
Toyota, The Media Owe You an Apology - AndrewWarner
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/feb2011/bw20110210_848076.htm
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DevX101
Call me a cynic, but the fact that this witchhunt happened during the very
short timeframe where the government owned GM and had a significant incentive
to show returns on the 'bailout' investment makes me think there was more to
the regulatory investigation than public safety.

~~~
jsz0
Same here. I'm not a conspiracy nut but let's face it -- it would only take a
dozen or so well placed back channel e-mails to get things rolling. Suddenly
everyone else is obligated to talk about it because it's the _big story._ Full
echo chamber effect. My guess would be more of a commercially driven agenda
though especially for the commercial news media that pays the bills with auto
advertising. Throughout the witch hunt I'm sure their ad buys from Toyota
didn't suffer at all and they helped secure their long term US interests. Win-
win situation.

~~~
tomjen3
And that is pretty much why I gave up reading news.

You don't have to know what is going on outside your field, and it is so much
more peaceful not knowing all the dangers that are going to kill you (but
never really happen).

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stcredzero
A part of the problem is that so many of the people in news seemingly didn't
even pay attention in grade school science classes. I remember one local
newsroom's momentary collective embarrassment when it became obvious that one
of their number a) had no concept of how fast orbital velocity is b)
apparently had an Aristotelian concept of momentum and c) held the 19th
century belief that just going a certain speed could somehow harm or stress
the human body.

In the US, a lot of news which has technical content is presented by people
who don't understand it.

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sliverstorm
_had no concept of how fast orbital velocity is_

Umm... what do you mean by that? I consider myself fairly well versed in
science, but I certainly can't rattle off the average orbital speed of a GPS
satellite.

~~~
stcredzero
Yes, but you know full well that current fighter jets can't get very near it.
That was one of his obvious mistakes.

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schwit
The media also owes an apology to Richard Jewel and the Duke lacrosse team.

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cookiecaper
The Toyota thing was obvious propaganda, constructed just as a story was
needed to boost sales from American automakers.

The businessmen that run these monolithic media corporations, for whom news is
only a small part of the total holdings, need friends with political power.
The politicians need someone to make them look good. It's a mutually
beneficial relationship; the businessmen get a fast track to DMCA et al, the
politicians get a fast track to making their choices from earlier look good
(bailing out American autos, in this case).

~~~
keen
Could it not be as simple as the media taking any opportunity to scare people?
Fear is a powerful motivator; if a story scares people, they will watch.

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protomyth
After what Consumer Reports pulled with Suzuki and the media reporting on
that, I am pretty sure Toyota shouldn't hold their breath.

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CamperBob
Can't forget the Ford pickups that 'Dateline' discovered have a tendency to
explode when you attach model rocket engines to the gas tank.

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electromagnetic
> Ford pickups ... have a tendency to explode when you attach model rocket
> engines to the gas tank.

And I was told it was a fail safe mechanism so that the gas tank didn't
explode unexpectedly, some people will lie to you to sell you anything!

~~~
stcredzero
Heh. Actually, the Mythbusters guys have tried to get gas tanks to explode,
with seemingly everything short of strapping rocket engines directly to the
thing.

It done burn good, but no 'splode.

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tomjen3
Thats not really fair.

It didn't burn until they shot it with tracer/incendiary rounds. Normal
bullets don't come anywhere near setting the gas on fire.

~~~
stcredzero
The more I learn, the more the humble _gas tank_ looks like really awesome
tech! I mean, you can put a _shitload_ of energy in the thing, and for all
that it's surprisingly robust.

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cafard
Take a seat in the waiting room next to Audi.

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stopmi
i am unaware of this.. can you point to a few links/resources?

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tesseract
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_5000#Reported_sudden_unint...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_5000#Reported_sudden_unintended_acceleration)

~~~
stopmi
thanks!

didn't know 'cause this was a while back..

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atlantic
Uncontrolled acceleration is a real phenomenon, although I don't think it is
Toyota-specific. This happened to me half a dozen times when I owned an Opel
Corsa. While going uphill in low gear for long periods (usually in mountainous
terrain, in the French Alps), the car would suddenly bound forwards for no
reason, and keep going on a steep uphill even if I took my foot off the
accelerator. I had a couple of near-misses with oncoming cars and rock walls.

I don't know how this works if you have automatic transmission, but the
principle must be the same. If you drive at very low speeds for prolonged
periods, especially on uphills, the effect would probably be replicated.

Presumably, this effect would hit learners more than experienced drivers,
since the former have a tendency to stick to low speeds and/or low gears.

I don't have an explanation, but from the accompanying noise I know it was
something taking place within in the combustion engine itself. It was not a
problem with the brakes or transmission.

