Braking Bad

[Fumesucker]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/opinion/11schmidt.html?pagewanted=1

THE Obama administration has said that it may require automakers to install “smart pedals” on all new cars. This kind of system — already used in BMWs, Chryslers, Volkswagens and some of the newest Toyotas — deactivates the car’s accelerator when the brake pedal is pressed so that the car can stop safely even if its throttle sticks open.

The idea is to prevent the kind of sudden acceleration that has recently led to the recall of millions of Toyotas. Federal safety regulators have received complaints asserting that this problem has caused accidents resulting in 52 deaths in Toyotas since 2000. Smart pedals might help prevent more such accidents if the cause of unintended acceleration turns out to be some vehicle defect.

But based on my experience in the 1980s helping investigate unintended acceleration in the Audi 5000, I suspect that smart pedals cannot solve the problem. The trouble, unbelievable as it may seem, is that sudden acceleration is very often caused by drivers who press the gas pedal when they intend to press the brake.

<snip>

But when engineers examined these vehicles post-crash, they found nothing that could account for what the drivers had reported. The trouble occurred in cars small and large, cheap and expensive, with and without cruise control or electronic engine controls, and with carburetors, fuel injection and even diesel engines. The only thing they had in common was an automatic transmission. An investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found no electro-mechanical defects to explain the problem. Nor did similar government studies in Canada and Japan or any number of private studies.

More at the link..

[zbdent]

1. telling line here:

"But based on my experience in the 1980s" ... um ... cars were not computerized in the 80s like they are now ... these days, you practically can plug your car into the USB port of your computer ...

That would be like an expert being quoted on technology in music because he worked on 8-track tape players for a while ...

[Fumesucker]

2. But people haven't changed.. They are still the same..

And the problems in the eighties, with rare exceptions, were caused by people..

[zbdent]

3. are you purposely being this ignorant???

the writer is blasting the idea that today's highly computer-dependent cars could be subject to some problem where the "programming" doesn't reflect reality ...

based on his studies of cars from the 1980s???

That's like saying you ate an orange, and because you ate an orange, you can definitely say that you hate the taste of apples ... because they're both fruit ...

Interesting article which points out that the "black box" (event data recorders) didn't really start getting mainstream until the late 90s: http://www.slate.com/id/2087207/

[Fumesucker]

4. The point of the article is that *people* haven't changed, they still make the same mistakes...

The same mistakes they made in the 80's..

That's not to say that *some* of the accidents can't be due to the design of the vehicle but the last time it turned out that it was people making mistakes, not the cars being faulty..

Did you not see that every single case of unintended acceleration was with an automatic transmission?

It never happened with manual transmissions, why was that?

Do you know how to drive a manual transmission?

[zbdent]

7. ugh ... trying to get a point into your head is like trying to debug a Windows Vista program

using a 386SX PC running Windows 3.11 ... which actually would be an appropriate analogy, because you're talking cases involving cars from the 1990s and later and applying the technical knowledge of a person who had represented the technology of the auto company in the 80s. (and I am a computer tech person - a programmer - who knows that there are software "bugs")

I am not denying that "people haven't changed" ... true ... the basic design hasn't evolved much in 30 years ... well, except for the fact that hormones in meats/dairy appear to possibly be causing puberty to start earlier and earlier, but that's a totally different discussion ...

Nor am I denying that a commonality of automatic transmissions in those cases (which could be explained by the fact that you have to use your left foot to depress the clutch to brake, and then move your right foot from the brake to the gas and, while accelerating, let up on the clutch ... otherwise, you stall) ...

looking further, I see that this guy's qualifications for defending technological advances is that he's a professor of Psychology at UCLA ... hmm, great engineering specs, or even knowledge of computers ... and he quotes the study from 1989 that says it wasn't an "electro-mechanical" defect, as in ... "no computer involved".

But you seem bound and determined to totally ignore the fact that there is computerized control of many functions of the car (electronic fuel injection, computerized "diagnosis" now available because the mechanic can plug a computer in and get codes saying what is wrong with an engine) far more in the 1990s than there was in the 1980s.

And any computer person can tell you that software often contains bugs ... Oh, but I guess that every new version of Windows and Internet Explorer and Red Hat Linux has come out perfectly fine.

[KittyWampus]

5. So what was with Audi's design that people mistook gas for brakes in only their cars?

Or is it just people with extremely poor coordination bought Audis in the 80's?

I am perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of user error, but if it happens with one manufacturer/model and not others that means it is a design flaw.

[Fumesucker]

6. It wasn't just Audis if you read the article..

From the article I linked to:

From the mid-1980s until 2000, thousands of incidents of sudden acceleration were reported in all makes and models of cars (and buses, tractors and golf carts). Then, as now, the incidents were relatively rare among car crashes generally, but they were nevertheless frequent and dangerous enough to upset automakers, drivers and the news media.

<snip>

But when engineers examined these vehicles post-crash, they found nothing that could account for what the drivers had reported. The trouble occurred in cars small and large, cheap and expensive, with and without cruise control or electronic engine controls, and with carburetors, fuel injection and even diesel engines. The only thing they had in common was an automatic transmission. An investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found no electro-mechanical defects to explain the problem. Nor did similar government studies in Canada and Japan or any number of private studies.

I think that Audi perhaps had the brake and accelerator pedal a bit closer together than in many cars.. Plus you got the media hysteria effect when 60 Minutes did a show on the Audi.

It's also interesting to note that every single case of unintended acceleration was in a car with an automatic transmission, it never happened in manual transmission cars, that should be a big clue..