Sudden Acceleration - It Happened To Us Today

I'm wondering if she made full disclosure of the dangerous vehicle when she traded it in for the Honda. Of course, that might affect the value of the car. And what if somebody down the road has SUA with that very same car, and wipes out a dozen innocent people? Can you imagine the guilt when someone researches the ownership history and lays the blame at her door? Oh, the horror!
BTW, what about the beep and the message flashing on the dash warning the driver that the door is open and the car is in gear? OTOH, anyone who would blithely and apparently deliberately leave a vehicle in gear, and count on the parking brake that works only on the rear brakes to hold against the power of the driven wheels in the front, probably wouldn't even pay attention to any warnings like that. Sheesh!

 

and if you're in the car with him, you better have your belt on.

 

Exactly how did the steering "not work"? Was the steering wheel locked or when you turned the steering wheel nothing happened? There are many holes in this story - believe me when I say that I know you honestly believed you did everything right but this is clearly operator error. It DOES happen to the best of us. One day at the car wash when I pulled up, the attendant always points out to put the car in neutral and foot off the brake. I thought I had it in neutral but when I took my foot off the brake, it started rolling forward before the wash was engaged. It scared both the attendant and me. Lo and behold, it WAS my fault - not some runaway Prius! Even though you can't figure it out, at least own up to the possibility it was your fault.

 

I think this person should stop defending herself and stop posting. It is clear there is a serious lack of understanding and skills necessary to operate a motor vehicle.

 

Well said.

 

To the OP if she (?) is still listening:

Just to satisfy yourself, go to a dealership and turn the steering wheel of the Prius. The wheel will move with the car completely unpowered. Then put it in neutral (will require power to disengage the parking pawl, but then you can pull the pawl relay and shut it off if you want to be absolutely certain). Then have someone push the vehicle, it will move freely. Now step on the brakes, it will stop. Again unpowered, and it will stop.

These are mechanical connections. So if the mechanic could find no fault with the mechanical connections, then the story is being misrecalled. An electrical problem could not do what you describe.

And if in gear with the parking brake on, it will continually force against the brake. It may have got a bit of traction and eventually it gains speed. Just like when you move something very heavy. It takes a few seconds but it will move. By the time it did move, you were already outside. Simple physics.

 

I suppose even if the mechanical connection of the steering system is intact, that still doesn't prevent the power steering system from going crazy and, say, supply opposite force to hinder steering.

 

Did you apply at least 112 pounds of pressure to the brake pedal? (That number comes from a metric spec.) If not, then you need a refresher in dealing with manual brakes, and with power brakes when the power fails.

If you did, and the brakes really did not work, then they failed federal brake requirements. In that case, you should file a defect report to NHTSA. If you do know software, then you also know how important defect reports are in finding and fixing bugs. Your dealership is not equipped to verify or reproduce or fix any alleged software defects. But plenty of other folks, all the way up to NASA, have been trying to verify brake software / firmware defects, without success.

 

I was in a line up and it happened. The hummer in front started rolling backwards towards my Prius. I put my car in reverse got out of his way, he did notice and stepped on his brake.

 

i hate when that happens, he was just bullying you.

 

If you are going to park the car, put it in park, step on the parking brake firmly, turn off the car!
That's what you should have done, and because you did not, I hand you the first, most coveted Award of 2012!


Next time do not leave the car in gear, plus leave the car in ready, and lightly apply the emergency brake, and then have Mom walk in front of the car!

 

I have a 2005 prius and here is my story:I was driving along doing about 35 mph when the traffic light up ahead began to turn so I floored it to beat the light.I then took my foot off the gas but the car kept accelerating at full throttle.I was now doing about 60 and still accelerating I hit the brakes and the car slowed down to 25mph. When I let off the brake it went back up to 60 . This happened two moor times.I began to kick the gas pedal and then I stomped it and that disenguaged the full throttle acceleration.Toyota checked it and found nothing wrong. Their error codes can not pick up this specific problem therefore it did not happen.But it did.

 

^^ File an incident report at: Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), File A Safety Complaint

What kind of floor mats to you have? Did you check for mat interference?

