So go to hell, Rush.

Amen.

If this problem were driver error, why haven’t we heard of the same thing happening to other car lines?

Amazing how it’s only happening to Toyota drivers.

PLEASE – stop with the logic

So glad you and your family are safe, BT. sends chills up a spine.

So glad you were able to avoid an accident, BT. When we bought our last car, the decision came down to Prius vs. clean diesel. We went with the clean diesel, assuming we’ll drive this car until our kids take our keys away due to old age/senility.

It’s only happening to Toyota drivers because they’ve been bribed by librul lawyers and brainwashed by the librul media coverage of the librul Congressional Toyota hearings.

“Driver error” is engineering code speak for “We don’t know why it happened or how to fix it, we’ve been unable to duplicate it in the lab, and nothing we can think of has been able to cause this problem.”

In other words “we (Toyota) don’t have a clue what’s causing it or how to fix it.” Probably safer to not own a Toyota or one of their other brands until they DO find out what is causing it (most likely a faulty drive-by-wire control system).

I can’t help it. I’ve always had to be able to back up any statements I make with the rationale behind it.

Hmmm. I should maybe contact my cousins and friends back home who work for Toyota and see if they got any extra cash thrown their way.

I’ve never had any trouble with my Tacoma, but then it’s never been on the recall list.

but then it’s never been on the recall list.

Neither has BT’s Sienna as he mentions in the post

I am glad to hear that they finally got it figured out.

Thanks much Jim and Elliott.

Ooooo, there’s Rush on my FDL. Really obscene. He just takes up too much space.

Yeah, Rush, you hopped-up, conspiracy ridden, I-dropped-my-brain-down-the-toilet nutcase, go to hell!

So does Laura Ingraham and her snarky diary.

I have no idea what is happening with the Toyotas but I had exactly the same thing happen in 2000 with the cruise control as you on my 1989 or so Cadillac de Ville. There is a thingy that gets worn and keeps the throttle open. The dealer knew all about it so it must have happened a lot.. Once I got it there. As far as I know there were never any recalls.

The difference is that the 1989 Cadillac had a mechanical throttle and cruise control, and was 11 years old when it happened, whereas the Sienna has a drive-by-wire, computer controlled throttle and cruise control, and is only 3 years old. It is unlikely that the Caddy and the Sienna had a similar issue, since they have such different control systems and ages.

So glad you are safe, what a chilling experience. And to have this unpatriotic traitor mock your experience, when you and your family were in danger, is obscene. I’m not sure hell is good enough for him.

Actually, and I’ve never said this in my adult life before, Rush has a point. After the Toyota recalls started there was a spike of people either staging accidents or trying to cash in after the fact by blaming the car for their own stupidity. Fortunately, their stories usually fell apart within hours.

For examples, see here and here.

I had a similiar experience when my accelerator got stuck under the carpet on my VW. It’s a terrifying experience.

So two links to the same basic story means everyone else is making it up huh?

Edit: sorry, two different stories but still, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen as initially described, it just means that two potential criminals got caught quickly

I can’t help it. I’ve always had to be able to back up any statements I make with the rationale behind it

Sounds like an engineer to me. Will never make it in politics though.

But he is not saying a few idiots faked it. He’s saying it’s all a shakedown.

Two different things.

You didn’t read the links at all, did you? In the NY case, a woman accelerated, redline, into a wall, then tried to blame the car. In the Cali case, a man deeply, deeply in debt faked an incident with unintended acceleration on the freeway, putting countless other peoples’ lives in danger, in an obvious fraud.

One was post hoc, the other premeditated fraud. One on the West Coast, one on the East. How are those the same story?

Yeah, he’s a moron. Still, the spike in fraud cases, fueled by media hysteria, DID occur.

He just puts the blame on one of the usual conservative boogeymen, trial lawyers.

See my edited reply

Which incident are you talking about happening ‘as originally described’? I’m thoroughly confused.

I posted the initial comment while waiting for both links to load. I saw they were both Prius related and didn’t catch they were on opposite coasts. One I knew was a scam, and didn’t really read the other that closely.

So I’m an idiot, Satisfied?

That still doesn’t mean Limbaugh was talking anything but out of his a**.

I never called you an idiot, so that one’s on you.

Limbaugh always talks out of his ass. Nevertheless, by accident and what, six months late, he partially hit on something: there was a lot of media hysteria and congressional theatrics clouding this issue, and it led some very stupid people to put themselves and others at risk, or to try to cover up their stupidity after the fact.

