Toyota has taken a massive hit to its rep, due to reports of floor mat-related unintended acceleration, and the automaker’s subsequent recall. The headline case: a fatal crash on August 28th. As The LA Times reports, a “runway” Lexus ES350 slammed into another vehicle and embankment, killing California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Saylor, his wife, teenage daughter and brother-in-law. The Times raises an important point: ” . . . a close look at the Lexus ES 350 raises questions about whether the car’s very design may have compromised Saylor’s skills. One obvious line of defense is to simply shut off the engine, a step that may not be intuitive on the ES 350. The car has a push-button start system, activated by the combination of a wireless electronic fob carried by the driver and a button on the dashboard. But once the vehicle is moving, the engine will not shut off unless the button is held down for a full three seconds — a period of time in which Saylor’s car would have traveled 528 feet. A driver may push the button repeatedly, not knowing it requires a three-second hold.”
The Times points out that the ES 350 was a loaner; Officer Saylor’s car may or may not have had a push button start. What’s more . . .
That procedure is explained deep in the owners manual. In a text box labeled “! Caution,” Toyota tells owners, “Do not touch the ‘power’ switch while driving.” But under the warning it adds, “If you have to make an emergency stop, press and hold the ‘power’ switch for more than three seconds.”
So what about shifting out of gear, per Consumer Reports’ advice?
The other common defense tactic advised by experts is to simply shift a runaway vehicle into neutral. But the ES 350 is equipped with an automatic transmission that can mimic manual shifting, and its shift lever on the console has a series of gates and detents that allow a driver to select any of at least four forward gears.
The arrangement of those gear selections could make it difficult to shift from a forward gear directly into neutral in a panic situation, Toyota spokesman Lyons acknowledged.
“I think it’s possible to get the shifter confused, but I can’t be sure that’s what happened” in San Diego, Lyons said. “You’d be surprised how many people around here [Toyota] don’t know what the neutral position is for.”
Don’t know what neutral is for? How about the brakes?
The ES 350 and most other modern vehicles are equipped with power-assisted brakes, which operate by drawing vacuum power from the engine. But when an engine opens to full throttle, the vacuum drops, and after one or two pumps of the brake pedal the power assist feature disappears.
As a result, a driver would have to apply enormous pressure to the brake pedal to stop the car, and if the throttle was wide open might not be able to stop it at all, safety experts say.
When Audi got hit with sudden unintended acceleration accusations, the “step on the brake while engaging gear” requirement was born. One wonders how this Toyota situation is going to play out from a regulation point-of-view. Meanwhile, lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers. Not because it makes sense, mind you. But because this is how these things always play out.
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Seems the new electric motorcycles have the same glitch from some stories I’ve been reading.
Starter buttons: the triumph of style over substance.
Wait until they discover that until the 1930s–and later, for some pick-ups–Real Cars had starter switches on the floor, like old headlight dim/bright controls. Imagine the styling possibilities that opens up.
Give me a good old fashioned key with an actual physical electrical switch behind it any day.
A big red PANIC button is in our future. It will simultaneously engage neutral, kill power to the engine, and call 911.
“A driver may push the button repeatedly, not knowing it requires a three-second hold.”
Interestingly, Nissan’s variant will shut off with either a two-second hold or three consecutive presses.
My car has push button start and it is one of very few things I dislike. More than dislike, actually. I find it confusing and cumbersome to use. I do not hate it quite as much as run flat tires. But just like run flat tires it makes my family less safe. Note to car engineers: get a brain!
I thought as much. An insane “stop engine” design.
Many cars today have computer-controlled transmissions. Might it also be possible that the driver did (or tried to) shift to Neutral but the electronic brain overrode that command? (“Dave, choosing Neutral or Park at high speed is not approved driving practice!”)
And a computer runs the Stability Control and Antilock Braking features. The latter “pulses” the brakes if traction is lost even though the driver maintains steady pressure on the pedal. Any possibility for a glitch there?
