Unintended Acceleration -- While Parking

In Nylion's case, the brakes worked as intended, and stopped the ICE revving.

Your OP is about an incident with "... complete loss of braking with simultaneous application of full power by the computer while his foot was firmly planted on the brake pedal."

The San Diego Lexus crash, the Denver Prius-in-a-creek and other incidents described on Nightline just over a year ago, the Audi fiasco of a generation ago, my non-Toyota incident, and numerous other incidents in all car brands, are similar to your OP. And quite different than Nylion's problems.

 

You're overreacting. Don't expect the general public to know proper usage of clauses.

You must be pretty naive to believe everything on the Internet. He also had money to waste by trading his Gen III for a 2010 370Z.

 

Probably for the same reason the liars had to gain from claiming needles found in Pepsi cans. But we don't believe they're all liars, as some are cases of pedal confusion where the drivers truly believe they hit the brake when they in fact hit the gas.

 

Hopping back and forth between distinct 'bad' things just obfuscates the issues.

Drivers have to identify problems of many sorts very quickly and mash the brakes on a regular basis, which is why most have it as an ingrained reflex.

While it is unfortunate that Nylion's problem was never traced to a root cause, it did demonstrate successful operation of a brake-throttle-override, which is what many folks are clamoring for as a failsafe mechanism for alleged UA problems across the whole passenger car market. Most U.S.-market cars don't yet have this feature.

Which 'the computer' do you mean? This isn't a PC or Mac. The scenario you describe involves many different controllers, and it will take one heck of a wild coordinated so-called glitch to throw them all off as described.

Remind me again, where did I can suggest anyone was a liar? Excepting post #375 of this thread, which was not about complaints to NHTSA.

Had I taken a certain different but common action during my fatigue-induced UA incident, the car (not a Toyota) would have been totaled into a cedar tree or the neighbor's dining room. In filling out the NHTSA complaint form, I would not have been lying at all, because I would have truly believed it was a problem with the car.

 

Guys, I had my foot on the brake very lightly as it slowly rolled out of the garage and started back down the very slight incline. No need to hit accelerator. Only rode the brakes. As ICE started, the brakes had a completely dead feel and lifted my foot and immediately repressed brakes. I am certain of the feeling of pressing on the brake. When that feeling was felt, I released pressure completely from the brake pedal and just reapplied. If I had even remotely touched the accelerator I certainly would not have felt the dead pedal feel, it would have gone to the floor and accelerated. Is it that damn hard tounderstand what I'm telling you. I am certain. I simply had to lift my foot back up off the brake pedal and reapply it right where it was. I'm not knocking Prius for all of the "think I'm bashing Prius so they need to make an excuse to support prius crowd.". It's very simple to understand that as the ICE started it possibly interrupted the brake input signal and me reapplying the brake reset it. Simple, and am just trying to bring light to the situation. I love my Prius, but wanted to post the experience here. That's how people learn whether there are other of these same instances. Be a positive crowd looking to share, learn, and make this a forum that people can benefit from. Don't make it an environment people don't want to visit or post in because they need to strap on a thick skin suit before visiting. I enjoy both sharing and learning in many various forums. Please remember, this is an "electric computer controlled car.". Things do happen when situations are right. Why on many occasions do people say I shut the car off, then turned the car back on and problem solved itself. It didn't happen again. Well, my point is, if it happens again to someone else, they might think of releasing and then reapplying the brakes to reser tge brake signal, rather than just push harder. Please also remember that no one has ever had to reboot there home pc. (JOKE!!!)

I do agree driver error in many occasions that drivers might not realize. This was simply riding the brake while rolling out of the garage. There wasn't a pedal shift, but a reset of same pedal. Pushing on the accelerator hard to brake would have not presented the dead pedal. The pedal had pressure but didn't apply brakes, they were not there and so just reset with another step on pedal.

Final post on this issue. People take what positive you may find in my exact occurrence. If you have nothing positive to grab from the posts, don't waste your time posting on this specific matter.

Have a great day!

 

You've stated that 1) the car had been driven for 45 minutes prior when you re-started it while it was still warm, 2) the brake pedal did not behave normally, and 3) lifting the foot completely off the brake and re-applying it brought it back to normal. I don't know what to tell you but all of these are symptoms of the so-called "grabbing brake in reverse" issue. You may not have felt the jerky movements because you were only lightly riding the brake and did not repeatedly modulate it (the jerky movements only occur when one tries to repress/depress repeatedly while the foot is still on the brake), but the fact remains that the brake pedal doesn't feel right (dead pedal feel as you said) in all of those cases.