I don’t know how any cruise control issues might have played into your awful experience, Blue Texan, but I think Rush would like to turn around completely the bizarrely random but real “throttle full open” occurrence problem that Toyotas seem to have. As a former programmer, I can see how the issue is possibly an obscure software bug, the kind of thing that will possibly bite all the car makers as they move to drive-by-wire.

Rush and crew did a good job (from their catapulting side) with a McDonald’s coffee injury lawsuit some years ago. In fact, McD’s had been aware for some time that their overly hot coffee was a risk to customers, but ignored the small verdicts until this big one hit the news. Rush among the bullmoses made his fans think it was those greedy lawyers pulling a fast one again.

As Rush knows, any assertion of rights or justice by isolated citizens against corporations must be nipped in the bud.

It certainly *felt* like a software issue from my standpoint, and apparently, a professor at Southern Illinois had the same theory.

…he partially hit on something:

No, he didn’t.

These are two different statements — one true, one false.

1) Toyota’s problems are all made up.
2) Some people are making up stories about Toyota.

Limbaugh asserted 1, which is false.

There’s no “partially hitting on something” in there.

Now here is my question for the mods. (And as a disclaimer, I believe this post and sympathize with the author completely.)

Why are you so vigilant against ad-hom attacks in the comments but the author of this post is allowed to call Limbaugh a fatass(which he is)?

[Mod Note: Abusive comments directed toward other commenters are not allowed. Rush Limbaugh, as a public person is not subject to this. Same thing goes for comments against any other public person. Note: Comments suggesting violence directed toward Rush Limbaugh or any other person are not allowed.]

Yeah. Putting the car in neutral (which other Toyota drivers have found to work) sounds like it essentially reset the chip or chips that control acceleration.

I didn’t read his statement as being universal, but rather describing a large group of potential frauds and people covering their mistakes. He says ‘a bunch’, not ‘all’.

As for the statement about the ‘whole thing’ being trumped up, I believe it was. The total number of these unintended acceleration cases is a statistical blip compared with the death toll from cars in general, the risks of driving, etc. We had national news organizations running with stories where some electronics prof with an axe to grind, currently working for lawyers suing toyota, rigs a car to behave in an odd way by literally gutting its electronics and rewiring them. That was grotesquely irresponsible.

Then we had the conflation of a number of minor issues into one much larger story. For example, the 2010 Prius had a minor issue with its antilock braking system where it would freeze for a fraction of a second if you hit a very large pothole at highway speed. That had absolutely nothing to do with the acceleration issues, real and alleged. But the news orgs reported it as if it did.

Meanwhile, US automakers have huge recalls and it’s barely mentioned in the news. I did a diary here comparing a recall where Ford sold over ten million cars that literally could, and many did, BURST INTO FLAMES and burn to the ground with no warning, with the Toyota recall. Oddly enough, the Toyota one got vastly, vastly more coverage, despite being far less dangerous and less lethal. Plus, Ford knew, for certain, documented legal certainty, about the problem for years and did nothing. Yet still, barely covered.

So yeah. I think it was overblown. A lot of us have car horror stories. I had the brakes give out on a Chrysler at highway speed for no reason and nearly got myself killed. Still, anecdotes aren’t always data.

Not a mod, but I don’t understand this. For BT’s descriptor to have been an ad hominem comment, he would have had to have been using that term not simply to describe Limbaugh, but to imply that being a “fatass” is why Rush is a lying jerk. (For the record, there are many fatasses out there who do not have Rush’s character flaw; Michael Moore and Jerrold Nadler come first to my mind.)

On a Prius, like the one in the video, you can also hold down the power button for 3 seconds to shut it off. It’s just like a PC power switch in that regard.

I don’t know how many Toyotas in general they put that in though. Obviously it’s in mine.

Glad you & your family are safe, BT. A couple of the original deadly car crashes happened in San Diego, and I believe those people tried everything, including putting their Toyota in neutral. It didn’t work and the result was awful.

Earlier this year, there was the bankrupt guy in San Diego (referenced in a link, above) who attempted to “fake” the problem w/his Toyota in order to sue and get money out of Toyota. It didn’t work and was quickly resolved what he did.