When I first heard about the ‘killer floor mats’, I just thought this was ridiculous, and would blow over soon.
Reading about the multiple/interactive confusing systems (starter button, gated shifter, brake pressure)…the dangerous car scenario becomes far more real.
In a panic situation, how would a new or occasional driver know to hold the starter button for 3 seconds (an eternity in a panic situation!)…and again, in a panic an unfamiliar driver may find a gated shifter confusing (I actually still prefer them though)…and then to find that the brakes don’t seem to be stopping the car, and/or have massively increased pressure required…
This SHOULD be addressed by safety experts, and perhaps some changes do need to be made, and/or additional safety measures designed in.
My mother had an Audi at the time of the whole 60 Minutes acceleration bullsh*t, and I was so pissed because a great car/company got decimated by a few idiots (sorry) who stood on the gas and thought they had their foot an the brake. But design changes (including a wider brake pedal on automatics, and a depress brake/shifter lock) made all cars safer, and I beleive the changes have probably saved lives (of people who are probably not good drivers, but deserve to live anyway.)
Looks like we have a new, and probably needed, round of safety measures on the way.
I would imagine that power brakes are going to be the next big thing to be “physically” decoupled from the engine in the form of electric assist. People will say that it is common sense that the power assist should increase with speed and/or throttle instead of decreasing with a wide open throttle.
I would think that some sort of electric assist is needed for hybrid cars when the engine is off. How does that work?
Some low end cars that they try to splice on keyless start has a high margin option – Nissan Versa, Mazda MX-5 Miata – replace the key with a nub that you twist in a similar, and very familiar fashion. This might become required, as off is as easy as twisting it back like you would a key.
sfdennis1: “Looks like we have a new, and probably needed, round of safety measures on the way.”
Look for Toyota to mail out “To Stop Engine Press Button for Three Seconds” stickers to slap on the dash.
Hope the software engineers haven’t made it so that pressing for four seconds will re-start the engine.
“Hope the software engineers haven’t made it so that pressing for four seconds will re-start the engine.”
Unless the software is really glitchy, it won’t restart without the car being in Park with the brake pedal depressed.
We’re going to see more cars that will ignore throttle inputs if the brake is pushed, some cars have that already.
Pic of ‘10 Lexus ES shift gate
With this design, moving the shift knob forwards 1 detent should put you into neutral. Familiarity is part of the problem, though, as that driver involved in the fatality had a rental that day.
One of the slushboxes I drive has a gate very similar to that of the above Lexus, the other has a zigzag that goes down to 1/L. Fortunately, the forwards nudge will put either car into N.
Although I’ve got two pushbutton start cars and find the interface ridiculous, the ES350 still has a transmission selector which allows you to hit “N” and a second pedal next to the accelerator with which to stop the car.
So long as we accept the idea that it is a manufacturer’s responsibility to make up for poor driving skills, these kinds of nonsense stories will persist. My deepest sympathies go to the family, but any aircraft pilot is trained to deal with a variety of remedies for in-flight failures. Teaching parallel parking and 3-point U-turns is in another league. This “runaway” is 100% driver error.
I remember driving a runaway ‘75 Newport on I270 with stuck linkage. Brakes don’t do much; turning off the engine helps, but the second you restart you send out a nice fireball through the exhaust – the carburetor doesn’t care about your ignition switch :). I finally got to a safe spot and got hit by a brilliant idea of using the transmission shift lever; dropped her to neutral and coasted/gently braked to a stop.
Given that it took me a good 30 seconds to even THINK of shifting to neutral, I’d say that having to press a button for at least 3 seconds is a recipie for disaster.
Lawmonkey is right – I have a Miata with keyless iginition and it works great – just like a regular key. Better yet, you can always pull off the knob, take a real key out of your keyless fob, and use it in case your keyless fob died for whatever reason. Starter button is great for race cars, but they also have an on-off switch for ignition. Here we have a fine example of what happens when somebody goes, “OH, starter button! Cool!” and forgets about the other pieces that make it work.
Just give me a key; they always work.
