A couple of stories that may be of group interest: "Federal regulators in 2007 asked Toyota Motor Corp. to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration in its vehicles after receiving complaints that vehicles could race out of control, company documents show. Yet the automaker began installing the safety feature, known as brake override, only this January after a widely publicized accident involving a runaway Lexus ES that killed four people near San Diego." Toyota was asked in 2007 to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration - latimes.com "Lawsuits over the last half-century are credited with such innovations as impact-absorbing dashboards and steering columns, and gas tanks that won't explode when a car is rear-ended." Toyota is just the latest automaker to face auto safety litigation - latimes.com
Of course, if Mr. Sikes and all the other victims of Prius SUA are correct, the safety feature is worthless... And of course, the LA Times got it wrong... since the brake override has been on some Toyotas for quite some time. I wonder who issued the press release this time.
Then, it should be able to reproduce. Why does it work during the investigation? It only fail to work when certain owners (mostly over 50) drive?
hey! i resemble that remark! and i did once back into my garage door when i forgot to put it up. so much for the back up camera, i thought the drieway looked funny.
Have you still not gotten yours checked out by the dealer? Seems your car, for which you claim the throttle override doesn't work, would be great material for investigative work. Why not get a service manager to do a ride along with you and demonstrate the failure? - D
Except that no other NA maker of vehicles currently has brake override installed across its product lineup either. It's very prevalent in German vehicles but almost non-existent in NA or JDM vehicles.....til now. The JDM makers had planned to implent it over the product lineup as the vehicles models renewed. AFAIK the US makers had no plans to implement it. These events put an urgency in every maker's product plans.
This is half the smoking gun. I don't know if we will see the discussions of dealer training, and the non reporting of incidents. The shielding of european incidents from us safety agencies is another part of the story. To those that still claim its ok, because of lack of such systems in NA cars, that is a hollow argument to the dead. Chrysler does have these systems, ok they were part of mb. The other problem with the argument is "Win" of $100M not to do this. The reason why toyota was singled out is the statistically very high incidents of toyotas crashes with reported unintended acceleration. This is not a case of toyota geting worse treatment than american makers, they were getting a pass because ex-employees were interfacing with the safety agency. LA times has this one right, toyota had it wrong.
The brake override may not work or designed not to activate if light pressure is put on the brake pedal or known as riding the brake.