Rush is paid very well by the corporations to shill for the “big” people in order to rip off and cow under the “small” people. This is but one tiny example of his crude venality and is completely unsurprising. While the post is good to highlight, it would be more “newsworthly” if that lying predator didn’t barf out crap like this about Toyota owners attempting to find redress for their poorly designed cars. El-Lushbo has always had it in for trial lawyers, but that’s no surprise: they hold corporations accountable. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Hey, there’s a video for that too, neat. I’ve never tried it myself.

I didn’t read his statement as being universal, but rather describing a large group of potential frauds and people covering their mistakes. He says ‘a bunch’, not ‘all’.

You didn’t read it, then, because he wondered if the “whole thing was trumped up” — and you also didn’t listen to the segment, apparently.

Blue Texan’s experience sounds like a genuine malfunction of the cruise control system, and Limbaugh’s statement looks like nothing more than red meat to his audience. Having said that, there is evidence stacking up that driver error was the cause of most of those acceleration problems.

Being a programmer, as well, I almost always blame the software. Of course it could be that the CPU is glitchy as well. Drive by wire probably isn’t a problem if the software is self-monitoring and a reboot requires a new restart. This sounds like one of those areas where the programmers spent too much time trying to make it work rather than focusing on points of failure.

El-Lushbo has always had it in for trial lawyers, but that’s no surprise: they hold corporations accountable. And we can’t have that, now can we?

And that’s the point. He’s working from a pre-fixed ideological construction, and analyzing events through that warped prism.

So there could be 40,000 legitimate claims against Toyota and 10 bogus ones, and he’d use the 10 bogus ones to argue that Toyota is being treated unfairly by the liberals and lawyers.

I read the part you excerpted here. If that wasn’t enough for it to have the proper context, isn’t it your fault, not mine?

You’re reading it differently than everyone else — and you’re ignoring the audio, which I provided, which gives it context.

Sounds like the problem’s on your end.

We have a 2002 Prius, older and smaller. If I wanted a new car today I’d probably opt for a small clean diesel like you did. As it is though, if my car tried to redline I’d have plenty of time to consider my options. It is faster than a VW Bus but not by much.

Absolutely. Here and here, for example.

If you look at the reported ages of people with the Toyota unintended acceleration problem, a very interesting pattern emerges. There’s a high rate at the youngest driving ages, a low rate at adult driving ages, rising in middle age, spiking in old age.

Mechanical problems with cars don’t magically materialize when Grandpa or Junior drives your car; the brakes don’t know your age when you push them.

But driver error is well known to correlate with age, especially in the young and old.

The thing is that Toyota had a) known about the defect for years before deigning to tell anyone, b) tried to blame it on the pedal manufacturer even though the problem existed long before Toyota started using that pedal, and c) had touted how perfect and boo-boo-free its vehicles were, especially compared to evil union-made American cars.

Exactly. That’s how Lush Rimjob “rolls.” The amazing thing in this particular case is that there’s a teensy grain of “truthiness” in that it is known that *some* unscrupulous people *attempted* to take advantage of a very real problem, which resulted in a number of real deaths.

So el-Lushbo extrapolates the few “bad apples” to say that it’s all a big old con by absolutely everyone, including, I guess, the people that actually died through no fault of their own and has been proven that there were definitely faults with their Toyotas.

It’s a load of rubbish to dance on a head of a pin arguing that perhaps Rush had some kind of a “point.” Rush emphatically only had the point of demonizing people who have a real reason to gain restitution from a corporation – and frankly Toyota stepped up and admitted it very publically – by lumping them in with a very tiny number of people who tried to rip off the system.

But again: that’s how Rush “rolls”: by outright lies, sins of omission, and all the rest. Good to highlight the story, but wake me when Rush ever, ever, ever tells the truth. Now excuse me while I go join Rip Van Winkle for a very looooong nap.

I do not find the allegations of a software failure compelling — Prof Gilbert had to induce several shorts in different places at the same time in order to produce the fault. It’s an extraordinarily unlikely failure and should leave evidence in an accident vehicle that does not appear to have been found.

There is a known problem with sticky gas pedals and the floor mats on some models; while Toyota has issued recalls for these, it’s unclear whether they got all of the problem models. There’s also no good reason to dismiss operator error as a probable cause — there’s just far too much history of similar errors, including patterns of errors affecting particular makes and models.