I love my pushbutton start on the Prius. I leave my keyfob and keys in my pocket and I can still enter the car and drive it without having to fumble for keys.
Messing with keys is SO LAST CENTURY!
Keyless entry and keyless start have been a HUGE convenience to me, with my bad back (sometimes makes finding my keys painful).
Rentals are aggravating, because I have to “manually” unlock the car. It’s annoying!
In the future, there will only be two buttons. GO and STOP.
My first instinct would be to put the car in neutral, not to turn it off. Few people seem to know you can shift into netural from R or D without pressing the brakes. I’m sure this is some kind of regulation or mandate, just like the ordering PRND.
I’m sure we’ll see permanent warning labels over the pushbutton starts like those giant airbag warnings on the sun visors in US cars now.
If only there was a brake assist system that didn’t rely on vacuum… OH! Like the hydraulic brake booster system found in 80’s and early 90’s Audi models. Audi gave up on hydraulic brake assist but it was “the bomb” okay, maybe a component of the system is just known as “the bomb” by Audi folks.
Using your parasitic power steering pump (that thing we’re doing away with now to implement electro-hydraulic steering racks) to provide the power assist for your brakes is great until of course your mineral oil based power steering system is hemorrhaging fluid in ever conceivable place.
Face it, were becoming a society of idiots. Not knowing how to place an automatic transmission into neutral drops below the line of “I have an acceptable knowledge of how to operate a vehicle.”
Also, all slushbox tranny gates are a straight push forward one notch from “D” and must be unguarded. FMVSS standard. Duh.
should be a fairly easy program
If speed > XXX,
And Acc = WOT
And Brake = 100%
Then Fuel = min
@Mark out west:
The ES350 gear shifter has this configuration:
N/-
D
+
If the car’s in 4th gear, you would have to tap the shifter up 4 times to hit neutral. If it’s not something you’re accustomed to (driving a loaner), it’s not exactly self evident.
There is something to be said for common control setups. While it does limit some of a cars personality, key on the left in a Porsche for instance, it does insure the driver knows what to do in a panic situation. Case it point, I put a big bad dent in a garage door with a borrowed lawn tractor. I typically use a John Deere with hydrostatic. It has a foot pedal for forward and reverse on the right an a brake on the left. Mom’s is older and uses a hand lever on the right and a brake on the right. In both you only use the brake when neutral will not stop you fast enough. The borrowed mower (lawn machines or some such) has the “fake” hydrostatic where you have only a go pedal on the right and must shift from forward to reverse with your hand. The Brake is also on the right and requires a high lifting of your foot to engage. additionally, the mower does not always stop fully with the lift of a foot. I was attempting to park close to the door and when the mower did not completely stop I got confused on where the pedal was and for that mater the key and continued to roll right into the door. Mind you I am a competent operator of machinery that usually requires little explanation to operate something new be it a car, mower or farm equipment. However, if you are not accustom to something till it is second nature you may get confused in a panic situation. It took me a while to instinctively reach for the right place to but my key in the Boxster as I do not drive it every day.
Several contributing factors are related to the driver’s unfamiliarity with the specifics of the vehicle. Perhaps this means that vehicles with these non-standard, non-obvious features make for poor choices as loaners?
Richard Chen :
October 19th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
We’re going to see more cars that will ignore throttle inputs if the brake is pushed, some cars have that already.
Pic of ‘10 Lexus ES shift gate
With this design, moving the shift knob forwards 1 detent should put you into neutral…
From the picture of the ES shift gate, it looks like it would be easy to accidentally put the lever into the manual mode where moving the lever forward causes an upshift instead of neutral. Should cars standardize on downshift forward upshift back? Accidental downshift forward would both slow the car and give the driver some feedback as to why the car isn’t going into neutral as expected.
The other user interface improvement would be for manufacturers to agree on a standard time delay for that the starter button to stop the engine. I would think that holding down for one second would be long enough.
