He wasn't
smart enough to stop the car - doesn't say much for his intelligence.
He obviously did NOT do the obvious things - like put it out of gear
or shut it down.
Getting into a car and not knowing how to operate the controls is just
plain stupid - particularly for a "professional" driver like a COP.

So the defect in these cars is the fault of the stupid drivers?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No, the deaths and accidents are the fault of stupid drivers. Anyone
who doesn't know enough to at least put it in nuetral or turn off the
ignition does not belong behind the wheel. Too bad that that
encompasses at least half of the drivers out there.

Harry K