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Toyota says driver is stupid regarding acceleration issues

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clav

Member
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-14/toyota-cites-driver-errors-in-acceleration-cases.html

Toyota Cites Driver Errors in Acceleration Cases

July 14, 2010, 1:25 PM EDT

(Updates with NHTSA, analyst comment starting in 11th paragraph.)

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp.’s investigation of accidents involving unintended acceleration where motorists said they pressed on the brake pedal shows that “virtually all” involved drivers who pushed the accelerator instead, a company spokesman said.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is looking into causes of unintended acceleration in its cars and trucks and has recalled more than 8 million worldwide in the past year for defects such as pedals that stuck or snagged on floor mats. U.S. auto-safety regulators are also probing the causes and haven’t released their findings.

The Toyota City, Japan-based company has reviewed about 2,000 reports of unintended acceleration since March, including analyses of information from event-data recorders when the incidents involved crashes, said Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman at the U.S. sales unit in Torrance, California.

“There are a variety of causes -- pedal entrapment, sticky pedal, other foreign objects in the car” and “pedal misapplication,” Michels said yesterday in a telephone interview. Asked how many crashes were linked to pushing the accelerator when motorists thought they were pushing the brake pedal, he said, “virtually all.”

The company has yet to find evidence of electronic malfunctions, he said.

Toyota’s American depositary receipts, each equal to two ordinary shares, rose $1.23, or 1.7 percent, to $72.95 at 1:08 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

‘Totally Ludicrous’

Auto-safety advocates including Joan Claybrook, a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, have questioned driver error as a cause. They have said automakers and regulators should take more seriously possibilities such as the failure of electronic controls.

“That is totally ludicrous,” Claybrook said of Toyota’s findings in a phone interview yesterday.
“They should be looking at the electronics in their cars and everyone knows it.”
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that NHTSA’s analysis of Toyota data recorders found cases in which throttles were open and brakes hadn’t been deployed.

NHTSA’s Comment

“Engineers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are continuing to investigate the possible causes of sudden acceleration, along with the National Academy of Sciences and NASA,” said Olivia Alair, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Transportation Department, which includes NHTSA, in an e- mailed statement today. “We have drawn no conclusions and released no data. We will follow the facts and inform the public when our investigation comes to an end.”

Attributing some of the sudden acceleration cases to driver error makes sense because “it hasn’t been a summer of careening Toyotas” after public attention focused on the issue, said James Bell, executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, California.

“Toyota is now going to walk a very tight line,” Bell said today in a phone interview. “They’re going to have to impress on their current drivers that they have to pay attention to their driving while at the same time they’ve built their fortune on making vehicles that are appliance-like.”

Brake-Override Technology

NHTSA said in May that Toyota vehicles involved in unintended-acceleration crashes may be linked to 89 deaths in 71 crashes since 2000.

The U.S. auto-safety agency previously investigated reports of unintended acceleration in Audi 5000 sedans and in a 1989 report concluded that human error was often the cause.

In the two decades since that report, more vehicles have been equipped with brake-override technology, designed to stop a car if the brakes and accelerator are applied simultaneously. Toyota has said it will install brake-override software in all new vehicles by model year 2011.
Toyota is facing more than 325 lawsuits in state and federal courts related to unintended acceleration, which has also been probed by U.S. lawmakers.

Company engineers last week showed Toyota’s main engineering facilities in Toyota City and Higashi-Fuji, Japan. Toyota demonstrated tests being run aimed at finding any potential cause of sudden acceleration arising from the electronic throttle control system and other components.

Toyota’s Tests

Tests include bombarding vehicles with electromagnetic interference at more than twice the level that would occur in real-world conditions, line-by-line evaluation of system software and testing of vehicles in laboratories that replicate hurricane-level rain and excessive heat and cold.

Toyota has yet to find further defects linked to unintended acceleration beyond problems with floor mats and sticky accelerator components, Dino Triantafyllos, Toyota’s U.S. vice president for vehicle quality, told reporters last week in Toyota City.

--With assistance from Alan Ohnsman in Tokyo, Margaret Cronin Fisk and Theo Keith in Southfield, Michigan. Editors: Larry Liebert, Terje Langeland

To contact the reporters on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
Click to expand...
 
S

sprsk

force push the doodoo rock
devilhawk said:
The only way this is true is if stupid drivers disproportionately choose Toyota.
Click to expand...

The most popular car brand in the world. Idiots of all shapes and sizes drive Toyota.

This doesn't surprise me after hearing about the doctored news reports and shit.
 
S

StevePharma

Member
I've been driving a Toyota for about 5 years now. I can honestly say that Toyota (in the Netherlands) has been one of the most correct and thorough comapnies I have dealt with with my life. You can really tell the Japanese are the founders of quality management. They even compensated me well when I had to bring in my car for a check-up (because of all the problems, my car wasn't involved but they checked it anyway).

So hopefully this is the same for Toyota US, but you never know...
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
Drivers are stupid.
I'm pretty sure most of the population has no idea how a car works at all.
Part of getting your driver's license should be getting familiar with the basic understandings of how a car operates.
 
B

Blackface

Banned
Now I have not followed this much. But couldn't the acceleration issue be solved by simply shifting into neutral once it got stuck?
 