@Rick. Are you certain? I think it is “slide to the right and up” to get to N. I didn’t think N was an option on the “manumatic” side (i.e., can only choose forward gears, not reverse or neutral with the “taps”).
These new cars are quite scary with so much electronic bull crap. Tops on my list is the silly keyless start for the above mentioned issues. We have truly become a society of lazy idiots. A person that cannot insert a key into a hole to start there car probably shouldn’t be driving. I can’t wait to see how these crap box cars are going to be when there 5-10 years old with 100K miles of salt belt and or dusty driving in varying degrees of temps. Can you say used car nightmares. Another of my favorites is the Lexus parallel park aid. How long before the sensors become dirty or defective so that instead of parallel parking your parallel scraping the car next to you.
@ScottyDriver:
No, I’m not sure. I can’t give a definitive answer based on the picture. I guess that kind of proves the point, no?
The OnStar operator could have remotely shut down the engine.
“I love my pushbutton start on the Prius. I leave my keyfob and keys in my pocket and I can still enter the car and drive it without having to fumble for keys.”
An acquaintance with a Keyless Go Mercedes drove to the airport in it, handed it over to his wife to drive home, and climbed aboard the flight to LA…with his keyfob still in his pocket. Wife stopped to do some shopping at a mall on the way home and turned off the car.
That’s where it sat until her husband got back from his business trip, fortunately a short one.
@Rick,
It’s a classic “tip tronic” slushbox. You tip/tilt the lever over to the sport gate and start tapping away. Tip back into “D” and you’re back into classic slushbox mode. No guard. In the worst case, neutral was two, not one click away.
These boxes have been around since the early 90s.
I sincerely hope there was some serious tongue-in-cheek regarding “loving the pushbutton on the Prius” comments…sure, being able to get in the car without physical use is cool. Until the car goes ape-sh*t like this Lexus did. Not saying it will, but when any car of mine goes WOT, I want to be able to quickly, and without much thought, disable the damn engine…NOW! No…push three times BS or “shift the lever through four gates” garbage. In our effort to be “stylish” we’ve severely dumbed down the skills and knowledge needed to be safe. If we absolutely must have these idiotic pushbuttons, then put a huge red “STOP” button on the dash that disables the tranny from the engine and shuts the engine down, as well. Form should follow function, not the other way around.
Dang, am I even more grateful for my puny 1997 Tercel…with it’s old-fashioned key start and manual transmission…I know that within a second I can either pull the key or pop the tranny into neutral.
In a panic situation slamming on the brakes is what everyone would have done. Are you telling me at WOT the brake system doesn’t have enough vacuum to to stop the car? If so there’s your problem! Push button or gear selector excluded if you can’t stop the car via the brakes (regardless of throttle position) you’ve got BIG problems.
I love my keyless start Genesis. I’ll never buy another car without the feature. The fob simply hangs in my pcket from a stainless spring clip and I never remove it except at the car wash where I plug the fob into the dash socket.
this is the same auto gate setup as my Mazda3:
http://www.lexus.com/lexus-share/images/gallery/models/ES/photos/interior/g_int5.jpg
how would this be difficult to find N with? and hell, even if you were dense enough to get confused, jam the bloody thing into R or P in a panic situation!!
The biggest problem with these stories are operators who do not understand the functionality and limitations of the equipment they own. Brakes will stop a run away car but only if the brakes are applied forcefully and deliberately to bring the car to a quick stop. If the operator rides the brakes to simply cease accelerating while he/she attempts to figure out what is wrong, the brakes are quickly heating to the point where they will be useless.
Similarly people are afraid of turning off the engine because they are afraid of losing power brakes or steering. Unfortunately a large percentage of the population doesn’t realize that steering is effortless above 20mph (power or not) and doesn’t become difficult until speeds under 10mph. Few people today have driven cars without power brakes, so they don’t know that biggest benefit of power brakes is the ease of holding vehicles at a stop, not because bringing vehicles to a stop required great amounts of strength.