Do you remember the sudden acceleration problems with the Audi 5000 back in the late 80s? It had purely mechanical throttle controls — and had a rash of incidents of sudden acceleration. When all was said and done, all of the accidents were operator error. There were elements of the design of the controls that made errors more likely — the gas and brake pedals were smaller and closer together than on comparable American models and (IIRC) the shift lever pattern was different than on otherwise comparable American models. As a result, the NHTSA imposed additional standards for the pattern, size, and placement of controls.

What difference does it make whether I listen to the audio? Is the transcript accurate, or not? If not, why did you post it?

Ok, let’s assume you’re right, and I’m being too charitable. What’s your point? He’s still correct that the evidence tends to indicate that most of these cases are driver-induced, and he’s right that there was a spike of fraud cases after the news broke.

He’s just wrong as to the reasons behind it. It’s not a lawyer-based conspiracy, it’s your typical, uncoordinated human greed and stupidity.

I stand by my statement that the larger issue of ‘unintended acceleration’ was trumped up. It was. The national media had a field day and got great ratings fluffing this story out of all proportion and without any determination as to the actual cause, because it sold ads.

Exactly. And the head/CeO of Toyota testified to that in Congress, fer gawd’s sake. Attempting to SPIN some kind of “pattern” about the way the accidents happened that makes it all the fault of the drivers (and attempting to decide that these same drivers all did this in order to rip off a vaunted corporation) somehow is patent b.s.

Yet apparently, these problems are only happening to toyota products.

If nothing else, doesn’t that suggest they have serious design flaws if drivers so readily make mistakes as Rush contends (and you so willingly defend?)

Here’s the Minnesota version of Toyota:

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Court records show Koua Fong Lee was convicted of criminal vehicular homicide and is serving an eight-year prison sentence for a crash that killed three people in 2006.

Despite that, two people who survived the crash and relatives of three people who did not survive, have no interest in suing Lee. In fact, they want him released from prison.

Instead, they are going to sue Toyota Motor Corp., which made the car involved in the crash. Their suit claims the accident was a result of product defect, said attorney Michael Padden, who represents some of the victims’ relatives.
…
While an expert testified in 2007 the vehicle’s brakes were working properly, Lee has always maintained they were not working.

“I step on the brake, but it’s not working,” Lee told KARE in February.

In the wake of Toyota’s recent sudden acceleration problems with much newer vehicles, prosecutors agreed to let both sides reinspect the car at St. Paul’s police impound lot in April.

Experts for Lee said they found evidence the brake lights were on at the time of the accident, a claim that is cited in the civil lawsuits about to filed against Toyota.

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=852390

The age distribution of the accidents is the best evidence that it’s not a mechanical or electronic problem.

“I stand by my statement that the larger issue of ‘unintended acceleration’ was trumped up. It was.”

And you know this, HOW? Where are you getting that information? How do you know it’s true?

If so, why did my Toyota dealership admit to me (without my even asking) that there ARE problems with ‘unintended acceleration’ with certain Toyota models? Why would they say that to me, if it was all “trumped up”??

I don’t see evidence for those claims in that article. I see a parts manufacturer arguing with Toyota over who’s to blame, while they simultaneously admit they did, in fact, sell some bad pedals to Toyota. I also see a lot of groundless speculation about electronic ghosts in the machine, which oddly no one has ever been able to find or replicate, even in cars which had unintended acceleration incidents and are examined later.

He’s still correct that the evidence tends to indicate that most of these cases are driver-induced, and he’s right that there was a spike of fraud cases after the news broke.

Let’s try this one more time. The thesis of the audio and the quote is: there’s no problem with Toyotas, it’s all bullshit cooked up by liberal lawyers.

That is false. The fact that he correctly cited one WSJ article doesn’t make it less so.

Years ago there were problems with the Pinto – which I believe had the engine in the rear of the car – exploding when rear-ended. This happened frequently, and the Pintos were recalled. It only happened to Pintos, not to other cars.

Was that something that “trumped up” by Pinto owners?

It wasn’t the engine, it was unprotected gas tanks in the rear that tended to explode with some impacts

I have linked the evidence that I have seen, some of it anyway. The age distribution of drivers who have the problem shows a sharp skew toward the young and the old, which is *extremely* strong and compelling evidence of driver error.

Again, read here and here.

Then there’s the number of cases we’re talking about, and the overall risk.

