2012 Prius v (lowercase v)...brakes failed tonight

thanks for sticking with us lexcyn, if you make it out the other end of the tunnel, you'll be the first!

 

As mentioned earlier in the thread, I don't think there'll be any useful data in the data recorder since you drove home after the occurrence. The EDR only stores a few minutes/seconds of data at the most and continuously purges the oldest data from memory.

 

Some fascinating reading about the deposition of the Bookout vs Toyota lawsuit
Page 55 claims Toyota software is overly complex with not enough fail safes.
Amazing that even NASA was involved in this investigation
http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/Bookout_v_Toyota_Barr_REDACTED.pdf

 

and in the end, found nothing.

 

Someone found $3 million dollars though

Toyota Defect Lawsuit Results in $3M Jury Award - AboutLawsuits.com

 

inevitable. research how many billions sharks have stolen from auto mfg.'s over the years. heck, just to settle cost millions, even when you're innocent. says more about our legal system than toyota brakes.

 

That HOW our litigation system works. Its the massive fines which keep the manufacturers inline. There is further talk about car company execs being prosecuted criminally. But the automotive lobby is too powerfull for now but like the Tuna Cannery exec who got put into jail because he continued to produce tainted tuna the same can and probably be applied to the auto industry. Going to be a day of reckoning..

 

all corporate officers should be liable, but only for what they knew, ordered or accepted as proven in a court of law. we don't need scapegoats. even the vdub ceo may have been innocent.

 

They may be liable but they will not be jailed depending on the industry they are in. Cars and Food are totally different venues of commerce and criminal laws reflect that so far. Insofar as the VW execs..they are a foreign entity so the US Government cannot do anything criminally to them. As for current events with VW - testimony of 50 employees who claim to know who knew about their 'Defeat software' code is in progress but it is in my estimation they are only taking the bullet for their higher ups. As more time goes on VW is not any kind of honourable company - they are arrogant and deceitful. But things did not go their way..and things will get even worse as more than likely EPA will slap them with $18 Billion in fines, VW will have to fix 500,000 USA VW's and pay back tax dollars to states which issued tax credits to individuals because they bought 'Clean Diesel'. VW makes GM , Chrysler and Toyota look like an appetizer in comparison to fines pending...

I'm reading thru the whole deposition of the UA case suit. All 286 pages of it. (Bookout vs Toyota)
I'm beginning to think that the hardware is not so much at fault but the embedded software is more so on the CAMRY instead of the Prius
I was considering buying the Hybrid Camry as our company bought 70 of them but I was in another dept which worked on utility trucks and not cars so I has very little exposure to them, They were 07 Camrys. and so far so good from what I hear. But anyways the reading goes on..about halfway there

 

It would be pretty astonishing for anybody to read and understand Mr. Barr's testimony upthread and come away describing it as "found nothing."

Now Mr. Bibb, the defense counsel, is a special exception; his job was to pretend to misunderstand even the clearest technical arguments, and he earned every penny they paid him. He was robbed at the Oscars.

To a total non-coder, it's possible the whole thing just reads like babble, but to anyone with a dash of experience in embedded code development, it's just wave after wave of "wait, they did what? What? Ohh, Wth, seriously?!"....

-Chap

 

you nailed it. 'from my perspective', they found nothing. the problem, for lay people who didn't have an ax to grind, were all the false reports and criminal misconduct by the claimants.

throw in the doubled non oem winter carpets, the carpet sliding problem, the pedal length shaving and the bad indiana pedal units, and you have a very confused public.

 

Hybrid Camry could be a quite different story. Refreshing my memory on the Barr testimony, where his slide 41 said he found a better watchdog design in the 2005 Prius, the actual testimony has more detail. Of course the dumb-as-a-post watchdog design was in the Camry engine control module, and what he found in the Prius was that the ECM firmware was pretty much the same, but in the Prius HV ECU firmware he saw an example of getting it right.

And of course there is no HV ECU in a conventional Camry, but in a HyCam there'd be one, and even if the ECM were still prone to problems, there'd be a lot less chance of UA with the HV ECU in charge of the transaxle. You might overrev the engine but you're not going far if the HV ECU disagrees....

-Chap

 

One has to have understood the orig Movie "TRON" to understand how programs work within the confines of a hardware environment lol!