Unfortunately the luxury features we take for granted on cars today have so distanced us from automobile operating basics that we are afraid to even attempt to operate a vehicle without them, even in an emergency.
the vacuum hose going to the brake vac booster usually has a check valve, prevent the vac from leaking back to the engine. So even the engine had just stopped running it should have 2-3 steps before it totally ran out of vac. Then is Foot strong as well as Armstrong.
Need to hold the stop button for 3 secs seems to work for some situation when one can accidentally touch it.
Same as the Toshiba note books, they require u to hold for few secs inorder to turn off. How often u need to turn off a Notebook, unless u in some Godforbidden site when someone walked in on u, then u wish u could kill the power Pronto too. If u running batery then is a different way, u need to pull the batt or else u need to wait for 30 secs or more.
Whenever there are loss of Life due to some stoopid device or system then is no fun.
When the car doesn’t work don’t u wish its a Volkswagen?
All electric-start street motorcycles (that I’m aware of) are keyless start. You turn the key to the run position, then thumb the starter button to start.
And all electric-start street motorcycles have an engine killswitch that shuts off the engine without requiring that you turn the key.
Maybe if car companies had bothered to look at best practices they wouldn’t have tried to make a single button do double-duty. I suspect that either legislation or legal precedent will soon require the use of hard-wired killswitches.
I predict you’ll see them on 2011 models.
“Similarly people are afraid of turning off the engine because they are afraid of losing power brakes or steering.”
I’d be careful about simply “turning off the engine.” In millions of car still on the road, turn it one notch too far–not hard to do– and you’ve locked the steering. Try then unlocking the steering while you’re hysterically putting useless pressure on the wheel to avoid that big oak tree and you’ll find it’s impossible.
Some things are easier written than actually done. Also, I doubt that many ordinary drivers have any idea that a running engine has anything to do with the brakes or steering.
Chicago Dude : I would imagine that power brakes are going to be the next big thing to be “physically” decoupled from the engine in the form of electric assist. People will say that it is common sense that the power assist should increase with speed and/or throttle instead of decreasing with a wide open throttle.
Right… because we all stomp the brakes while we’re accelerating at WOT! I will agree, however, that on cars with drive-by-wire throttle, it makes sense that the throttle input should be ignored when the brakes are also applied. Of course then you’ll have all the bad drivers that accelerate with the right foot and brake with the left foot complaining to the dealer that there’s something wrong with their car (because they were resting their foot on the pedal just enough to activate the brake light). One of my co-workers encountered this with his Jetta TDI which behaves that way. He had it back to the dealer multiple times, and each time they couldn’t find anything wrong or course.
FYI, there’s supposed to be enough vacuum retained in the brake booster for at least one good panic stop, intended for the case case where your engine stalls and is no longer providing vacuum. In the worst case scenario, the emergency brake is a last-resort, but how many people today would instinctively use this anywhere except a parking lot?
Lets also not forget that the one of the occupants of the “runaway” Lexus had time to call 911 and talk to the operator, albeit briefly. Surely the driver had enough time to figure out that he ought to shift into neutral after finding that the start/stop button wasn’t doing the trick.
I’m going with my original conclusion that this accident was primarily driver error.
Reading about the multiple/interactive confusing systems (starter button, gated shifter, brake pressure)…the dangerous car scenario becomes far more real.
If you stand on the brake, you will stop the car. You can try this yourself: step on both the gas and brake and see who wins.
The problem is that people panic. People have always panicked, by the way, it’s not a new thing. No amount of driver education or manual transmission adoption is going to help people who freeze up and either do the wrong thing, or nothing at all.
This is where things like pre-collision systems are going to play a bigger role: the car will sense oncoming obstacles, precharge that brakes, tighten the seatbelts and, when you pass from “collision warning” to “brace for impact”, actually apply the brakes. Mercedes and Lexus both have cars that do this now, and it’s probably something that will filter downmarket, just as ESC has.
As to the manumatic mode, the dash clearly indicates when you are in this mode by an indicator light labeled “S” and the gear you are in displayed in a separate LCD. If you are too dumb to figure out that S != D, then you shouldn’t be driving any car.