Consumers also may want to reconsider parking their recalled Toyotas until repairs have been made. “Replacing driving by walking really increases the risk of dying,” Fischbeck said. “Walking a mile is 19 times or 1,900 percent more dangerous than driving a mile in a recalled Toyota. Driving while using a cell phone would increase risk much more than the chance of having a stuck accelerator.”

In the U.S., there is a little more than one fatality for every 100 million miles driven. The average U.S. vehicle logs about 13,000 miles each year. Based on these averages, for the 2.3 million Toyotas being recalled, there are about 340 fatalities every year for causes unrelated to the accelerator. The accelerator problem is adding about six deaths every year to this total — meaning that the accelerator problem is increasing the driving risk by about 2 percent.

And that’s assuming there actually is a mechanical root cause, rather than human error.

In my case: it was not a sticky pedal — the dealer confirmed this, and it wasn’t my error.

So now, rather than dealing with the quote, I have to argue against your thesis of the quote?

I give up. I can’t win if the rules and ‘facts’ change on me constantly. I will merely point out that I have linked to numerous articles in this thread illustrating that there is very strong evidence that, in fact, isolated actual mechanical issues aside, the overwhelming cause of the Toyota ‘unintended acceleration’ problem is driver error, as well as examples of frauds and self-deceivers claiming that their car made them do things or make mistakes.

Precisely. There are undoubtedly individual cases where a car goes bad – that’s life. It happens. But the age skewing overall is extremely compelling. If this is a mechanical issue, it has to be one that is somehow influenced by driver age, affecting the very young and the very old while largely skipping over intervening generations.

That would be one very, very strange mechanical error.

Here’s a good short piece on the Audi mess that I remember reading. Most people have completely forgotten that a few decades ago the media whipped the country into a hysterical frenzy over ‘unintended acceleration’, only to have it all be a mirage. Not before it almost ruined Audi though.

Those who forget history…. etc.

So now, rather than dealing with the quote, I have to argue against your thesis of the quote?

Yes, this is commonly referred to as “reading comprehension” on standardized tests.

It just happens less often with other car lines. There probably are instances of driver error, but whether something about Toyota’s car designs causes more driver error, or there’s something else going on remains to be determined, I think. There might be other explanations, also.

The situation Blue Texan describes sounds like a fault with the cruise control. The suspected faults I’ve read about with Toyotas are with other systems. That might explain the lack of recall for that vehicle.

By way of disclosure, I own a very old Toyota vehicle, which was built long before these problems developed.

Funny how my reading comprehension allowed me to bring numerous pieces of evidence to the conversation, while yours seems to confine you to ignoring data that conflicts with your predetermined conclusion while shifting the terms of the debate to suit yourself.

The drivers that died in San Diego (not the fake) were middle-aged, neither young nor old. It was Toyota that stated there was an acceleration problem with certain makes of Toyotas. At first they talked about issues with sticky gas pedals, and then with the floor mats, and then they blamed it on some other issues.

So I don’t see how this is all “trumped up” by consumers. Just because someone younger or older has problems does not connote that there’s some kind of owner conspiracy to bilk Toyota. That’s my issue with your discussion.

You *may* be right that somehow the problems skew towards certain age groups and their driving habits. But, so what? I simply disagree that the majority of the deaths have been conspiratorily “trumped up” in order to bilk Toyota. And then, as stated, the 2 Toyota deaths of which I’m aware involved male drivers in middle age.

In the 80s, as the NYT piece I linked to above discusses, it ‘happened’ a lot less with other cars than Audis. Mostly, as it turns out, due to a post hoc selection bias. If people hear enough about Carmaker X having a problem, and they experience an issue, they’re far more likely to make the connection and, more importantly, report the issue to the relevant authorities.

For example, the other day in my garage I started to get out of my car without remembering that I had already put it in reverse. It was a hectic morning, and I committed a driver error. Big whoop. But, if I had heard a series of frantic news stories about an alleged Toyota Reversal Problem, I might be inclined to blame the car and not myself, either consciously or unconsciously.

It’s a kind of subjective validation, I suppose. If a person sees a horoscope saying the reason they had a bad day was the moon’s in the wrong house, they might draw the false causative relationship between them in their head. Same deal here, only for horoscope, substitute ABC or CBS.

Thanks for the clarification. You’re correct.

My point, of course, is: were the Pinto drivers all colluding to bilk Ford by faking these accidents?

My Toyota dealer admits to me readily that there were design (or whatever) flaws with certain makes of Toyota. How does this someone translate into Toyota owners all colluding with one another to “fake” problems in order to bilk Toyota?