C

ClassyPenguin

Banned
Blackface said:
Now I have not followed this much. But couldn't the acceleration issue be solved by simply shifting into neutral once it got stuck?
Click to expand...
Most likely :lol

All cars generally suck, being a complicated piece of machinery.
 
I

iamaustrian

Member
so basicly these US drivers are too stupid to drive?
how the hell were they able to get a driving liscence?




trinest said:
Who drives a Toyota anyway- European cars are where its at.
Click to expand...

people who want to get a car which is worth the money?


and yes, I drive Toyota(corolla verso) since 5 years now after years of pain with german cars(audi, vw, bmw).
 
S

Slavik81

Member
I still find it amazing that this was published a couple months before disaster stuck. At the time, they were on top of the world...

A wobble on the road to the top
Although it is very close to becoming the world's biggest carmaker, not all is running smoothly at Toyota

...

But despite the sweetness of the moment, it is almost forbidden for Toyota executives to talk about becoming Number One. When asked, they all say the same thing: being biggest doesn't mean anything; what matters is doing your best for the customer. Boastfulness or crowing over Detroit's agonies is most definitely not part of the Toyota Way, the 14 principles that underpin the firm's management philosophy. And despite having created the capacity to build more than 2m vehicles in North America by 2010 (more than half the number it expects to sell) Toyota has never entirely lost its fear that success could provoke a protectionist backlash.

But there are two other things the firm's executives like talking about even less. The first is the strain the drive to the top has put on the fabled Toyota Production System. In the past couple of years, a series of unToyota-like quality problems have begun to nibble away at the firm's reputation as the world's most admired manufacturer and as a byword for reliable vehicles. In July 2006, after some conspicuous product recalls, Mr Watanabe bowed in apology and promised to fix things with a “customer first” programme that would redirect engineering resources and, if necessary, lengthen development times. But the recalls have continued and Toyota is still slipping in consumer-quality surveys. The company's global head of manufacturing, Takeshi Uchiyamada, recently expressed “shame” at the problems with the latest Tundra full-size pick-up.

...

As Toyota Motor Corporation celebrates both 70 years as a carmaker and half a century of selling cars in America, it would be a huge exaggeration to suggest that there is any danger of the wheels coming off “the machine that changed the world”, as Toyota has been called. But there is an unmistakable feeling that at the very moment of its greatest triumph, Toyota has wobbled.

At first sight, there is little for Toyota to be concerned about. While its American rivals have cut back production of cars they can't sell, each year Toyota sets another output record. In the year to the end of March 2007, Toyota sold 8.52m vehicles, nearly a 7% increase over the previous year. On the back of a 14% increase in revenues, Toyota's net income rose by 20% to $14 billion (GM, though it just outsold Toyota, lost $2 billion last year and is sufficiently gloomy about its financial prospects to have this week taken on the chin a massive $39 billion non-cash charge to write down deferred tax credits).

This financial year Toyota expects net income to grow by a more modest 3.4% despite a strong first six months. That is because money is being ploughed into new factories and the development of new models to feed ambitious production targets in the years ahead; Toyota is aiming to sell 10.4m vehicles in 2009. But it is also throwing cash at its troubling quality issues by introducing stringent new controls, hiring more inspection engineers and beginning a mammoth programme of re-training factory workers.
Click to expand...

http://www.economist.com/node/10097827
 
C

Ceres

Banned
Spire said:
Again:




Toyota is getting a worse rap than it deserves.
Click to expand...

I pretty much assumed no matter how large the actual problem was, that a lot of people would try to blame accidents on the accelerator problem when it came out despite knowing it was never the cause of their own accident. If they can get away with Toyota being the reason for the crash than their own error, it saves them money from insurance and gives them access to a possible lawsuit.
 
H

HomerSimpson-Man

Member
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It was so overblown. So it was mostly faulty drivers instead of faulty cars. :lol

It's just easier to blame Toyota than your own mistakes.
 
A

a Master Ninja

Member
Unintended acceleration is not a new allegation for any auto-maker, and are almost always dis-proven. It is a common scapegoat for people who can't take responsibility for their own actions and instead blame the car. Not all that different than claims like "I swear I had it in Reverse but the car drove forward and hit a guy!"

While there is a chance this could be real, skepticism is warranted because there is a long history of the media hyping unfounded claims for headlines.

Look what happened to Audi in the 1980s:
wikipedia said:
A 60 Minutes report aired 23 November 1986, featuring interviews with six people who had sued Audi after reporting unintended acceleration, showing an Audi 5000 ostensibly suffering a problem when the brake pedal was pushed. Subsequent investigation revealed that 60 Minutes had engineered the failure — fitting a canister of compressed air on the passenger-side floor, linked via a hose to a hole drilled into the transmission.
Click to expand...
Audi went on to do a massive recall, lost hundreds of millions, and their sales didn't rebound for over a decade. And all of this was for nothing.
 
C

Cheerilee

Member
Black box recordings claiming that "gas pedals were pressed and brakes were not" will do nothing to dissuade people who claimed that a software glitch was causing the vehicle to register the wrong inputs.

And "but the problem went away, how do you explain that?" is meaningless since Toyota took the opportunity of the recall to reflash the vehicles firmware.
 
P

PumpkinPie

Banned
I don't believe any bullshit against Toyota, I've owned two in the past 3 years and had no trouble aside from the dealerships.
 
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