It’s poor design that contributes to driver error.
From looking at the pictures of the Lexus shifter, it appears the manumatic gate is too close to the main gate. It is possible to accidentally shift into the manumatic gate if you move the handle to the left until it stops. I suspect
Yes, cars are needlessly more complex than hitherto, but thanks, government. And, yes, Americans are, as a group, losing their collective IQ as more and more stupid people manifest. Most women, most feminized men (and I don’t mean queers), anyone with a cell phone and/or iPod, and anyone not speaking English, should not be driving. But since none of the above will ever happen, let’s just place the blame on an inanimate object and/or poor engineering. It’s easier that way, and allows for more government regulation at the same time.
You can blame push buttons and technology for a lot of ills, but if the Lexus came with a stick shift instead of automatic only, the poor guy would be alive today. Of course most drivers today just want to aim their vehicle, not drive them.
Yes, cars are needlessly more complex than hitherto, but thanks, government. And, yes, Americans are, as a group, losing their collective IQ as more and more stupid people manifest.
People are no more stupid or smart than they used to be.** What’s changing is that we’ve enabled “stupid” people to a greater degree than ever before by putting more and more technology and choices into their hands.
If you’ve worked technical support, you’ll understand this. Anyone who bought a computer in 1990 probably knew how to use it, or at least wanted to. Now, they’re in the hands of people who really don’t know how they work, and the support requirements have exploded.
Cars are similar: as we get more people on the road in more capable vehicles, we’re going to have more problems, despite that the accident rate is going down. The solution, really, is fewer cars.
** Everyone seems to think that people were always better when they themselves were younger, no matter what their current age. People who are 80 think that the world went to shit in 1945; people in the 50s think the cutoff is 1962. God help me, I’m starting to feel that way about the 1980s. Call it nostalgic social narcissism.
“You can blame push buttons and technology for a lot of ills, but if the Lexus came with a stick shift instead of automatic only, the poor guy would be alive today. Of course most drivers today just want to aim their vehicle, not drive them.”
Actually, if it came with a straightfowrard PRNDL automatic, he’d be alive too. The problem has more to do with sportomatic-tiptronic-whizbang-paddles electronic multimode shifters (and the other moronic electronic aids) than it does with manual-versus-auto transmissions.
It’s sort of like saying he’d be alive if he’d had to start his car with a crank rather than a pussy electric starter, since then there’d have been a simple ground-to-stop switch somewhere to kill the mags.
And of course everybody understands that Real Men Use Starter Cranks.
Honestly I think the main problem was that it wasn’t his car. If something goes wrong with my car I know what to do instantly on a borrowed car I’d have to take time to figure it out. The why didn’t he do this or if you can’t do this you shouldn’t have a license comments are irrelevant in this scenario since this wasn’t the driver’s regular vehicle.
If only there was a brake assist system that didn’t rely on vacuum… OH! Like the hydraulic brake booster system found in 80’s and early 90’s Audi models.
There are lots of versions of non-vacuum brake boosters I am aware of. 80’s Turbo T-birds and late Buick Grand Nationals had Nitrogen pressure accumulator systems (GM called it “Powermaster” brakes) with electric pumps. Seems some engineers/lawyers were concerned about the lack of vacuum with a turbo motor. Early Grand Nationals had a hydraulic system similar to Audi called Hydroboost. I recall a friend’s Celebrity Eurosport (no euro, no sport) had the “HO” 2.8 V6 which, I guess because of low vacuum, had an electric pump to add supplementary vacuum to the normal vacuum booster brake system.
I didn’t know the ES350 would let you shift into neutral if you couldn’t downshift to first gear beforehand. It’s been a little while since I drove one, but I thought shifting into neutral was integrated with the manumatic downshift.
Most electronically controlled automatics won’t let you downshift into a gear if you’re going to overrev, so how WOULD you get the ES350 into neutral (if my memory serves on the N/- sharing)?