But I have played around with BASIC and some Assemble and compiled a few programs to get the gist of it. But this article is pretty fascinating as to the various programs used purposed to handle certain events. Events which may be modified and acted upon but not in the designed or calculated actions it was intended to be. Kinda like writing a program and testing it and some keypress action does something totally not intended. It sometimes takes more time to correct the problem than it was to write the whole program. Well a simple program but with millions of lines of code...I can't imagine.. I have to give it to the defence tho..his job is to knock down arguments which put Toy in a bad light and lessen its culpability. as best as possible. Around in the 2000 when electronic throttle came up I remember Mercedes had some bad accidents but I don't if they were due to Electronic throttle bodies. I remember one Benz went thru a garage door..
I am sure they were well compensated and shushed up. Many cars have those now. Some you never hear about other than the motors croak. But the inability to not stop down the throttle plate is one deadly mutha... Im on tailend of PDF!

Thanks for the correction for some reason I thought the lawsuit was involving the Hybrid Camries but upon doing some more reading I got that totally wrong...I guess I got caught up in the read..it was like some murder mystery in binary code lol! Good to hear that the Prius software was less prone to problems than the Camry. Which begs the question on brake fails on Prius.

Is the incident and complaint level high as reported to NHTSA?

 

once the hyped case of the chip in the lexus was published, complaints and lawsuits went through the roof.

 

If that kind of thing intrigues you, a really good read is the Therac-25 report, which you might have noticed Barr mentioned in his Bookout testimony, because it's a classic case that's taught in embedded-system engineering programs and contained a bunch of the same facepalms Barr found in the Camry 20 years later.

It was a radiation-treatment machine that would occasionally, for no apparent reason, deliver a massive overdose and maim or kill a patient. Did that to about six people over 1985 to 1987, but very hard to investigate because that was at several different treatment centers across the North American continent, usually only one accident per center, and of course the manufacturer told them all there was no pattern.

And a propos your "some keypress action", there was no lead that cracked the case until the thing happened to nail two patients a month apart at the same East Texas clinic, and the same tech was running it both times, and she remembered (after a month!) that she used the same edit key both times while entering the dose!

-Chap

 

Yeah got it and thank you again. MORE interesting reading along the way. If it wasn't for the operators remembered keypress sequence she probably be in jail as she would be deemed guilty because she used the machine on both patients.and they expired.
I remember when programming to always use a keyboard handler to trap unintended keypress when they occur. That was a long time ago.
Good thing she remembered that keypress sequence. Who would have thought. I would think she was under a great deal of PRESSURE!

 

I was one of those treated every day for a month with a computer controlled radiation machine and, as one who had 37 years of OS software experience at the time, I at least realized what could go wrong.

It appears I got away with it based on 5 years of testing.

But it could have been bad.

The last OS I was associated with was the most tested of any produced to that date. Code analyzers, more than 100% of the costs of developing the software devoted to testing, multiple labs hired to perform outside testing, government certification, etc.

As the one who had to make the call when to ship, let me tell you how difficult that task was and I'm sure someone in hindsight could have criticized the decision.

Embedded code isn't basic or even some assembly language. Nor is an OS.

 

You mean that the OS or embedded cannot make any machine language calls?
I read the article about the radiation machine and its fault with the cursor up routine.
They say that anyone who writes the code should NEVER write the Docs as people who use the machine are in the position to know all the inner workings (not talking back doors here) will devise a way to operate the original designer didn't think about. Its always best to just hire someone or use some who can follow instruction and watch what they do to see some possible traps they do with the documentation they read but understand the doc different than what the designer intended. I learned that when I was chosen to be a temp spec writer when one within another dept got sick and they needed someone who can use a MAC or PC in the mid 80's. As a BBS Sysop it was a piece of cake - LOL I date myself obviously. But I learned quickly what you write is not always interpreted as what you think. But anyways...getting off subject. Good you made it thru the radiation sessions.

 

I wasn't able to drive home and had the car towed via flatbed to the closest dealer/repair shop... so hopefully they can pull something from it. I should be hearing from them this week. I can't wait to rid myself of this horrible Ford Focus rental.

 

If the OP is a left foot braker, there's also a possibility he was unknowingly pressing the footrest instead of the pedal.