Just 90 percent?

John

Wow, it’s the 80s all over again; I swear I used almost that exact quote from a newspaper article about the Audi debacle for a school paper back then.

I say the following as a person who has had a floor mat in a Sentra SE-R stick the gas to the floor twice when pulling away from a light (a problem solved by clutching in, and eventually Nissan recalled the floor mats) — even when it isn’t driver error completely, driver error is likely involved in some way.

Consider my experience — if I had been driving an automatic, I might have hit the brake instead of clutching in. If I wasn’t familiar with the car for some reason (let’s say I was used to a different car’s pedal arrangement) I might have hit the gas by accident, and since a stuck gas pedal triggered my attempt to hit the brake, of course I’d believe with all my heart that I had hit the brake without success.

The Audi problem ended up being a chain: there was a surging idle causing cars to jump a bit under certain conditions, and the drivers (who were significantly new to the car, or not the regular drivers of the car) hit the gas instead of the brake in response. Since an experienced owner of the car might be familiar with the idiosyncratic behavior of the car, it really does come down to an unusual behavior coupled with an unfamiliar design for a particular driver.

Similarly, the second time my gas pedal stuck, it was a yawn — I was familiar with the behavior now — but the first time was quite a wake-up call. Even though it was the floor mat, the floor mat didn’t send me careening into another car, because I was paying attention. But then, I was driving stick as well, and cars with automatic transmissions don’t require as much attention, so they’re more likely to be driven by those with shorter attention spans.

Oh, and hey: remember those Mazda 5s catching on fire a few years back, that got traced to people shifting the transmission into manual mode and leaving it there? The cars automatically shifted into 2nd gear, and stayed there — and drivers then proceeded to drive at highway speeds with the cars redlined in 2nd until the exhaust got hot enough to start a fire. Unfamiliar behavior (the manumatic’s functionality) coupled with driver unfamiliarity (the high engine noise wasn’t a red flag.)

So this too shall be settled, and perhaps we’ll see something good come from it as we did with the Audi event in the 80s — cars that don’t shift out of park without your foot on the brake were a direct result of that bruhaha.

If these cars are truly accelerating themselves, as most have posted, the brakes are more than capable of stopping the car. What I want to know is this – if the car outright floored the pedal, I can understand some serious side effects (in the middle of a turn, while engine braking, etc). Under ANY other circumstance, drivers should be aware enough to adjust for slight or even moderate acceleration, IF these cars did actually accelerate themselves. More brake pressure, shoving it in N, parking/emergency brake, SHUTTING OFF THE ENGINE!!, there are ways to combat this, and you don’t have to be a professional racer to do them.

Unless the brakes go out, the car won’t shut off, and the manual brakes (whether it be emergency or parking) go out, the car won’t shift, shut off, AND the car accelerates itself, then there is reason for these “wrecks.” Seeing how that is next to impossible… well, I guess we’ve all pretty much come to the same conclusion.

The ONLY legitimate “unintended acceleration” I’ve read/experienced is on old, OLD cars (such as my 22 year old car) where a piece of rubber (or whatever) deteriorates, shoving something on the throttle cable. While it might be a scary situation, especially if you didn’t know about the common problem before, from personal experience, my gut reaction without the slightest hesitation was to straighten the wheel, throw it in N, gently press the brakes, and shut off the car. It took about 1 second to dislodge the pedal, another second to start the car back up, and one more second to throw it in gear. Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. God forbid something like this happens to someone, their BASIC knowledge of how a car works should be enough to rectify the situation without getting in a wreck.

And for those who say “hey! what if you rear-end someone in the process?” my comment; brakes work without the engine on, first off.. and second, that’s what keeping a safe distance is for (especially if you have an old car). Again, common sense prevails.

Or it should, anyway…

The article suggests that the brakes did not fail. And as noted before, brake failure should not cause the car to accelerate. Brakes operate a hydraulic system, separate and apart from the throttle, so there is no way that the brake pedal should make the vehicles increase their speed.

These claims all sound very much like what happened with the Audi 5000. The Audi’s problems were caused by a combination of unsecured floor mats and pedal placement that was not typical in comparison to the domestic cars that then dominated the market.

I think that the problem is this — you have drivers here involved in accidents that indicate acceleration and probably show no skid marks. Accelerating and failing to brake under these circumstances would suggest that the drivers were 100% at fault. Obviously, that’s not great for the driver involved in these accidents. For them, blaming the vehicle becomes the only available alibi.

Perhaps these drivers are sincere in their beliefs, but their beliefs don’t make sense. If the cars accelerated, it would have something to do with the throttle, not the brakes.

I’ve actually been in a situation myself when a motor revved up to a few thousand RPM on its own accord, which caused the car to accelerate without any assistance from me. So I know firsthand that acceleration can occur without driver error.

But in that instance, I was able to use the brakes to stop the car. The acceleration component to the incident was absolutely a vehicle defect that was not my fault and required repair, but the brakes were able to stop the car.