There was not a huge “rise” in faked accidents after the info came out. There were a few fakes; they were busted; and that was the end of it.

I never alleged a conspiracy to trump anything up, and I never said that consumers were doing the trumping at all, at least not as a group, though I did make comments about two particular cases where drivers lied about having the problem in their cars at the height of the frenzy. Stop putting words in my mouth please, it’s profoundly disrespectful, not to mention a form of lying.

What I said was that the media and some in Congress inflated the significance of an issue of very small statistical importance and risk to suit their own purposes, specifically, in the case of the media, to get attention and ad revenue. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s just bad practices. As for congress, well. It certainly got them on the front pages of all the papers here in the Midwest for weeks on end, which is always good in an election year.

I provided links to the analyses indicating that the publicly reported cases of unintended acceleration do, in fact, skew old and young. That’s data, not an accusation by me, nor my analysis originally. If you have your own data, please present it. I also specifically said that there were surely individual cases of specific mechanical failure that have no bearing on the overall issue of a widespread issue with Toyotas.

If you don’t want to discuss what I’ve actually stated, then find someone else to bother please.

An equally valid explanation for the age groupings could be that the inexperienced and elderly drivers either lacked experience or coordinated fast reflexes to put the car in neutral or otherwise extricate themselves from a dangerous situation.

Yes, if they had been depressing the brakes at all.

However, the NHTSA has been studying the issue, and… it looks like it was largely driver error after all. Big surprise!

People “familiar with the findings” of NHTSA’s investigation into unintended acceleration in Toyotas tell the WSJ [sub] that after studying “dozens” of black boxes, the DOT has

found that at the time of the crashes, throttles were wide open and the brakes were not engaged… The results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyota and Lexus vehicles surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.

…

The data recorders analyzed by NHTSA were selected by the agency, not Toyota, based on complaints the drivers had filed with the government.

Yet Toyota conceded that there are design flaws causing sudden acceleration

NYT: “Toyota Concedes 2 Flaws Caused Loss of Control”

Sean Kane, the president of Safety Research and Strategies, a Massachusetts consulting firm that is working with lawyers suing Toyota, said data recorders that did not show braking were “far from an exoneration of Toyota and its electronics.”

Mr. Kane said that driver error was always assumed to be the cause of at least some of the complaints but that the recorders alone could not prove that a car did not accelerate on its own.

“You can’t ignore the fact that when they move to an electronic throttle control you basically see a fourfold increase in complaints,” Mr. Kane said. He also said the event data recorders rely “on the same sensing system that is unable to detect the failure to begin with,” and is therefore not “an independent witness.”

This is an ongoing investigation. Glibly dismissing it at this point (“big surprise!”) is rather short-sided, don’t you think?

Are you still talking to me? I thought you were playing the ‘I’m not listening game’ or something, what with ignoring the links I’ve been posting up until now. I’m not glibly dismissing anything ‘at this point’; I’d come to the conclusion that this is overwhelmingly likely to be driver error several months ago, when people first compiled the data showing the utterly astounding correlation between age and SUA incidents.

That, and when anti-toyota people started raving online about ‘cosmic rays’ causing these accidents. That was tinfoil hat time.

Also, you’re seriously going to counter the initial results of the NHTSA with the word of a hired gun working to sue Toyota? Seriously?

That’s where you’re going with this. Wow.

Update: Ahh, oops. Misread the first part of that. Ok, fine on a small number of bad pedals.

But that was old news; how does that conflict with the problem being ‘largely’ driver error?

some electronics prof with an axe to grind, currently working for lawyers suing toyota, rigs a car to behave in an odd way by literally gutting its electronics and rewiring them. That was grotesquely irresponsible.”

You, hctomorrow, and PierceNichols seem to have missed the facts on this topic.

What Prof Gilbert did was to induce several shorts in different places at the same time in order to produce the fault, but the point was not to show how the unattended acceleration occured, or to even show that it did occur, it was only to show that the black boxes that NHTSA relied on to say their was no problem were unreliable. The professor produced the fault, and the black box failed to record it.

So all those old folk can’t find the brake stories are crap – the car electronics changed in the last 10 years and are now not as reliable as they should be – live with it.

