ValMikeSmith
Veteran
Joined: 18 May 2008
Age: 54
Gender: Male
Posts: 977
Location: Stranger in a strange land
01 Feb 2010, 9:01 am
The new Lexus with the SYNC and Hard Drive and also some
Toyotas made after 2005 have bloated software with a fatal
crash scenario: The gas pedal is just a big button connected
to the computer, and the computer controls the engine.
THERE IS GOING TO BE A HUGE ... RECALL ON ALL THOSE
CARS SINCE ONE POLICE CAR THAT CRASHED AND KILLED
ALL INSIDE ... SOMEONE DIALED 911 AND SAID "OMG WE
ARE GOING 110MPH AND WE CAN'T STOP" and then "click!"
When the computer crashes, the engine gets stuck on full
speed. I think I know a little more but probably should leave
some out. Anyway if you have a Toyota then search or
watch for the recall. I don't know how old this news is, it
might be a week old, or something that will be reported
tomorrow. Until the phone call, nobody knew what was
causing all those high speed accidents. I heard someone
say that they hope the "black box" has an error log, because
finding the problem will otherwise be like looking at every
line of code on the hard drive, and they don't think it will
be possible to find the problem unless the black box tells
them what went wrong. If someone you know gets the recall, pray the software gets fixed because the plan B is to make
it easier to stop the car in spite of the problem, by shifting
into neutral, braking, and turning off the key (which is for
some reason hard to do but is the best thing to do if it
happens).
Um... I don't know what else to say about this...
I hope it's not true because if it is then a lot of people
are getting hurt (DEAD) and Toyota may need a "bailout",
because from what I heard it's that serious.
And if it's not true, I'd hate to have been tricked into
telling a lie, especially such a horrible one.
THEY DO PUT HARD DRIVES IN CARS NOW,
AND WHOEVER'S IDEA IT WAS IS AN IDIOT!! !
Hasn't everyone heard a joke about "what if" they did this?
I can't help myself from saying...
I hope they didn't click I AGREE on the EULA.
01 Feb 2010, 11:37 am
01 Feb 2010, 12:04 pm
I like my proper old fashioned car with its carburettors where my foot connects to a set of throttles no chance of software problems 
01 Feb 2010, 12:27 pm
Maybe not software problems, however I have had a car that had BOTH accellerator cables (both the one attached to the pedal, and the one attached to the cruise control) break at different times, and the throttle was stuck wide open. This (obviously) had nothing to do with software, and yes, it was quite scary.
01 Feb 2010, 1:17 pm
01 Feb 2010, 1:22 pm
01 Feb 2010, 1:56 pm
This story is more than two weeks old, but the story that they're telling in the news media is that the pedal sticks because it gets hung on the floor mat, which sounded like BS to me as soon as I heard it. The computer issue actually sounds more plausible. If the floor mat is the problem, just take it out. They could offer a replacement from the dealerships, no need for a recall of millions of units.
Here is what Toyota owners need to know as the carmaker scrambles to find a fix for the problems.
How big is the problem? All major auto manufacturers have gotten at least some complaints of "unintended acceleration" in their vehicles. According to a December 2009 analysis by Consumer Reports looking at a federal database, Toyota has received a disproportionate number of complaints.
How many deaths have there been? In the past 10 years, according to some analyses, there have been 19 deaths in Toyota vehicles connected to some form of unintended acceleration, a figure that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls "plausible" based on its data.
Similar statistics have not been provided for other automakers, so there's no way to know how Toyota compares to other major automakers in this regard.
Four of those deaths occurred in a single incident: the August 2009 crash that killed an off-duty California Highway patrolman and his family in a Lexus, the agency said. That crash was caused by the car's accelerator pedal getting stuck in a non-standard floormat, the sort of problem that was the subject of a recall initiated in November.
Unintended acceleration is hard to definitively confirm because it's impossible to rule out driver error in many cases.
What's the sticky-pedal recall for? Over time, gas pedals in some of the recalled cars become sticky. At first, they just become a little harder to push down and, when you lift your foot off the gas, slower to come back up.