This is akin to two people arguing over whether the car actually accelerates during the regenerative to friction braking transition when braking over a pothole (a different issue), but it doesn't change the fact that we're talking about the same issue.

 

You have identified a significant issue in the matter of the believability
of the many "reports" of U/A. Standing on their own merits they are
merely allegations... raw data... unverified, unvalidated,
uninvestigated, highly reliant on a common belief in infallable human
memory.

Errors in the initial "reports" would not be the result of lying -- a
morally repugnant and unforgivable act -- but rather false or
incomplete memory, an unfortunate but typical human failing.

Memory errors fall into two classes: people can 1) either completely
fail to recall an event or 2) have an inaccurate recollection. People
have very different attitudes about the two types of failure. Most
people understand that total memory failures are common. They can
introspect about occasions when they have been unable to recall an
event, so failures by other people are hardly surprising. In contrast,
people are overly optimistic about accuracy of their retrieved
memories, probably because most errors have little practical
consequence and go unnoticed. Given the confidence in their own
memory accuracy, people have too much faith in the accuracy of
eyewitnesses. Memory has a multitude of quirks and inaccuracies that
creep into its everyday operation. Full discussion:
Visual Expert Human Factors: Eyewitness Memory Is Unreliable

Also:
The Problem With Eyewitness Testimony

Google witness unreliability for more.

Addditional verification and close scrutiny is needed to validate the
initial reports. NHTSA has done so and found no verified cases of actual
U/A, rather probable operator error.

 

Rokeby, as an example of your memory comments, I recently had a similar experience. I have an unusually good memory, and recall a lot of detail, even from early childhood. I have a memory of one Christmas where my brother did a clever wrapping job of a present and made it look like Santa. I clearly recall it standing to the left of our fireplace.

Over the holiday season, while wrapping presents, I recalled that happy memory and clearly saw it in my mind's eye, with Santa standing there to the left of the fireplace.

I received a new scanner for Christmas this year. As a result, I've been mining old slides and negatives and digitizing them. One of them was a photo of me sitting next to the Santa present, with Santa standing there to the *right* of the fireplace. At first I thought the slide was backward in the scanner, but text is clearly visible, and it was correct.

My memory is good, but not perfect. I remember general ideas and fill in the details as needed. I think most humans work this way, and we do it without realization.

Tom

 

A data recorder does the same for less cost. Unless, of course, you believe that it is impossible to reliably record pedal positions.

Tom

 

Agreed. Data recorders is the best source of information to record pedal positions because that is the only action that needs to be recorded. Camera's should be used when a wide variety of unknown actions needs to be recorded, like distracted driving. Distracted driving is a major cause of accidents and in-cabin cameras would be more useful when mounted in/on the rearview mirror with a wide angle lens or pointed at the driver.

 

Not true. The NHTSA's administrator didn't like the result from his agency's experts (working with car electronics and computer programming is a 30 year plus thing), since it didn't match up with his mentor's opinion (Ralph Nader). The administrator wasn't happy with the fact that the agency's investigators had to claim whistleblower protection from him, after they leaked the Sikes report (which Strickland was going to quash).

Ralph Nader (and his Consumers Union) hates Toyota now because of their size and success.

As for Dr. Gilbert who re-programmed the Toyota computer to create the situation he was paid to document, only the attorneys for the Toyota tort lawyers, or the plaintiffs believe his report. That issue was dealt with long ago on Priuschat.

Belief and science don't match. The fact that a lot of old people like me get confused about what pedal they're pushing but swear it was the brake, doesn't make it so. The fact that a lot of scientists believe in global warming doesn't make it so. The fact that a lot of medical doctors and politicians and plumbers don't, doesn't make it so.

Those who choose to believe Ralph Nader & his associates and the tort lawyers are pure as the driven snow here, where's the proof. Not anecdotal, not "smoke=fire" illogic, but real science.

 

Speaking of Ralph Nadar, Corvair Handling and Stability

 

Yeah, right.

Many privacy advocates will raise a huge fuss and immediately paint over the lenses of every camera.