 

It was NOT floor mat interference when it happened to me. Do you know about the settlement that Toyota has agreed to? You should have gotten a post card if you are the original owner. Toyota Economic Loss Settlement Website They still say their car/parts aren't to blame but then why are they agreeing to pay? In the mean time, ask your service person about the recall on the gas pedals. I suspect they did more than just switch out the gas pedals. I never had any more unintended acceleration after Toyota did that fix. Good luck to you.

 

This sounds like the anticipated behaviour for two pedal inputs. It can be replicated driving with two feet. The brake always overrides the throttle. This is why all the runaway with no brake cases are purely false.

Your sounds plausible, but I would look more towards a stuck pedal. Either trapped somehow which you say did not happen, or if the spring pushing back on your pedal is warped/broken so the pedal did not come back to resting idle when you let your foot off. This does happen on any car over time as the metal fatigues. Yours is way too early for that, so it is probably a defect, potentially a manufacturing defect, or potentially something happened to it.

Have you recently jammed the pedals? They are not bulletproof. We have heard cases where the brake pedal becomes warped and no longer flush or returns to idle after a true panic braking. Stomp and put your weight on the pedal, the car will stop, but the pedal might need to be replaced! This could theoretically happen to the accelerator if you like playing racecar at the stop lights maybe.

I would focus my attention on the pedal itself as it appears all the control systems worked exactly as they should as if receiving to both accelerate and decellerate.

 

We shouldn't say 'always overrides' and 'purely false'. These are true most of the time, hopefully the vast vast majority of the time. But there are corner case exceptions (in the auto industry overall, not yet known in Prius specifically), and the possibility of rare but yet undiscovered flaws nearly always remains.

So. even though most reports will turn out to be operator error or simple problems such as mat interference, we still need to take these reports seriously. That is necessary to find the rare but very real flaws.

 

My phrase was only intended for the Prius, but can be extended to any Toyota or Lexus model using this same drive control system.

Of course there is always the possibility of an exception. However the probability is so low, it not even worth mentioning. Considering the lack of scientific education, any path that cannot be proven becomes the way to disprove the entire theory. Or is used to take scientific theory and turn it into "FUD theory" which means nobody knows and this theory is just as valid as a theory saying a divine spirit overtook the car for a few seconds.

It is possible the scenario was a complete fluke. But having nothing recorded means none of the ECUs that monitor the pedal positions and speeds noticed anything strange and logged something which in and of itself makes the probability skyrocket. It also behaved in a deterministic and predictable way as it is programmed to do under a few known situations which makes it less probable that is was operating completely randomly and jerking back and forth or something. All signs point to a few places that should be inspected and I don't see anything new or out of the ordinary that would suggest something different. But it is correct that it cannot be fully proven and is a theory.

 

Easy for me to say after the fact, but learn to push the Park button or hold the shift lever over in N for a couple of seconds.
Maybe practice these maneuvers.

 

As an engineer, and living in the back yard of a major commercial aircraft maker, I beg to differ. The possibility is certainly enough that is must be considered in the aviation industry, where catastrophic faults were long ago driven to a much lower level than in the automotive industry.

 

Yes, also as an engineer, the aircraft market is completely different than the vehicle market or spacecraft market, or ballistic missile market, or consumer electronic market or whatever. The company I work for designs chips that have very few bugs statistically. For your basic low end missile, then you put a number of those in parallel and another few completely parallel systems doing the same thing and make sure all the answers from all the devices in all the parallel systems line up before any calculation is considered final. Even still, there is a possibility for a failure. But it has been driven down way into the noise.

This specific area of the car's brake system got many engineers raking over the code, hardware, system level design, everything and nobody found anything wrong. I am sure something exists somewhere, or if you drive through the right EMF something weird will happen, but the probability is very very low. So low, that unless something extraordinary happens or something unique happens, it will be explained away as something more common that causes the same outcome.
All of this is what you and I would measure in sigmas. And you can't get 0 defects or infinite sigma reliability, so there are defects and problems. But you have to pick a point to accept your sigma rate, and move forward.