In the worst case, the pedal on these cars can become stuck part way down. That, of course, could mean the car keeps accelerating, or just keeps going, even after you take the foot off the gas.
This recall is separate from the one announced in November to fix a problem in which the gas pedal can get stuck in the cars' removable floor mat.
How's Toyota going to fix the sticking pedals? Toyota said Monday it has developed a fix for gas pedals and is already shipping the new parts to dealers. The fix involves reinforcing the pedal assembly in a way that eliminates the excess friction that has caused the pedals to stick, the company said in a press release. Toyota said dealers will work extended hours to fix the recalled vehicles.
The automaker will begin notifying customers this week to tell them when they can have their vehicles fixed.
What, exactly, is causing this? A lever that is part of the accelerator pedal assembly can become worn and begin to stick. This is especially true if the part becomes moist, such as when condensation occurs on a cold morning or, in some cases, if the vehicle is parked in a humid place for a long period.
If the pedal sticking halfway due to humidity is really the problem, why would that kill anyone? Just step on the f**kin' brake, and shift into park. Duh.
I knew there were gonna be problems when they invented automatic transmissions.
01 Feb 2010, 2:16 pm
Proof would be good. Plus, if its true its proof that we shouldn't give all control to technology (keep normal gas pedals!).
http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/our- ... px?id=2234
Is this what you are referring too?
01 Feb 2010, 11:56 pm
if you roll down the rear left window, honk twice, and put the radio on 99FM (simultaneously) it reboots and you're fine...
02 Feb 2010, 7:44 am
02 Feb 2010, 5:28 pm
03 Feb 2010, 1:08 am
solid-state drives are starting to appear. An HD would be moved constantly, and would have a tendency to precess every time you made a turn one way or the other, not to mention acceleration and deceleration. That, plus spinup and spindown every time you turned the car on or off, makes me thing that a Hard drive wouldn't be the best solution.
Still, ya never know...
03 Feb 2010, 5:19 am
ValMikeSmith
Veteran
Joined: 18 May 2008
Age: 54
Gender: Male
Posts: 977
Location: Stranger in a strange land
04 Feb 2010, 8:10 am
Still, ya never know...
I AGREE TOTALLY! But Lexus was advertising how big its
hard drive was in it's advertisements. I can't imagine
why anyone would want a hard drive in their car.
I don't even want one in my computer. It works
great without one. Before 1995, I didn't know anyone
with hard drives in their computers, nor with viruses.
@Keith, the problem is software. I heard an engineer
arguing that it is pointless to fix the pedal which is
working but the computer stops responding to controls,
so the only way to stop is in neutral and brake and
THEN turn off the car. If they are "fixing" the pedal it means
that they cannot fix the software, but they HAVE TO do
SOMETHING, even though it won't really fix ANYTHING.
Politics and economics says, "just put a band-aid on it",
so that is ALL it looks like they are doing.
Also, the problem requires hard braking because for some
reason the ABS braking uses up all of the pressure when
the engine is going that fast.
And the problem IS LOST INTERFACE (CONTROLS).
Waiting till you stop to turn off makes sense if power
steering and braking works.
I don't understand why neutral would be worse for
manual transmission.
I am not generating this information just repeating what
I heard an engineer say in a LIVE TECHNICAL GROUP
DISCUSSION, Not from the media, which says a lot of
totally Stupid things all of the time these days. The
media was too stupid to even bother killing their
soundbyte time listening to the engineer. It was a
semi-public technical discussion outside of Toyota
and I repeated what I remember.
Anyway, there must have been too much software
and not enough error log, so they can't fix the system;
just like how Microsoft had to dump Longhorn and
start Vista (allegedly) over from scratch.
(Unless I misunderstood the TV news showing what
looked like they were fixing a pedal instead of replacing
the computer.) The pedal fix idea just makes it go up or down
more. If the network is down, clicking harder is futile!
Its a FLY BY WIRE SYSTEM: that means that the pedal
is just a "GO" button on a dead computer's keyboard.
04 Feb 2010, 1:37 pm
advertising how big their hard drives were? how '1990s...
oh well, some people have more money than sense...
05 Feb 2010, 5:25 pm