And this isn’t much of a ‘concession’:

A Toyota spokesman, Mike Michels, said the company’s investigation involved inspecting the vehicles and downloading data from onboard recorders if a crash occurred. Mr. Michels said the investigation found sticking accelerator pedals in a small number of vehicles and a larger number with floor mats that interfered with pedals.

He said none of the vehicles with a sticking pedal was involved in a crash, and he did not know how many of those identified as having problematic floor mats had crashed.

The Toyota review pointed to human error in most instances when a vehicle crashed while the driver was trying to brake, Mr. Michels said. Nearly all of the crashes in those instances resulted from “pedal misapplication,” meaning the driver mistakenly pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, he said.

To recap: the problem, according to Toyota, now backed up by the NHTSA in preliminary work, is mostly driver error, compounded with a very small number of bad pedals and slightly more bad floor mats.

The counterargument comes from hired guns suing Toyota. Hmm.

Yeah.

Of course, the fact that the DoT report is leaked ahead of time so the nay-sayers can get out front in claims that it was all user error has nothing to do with your perspective now does it.

And as has been pointed out, if the “black box” is stuck with the accelerator to the floor, how is it going to register that the driver attempted to use the brake?

As an aside, while Ford/GM/Jeep do not have this Toyota electronic control problem, they have in the past had mechanical wear out problems with accelerating out of control the result (but both the Ford and the Jeep that I am aware off that after 10 years had this problem had brakes that still controled the car (indeed that is a test that is done in the states involved for all cars – and has been the test for the last couple of decades – but then I’ve lived in various Northeast states).

Indeed going into neutral was never a problem. Toyota design sucks in this case.

He introduced faults that can only work if you fault three separate wires into each other in precise order across a resistor of precisely the right number of ohms.. I think it was 200.

That type of error cannot realistically occur in the outside world. Gilbert said as much in his testimony to Congress. He proved that an error that does not occur is not logged properly by a car that has been heavily sabotaged by an electronics engineer.

News at 11. *rolls eyes*

Does that error cause this problem? No. Have such shorts been found in any of the affected cars? No. Have other incidents been found and documented that, in fact, some of these drivers are not pressing the brake pedal? Yes.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the police have deemed Miss Myrna Marseilles’ incident a case of drive error. In her original story, Miss Marseilles claimed she the car went through a parking stall, over a kerb and into a wall. She also claimed that the car had accelerated as she tried to brake, But her story didn’t match the evidence. Her trouble was caused by a camera. The parking lot was under the watchful eye of a security camera. Police Chief Steve Riffel said the surveillance video clearly showed that the brake light only came on AFTER the car hit the wall, not before. Miss Marseilles may now be ticketed for this crash, but the police have yet to decide.

That’s not the car black box talking; it’s a security camera. Oops.

I’ve already linked to the almost hiliariously bad California fraud in this thread, which was also documented by lots of cameras, 911 calls, etc. And none of Gilbert’s work explains the anomaly in the ages of affected drivers, which is yet another source of information indicating likely driver error, aside from black boxes or security cameras.

one more time – the black box is not recording all faults. Professor Gilbert proved that and others have verified he is correct.

So a NHTSA study using black box is worth what?

Gilbert’s so-called problem doesn’t cause SUA, it at best would obscure it. It also never happens in the real world and has never been found in an actual car.

Given that, and the demographic data, and the occasional security camera or cop catching these drivers in the act… yeah. Sorry. Occam’s razor says go for the simple explanation.

Once again: how do you explain the demographic problem? How could a mechanical problem choose to occur disproportionately in certain age groups?

Outside Software testing seems to be avoided by Toyota – wonder why.

When I wrote programs all errors were captured and dealt with – your “rare hard to reproduce not likely” excuse does not fly.

Yeah, as a QA Tester, rare and hard to re-produce does not mean it does not exist.

Err, offhand? Because they’re a large corporation that makes proprietary software?

Did someone not tell me it was ‘Ask Obvious Questions’ day?

It also doesn’t mean that it does. Either is an argument from ignorance and hence a logical fallacy.

Since we’re now officially in the realm of logical fallacies and conspiracy theories, I’m checking out of this thread before it goes full-bore Toyota Truther. Later.

As a tester, I tend to eventually find those “rare and hard to find” defects. Are they easily found? No. But they can be found. As they say “Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire”

So you may think it’s a logical fallacy but for me as a tester, it’s a defect that can indeed be found (and fixed)

It is not an “Argument from ignorance” no matter how much you may proclaim it as such.