Virtually all of these accidents involve drivers who claim that the car accelerated when the brake pedals were depressed. The odds of that being true are effectively zero. I have yet to see a single situation in which a braking system is used to actuate the throttle. Engines are often used to provide power to the brake booster, but a failure of the booster would make the brakes less effective and would not cause acceleration.

Agreed. However, we still have a situation in which 89% of the complaints in a given time period came from people driving one make/model – the Tacoma. If it’s just down to general stupidity, then it’s hard to explain the preponderance of Tacoma drivers. My point, mainly, is that there is no use assigning blame until after the investigation is completed. Do we know at this point that Tacoma’s don’t have brake failure problems?

I agree with you and others that pedals too close and in the same plane are likely answers. IMO, this amounts to a design defect because the average driver isn’t interested in heel/toe driving technique.

I wouldn’t go that far. Some designs are better than others, which means of course that some designs are worse than others.

If the pedal placement is prone to provoke human error, then it should be changed. If the throttles are surging, then they should be fixed. The manufacturer has to take some responsibility to make sure that mistakes are difficult to make, particularly in emergency situations when reaction time counts.

“Unintended acceleration” is directly proportional to the number of “clueless drivers” operating said vehicle…

The alleged victim described in the article claims that he hit the brakes, but the car accelerated. Shades of the Audi 5000.

I have no problem believing that poor pedal placement, bad floor mats, or even a malfunctioning throttle could contribute to driver error. If there is an issue with any of these, they should certainly be addressed. (As we can see from the link that I provided above, Toyota has recently recalled floor mats on other models for their contribution to unintended acceleration.)

But it is simply not credible to claim that hitting the brakes caused the vehicles to accelerate. Even if the power brakes failed, that would result in the brakes working poorly, but that would not cause acceleration.

Brake pedals are not connected to throttles, so the claims don’t make sense. It’s a bit like claiming that the car wouldn’t stop because of the song playing on the stereo. (Heavy metal is good for braking, but disco, of course, is not.)

Also, something like a too-close pedal placement is something I would think most people would notice as soon as they get into a vehicle–like on the test drive–and should become accustomed to if they decide to buy the truck. Does anyone know how long these 33 people had their Tacomas before driving them into something solid?

But letting the poltroons at NHTSA get their mitts on this is not good. Soon we’ll have a pedal size and placement rule.

I just bought a manual-transmission 2008 Hyundai Elantra; I added an extra return spring to the gas pedal to keep me from over-revving the engine when starting out, and to give me enough throttle “feel” so that I could minimize throttle “overrun” between gears. It helped quite a bit, as my size 14 shoe/foot was hard to keep off the gas!

Actually the article says 33 of 37 in the same time period. It doesn’t actually say what the time period is. It doesn’t say what the total number of complaints is for 06-07 pickups.

… Of course, after a crash nobody wants to take responsibility for the fact that they may have hit the gas instead of the brakes, but what is motivating this investigation has nothing to do with the facts of the individual cases. No, the investigation is being spurred by the fact that only four “unintended acceleration” complaints have been logged against non-Tacoma pickups in the period that 33 were logged against the ‘yota.

Agreed, but we don’t know all the details of the accidents, do we? Certainly we don’t from the TTAC article. Reaction times differ quite a bit depending on age. Did each and every one of these people completely fail to use their brakes?

And, there is still a distribution problem. It seems odd that 33 of 37 people who didn’t have the presence of mind to stand on the brakes would be driving Tacomas. You’d think panic driven inaction would be distributed a bit more evenly amongst makes and models.

As an aside, the engine in my Ranger sometimes ‘races’ when my foot is not on the gas pedal. I have both a brake and a clutch pedal to control the engine’s power, so no problems.

So because you say so I am supposed to believe this? What evidence do you have? Most happy customers that I know aren’t “flocking” to the NHTSA site to file made up reports. Of the few reports that actually have a scanned version of the complaint they show a filing date close to the incident date.

For example:
http://nhthqnwws111.odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/docservlet/Artemis/Public/Complaints%20-%20Correspondence/2006/EVOQ/EQ-10152011-5026.PDF

Yup, just like the 3.0 v6 in my brother’s ES300 that died due to oil gelling. He was called stupid for not changing his oil frequently enough. Called a liar, too.

This was a big story around Christmas time in Tennesse. that’s when people started flocking to the NHTSA site.

I’m not sure where you’re getting that from but of the 19 VSC complaints filed against the 2006 Tacoma 12 of them are prior to mid-2007 and only 3 of them are in 2008. Of the 3 accelerator pedal complaints there was one in each of ‘05, ‘06, and ‘07. Of the 8 cruise control complaints only 1 was in ‘07 and the other 7 were in ‘06. Were you just guessing?

Incorrect. Late 2007 is when the myterious detailed complaints of run away Tacomas start showing up, most of them are in 2008, despite the 2006 Tacoma being on sale since mid 2005.

Except that the submissions are pretty evenly spread out over the past two years.

When 60 minutes pulled their hatchet job on the Audi, the complaints flooded in from people who were probably hoping they would get on any class action lawsuit that would get them a new car.