After losing verdict, Toyota settles in sudden acceleration case

I should have been more generic in my response on suggesting what to do in case of a run away car.

Check to make sure nothing is jamming the accelerator or blocking the brake. Loose objects doing so have been a culprit of crashes in the past.

 

Are you confusing this with the case of CHP officer Mark Saylor, who crashed in a loaner Lexus ES350 at a highway T intersection in San Diego on August 28, 2009, with a total of 4 family members in the car?

This is not the 'original' Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration crash, just the one that made the biggest headlines and really got the publicity ball rolling. In this particular case, the dealer did put the wrong floor mats in the car, and there was physical evidence that the improper mat did trap the gas pedal. A previous driver of this loaner car even reported a problem.

 

My mistake. I remembered California; misplaced the city, so I do apologize. San Diego it is.

KBeck

 

After Kbeck's listing of a multitude of Toyota's programming sins, maybe I should add another possible brake anomaly, described in several previous threads but not yet with any critical mass. One of them last year was Had an at fault accident - braking anomaly - like hit sheet of ice, to which I replied:

Another relevant thread is: Problem with my brakes.

My feeling is that a transient loss of power assist would still be legal under current federal regulations if the underlying hydraulic system still works when the driver applies 112 pounds of pedal force. This would be pressing through the Prius 'brake by wire' stroke-simulator stuff and directly forcing the hydraulics. But such bugs should still be thoroughly wrung out of the system, and Kbeck's listing of throttle control programming sins does reinforce suspicions that something like this could also be hiding in the brake firmware.

This is why it is essential that the various systems be independent and isolated, so that failure in one component doesn't automatically cascade to the others. Where the isolated failures discussed so far won't set my hair on fire -- parking my Toyota means reverting to our older mechanically-controlled cars that are clearly more hazardous -- a violation of the isolation boundaries could easily get sparks flying,

 

In this case the court did reach the right decision. One of the dead people is a California Highway Patrol officer. Pretty sure he knows how to stop a car, shift to neutral, et cetera. Nevertheless this skilled & trained driver could not stop the car & four family members were killed (including a child that nobody sheds a tear for). I took that last bit out of the Obama playbook (think of the children).

One of the dead people had no floor mats, so Toyota trying to blame mats was silly.

But then car corporations are more-and-more acting like GM: deny deny deny. (Toyota also lost a lawsuit wherein their engines gelled with oil, and they voided warranties, even when cstomers had oil change records. Too bad one of those customers was a lawyer & she immediately started collecting data to file a class-action lawsuit.) I no longer trust any of these megacorps. Not one of them.

 

Remember O.J? ...the McDonalds coffee burn case?

I was in Federal Law Enforcement for 23 years. Some take their training and hone their skills better than others.

I've had many partners, who I know in a pinch, I could NOT depend on.

And, I am also aware of GREEDY corporations and Government "kicked upstairs" managers like they have staffing the VA hospitals.

 

The coffee case had merit. The temperature was set to a scalding level of almost 200 degrees (making it unsafe to drink, because it would cause burns to patrons). It did not meet standards for food safety

 

And not only that. McDonalds had either been stiffing people or settling for paltry sums, under seal, for several years. We're talking multiple dozens, here. They knew there was a problem; some idiot in management thought the "better taste" outweighed the injuries being done. Assuming that the thought process of those idiots went that far. The lady really only wanted her hospital bills paid and to keep McDonald's from zapping other victims, and said so. And, no, it wasn't just an emergency room visit; she had 3rd degree burns on a significantly large percentage of her skin, mostly down there.

It was the jury, when they got the full view of what McDonald's had been doing, that went wild crazy mad on McDonald's corporate butt and put in that massive, "Don't do that again, you idiots!" penalty award; it was, if memory serves, 'way more than the lady and her lawyers had asked for. Sometimes, for companies, it's only when it's money that they stand up and pay attention. Even so, the amount the jury calculated was based on, what, a single day's revenue from coffee sales?

It's when the idiot late-night commentators and worse "news" anchors starting treating this like a burn that one might get that you fix with a little running cold water. And every right-wing, anti-lawyer bigot raised up and told massive lies about the case. It was worse than that Republican operative and his, "Al Gore Invented the Internet" meme. What's the phrase? Oh, yeah: "A lie can make it twice around the world before the truth can get its boots on."

KBeck

 

Al Gore said he created the internet.

 

Did you read http://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/NHTSA_Santee_Inspect.pdf ?

And from Toyota sued over deaths in key California crash| Reuters

And the driver was supposedly unfamiliar w/the push button start/stop systems (since since his car (not the loaner) didn't have it) and thus didn't know that pushing & holding for several seconds will shut the car down. We also don't know if the driver had some ulterior motive.

 

That's nice.
I repeat: Many of the accidents HAD NO FLOOR MATS in their cars. So the cause was not floor mats in *those* cases.

 

and some engines had gelled oil...

 

We also don't know if the officer tried to shift to Neutral, or might have been stymied by an unfamiliar zig-zag shifter pattern in that loaner car and failed to reach it under the stress of the incident.

Such as that nanny or housemaid crash in a Prius, where the surveillance tape showed the brake lights didn't light up until slightly after the impact. And others where the EDR showed no brake pedal application.

In my area over the past decade, quite a large number of folks in a wide variety of vehicle makes and models who have had SUA crashes, have admitted to hitting the wrong pedal.

 

(1) I'm not aware of any Prius deaths from uncontrolled acceleration. It was all other models that killed their passengers. (2) Yeah your girlfriend Toyota is perfection (that's how I think you genuinely believe... at least that's how you come across).

(3) The fact is Toyota was caught lying. They knew they had a "sticky pedal" problem which they fixed in EU models of the Camry, Corolla, etc but not the U.S. instead preferring to cover it up. The 2nd time they lied was when they told NHTSA they only learned about the sticky pedal problem in 2012 when they actually knew about it in 2009.

(4) Hence they are getting fined. Toyota is not better than GM.