~~~
wazoox
You probably had a diesel engine and too much oil in the carter. This may be a
case of self-ignition of oil.

Anyway, pressing hard on the brake would have stopped you.

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currymesurprise
People generally agree that there was not a malfunction in the electronics.

But whatever happened with Woz's car? He claimed he could reproduce an
uncontrolled acceleration bug in the electronics. (However, this is unrelated
to the alleged malfunction affecting other people.) Last I heard, he turned
over his car to Toyota, and that's it.

Anyone know more details?

~~~
Symmetry
Woz was able to find some bad hysteresis in the cruise control system. It
looked from my reading like the speed control system was over-damped, but I
don't really see what it had to do with the media reports - given that you can
exit cruise control just by touching the breaks or accelerator and AFAIK
nobody reporting unexpected acceleration had been hitting the "faster" button
on their cruise control.

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techiferous
By the way, what's so scary about a gas pedal getting stuck? Can't you just
put the car in neutral?

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InclinedPlane
Some people respond poorly in emergencies. The fight-or-flight response causes
their brains to lock up and they freak out, instead of making rational
decisions. They'll burn out the breaks trying to break normally, for example,
or just do nothing until they run into something. Even though in such a
situation any combination of fully breaking, shutting off the engine, picking
the accelerator pedal up with the edge of your shoe, using the emergency
brake, or shifting into neutral would probably be more than sufficient.

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LogicHoleFlaw
Thing is, just jamming on the brakes will stop your car, every time. Your
brakes are much more powerful than your accelerator. The problem is when a
driver thinks their foot _is_ on the brake, when it is actually on the
accelerator. So mashing their foot to the ground just exacerbates (i.e. causes
in the first place) the problem.

The panic response is very difficult to overcome.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed, that was the first thing I listed. In an emergency you should
condition yourself to jam on the brakes. That _will_ stop the car, even if the
accelerator is running.

However, some people will try to apply the brakes gradually (as you would when
coming to a stop normally). And in that case the brakes won't respond as one
might expect. If the brakes don't seem to work, push harder until they do.

~~~
Symmetry
Also, if you use your brakes to slow down with a stuck accelerator but not
stop you can wear out your break pads fairly quickly at 60 mph. At which point
you're SOL.

EDIT: Reading a comment farther down, I'm reminded that this is a matter of
the copper pads getting too hot rather than wearing away. Same effect though.

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Jun8
It's not that Toyota didn't have _any_ problems with the cars, they just found
that there was no electronic malfunction.

From CNN
([http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/autos/nhtsa_nasa_toyota_fina...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/autos/nhtsa_nasa_toyota_final_report/index.htm)):

"Toyota recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in 2008 and 2009 for defects
related to gas pedals -- including sticky pedals and floor mat obstruction --
as a result of complaints of unwanted acceleration."

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anonymous246
Are you sure Toyota didn't do that gratuitously as a PR exercise? Because I'm
not.

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Jun8
8M cars to recall (and the resulting hit to prestige) is a huge cost, compared
to the PR gain they had on this issue.

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steve19
The alternative was doing nothing and being raped by the media for killing
people and doing nothing about it.

What choice did Toyota have? Better to be seen doing something even if the
problem did not exist.

~~~
eli
Well, isn't that kinda what they did? The fine wasn't for having unsafe cars.
It was for getting reports that their cars were unsafe _and hiding them from
regulators_

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silverlake
1\. Buy shares in companies hit by media hysteria. 2\. Wait for hysteria to
pass. 3\. Profit!

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mckoss
Great article. Will CBS apologize? Will they learn anything from this? Since
they don't seem to have suffered financially from their irresponsible
reporting, I am afraid the won't change a thing.

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siika2000
> After all, brakes always override the throttle

Huh? Is this only in cars with automatic transmission or something? Since with
a manual transmission you couldn't get going uphill if this were true.

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siika2000
Could the downvoter answer the question? In none of the cars I've driven does
the "brake always override the throttle". Yes, brake is more powerful than the
the engine, but that is hardly "overriding" in the sense that I understand it.

~~~
chrisbennet
You're interpreting "override" as a boolean (either/or) relationship when the
poster was describing an analog relationship.

The "stop" signal of the brakes outweighs/overrides the "go" signal of the
throttle by some low multiple. If I had to guess, the brakes on an average car
can consume 3-4 times as much horsespower as the engine produces. Porsche used
to describe some of their brakes as "2000 hp brakes".

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eli
Maybe true, but they also spent months illegally withholding crash data from
government regulators. Let's call it even.

~~~
dschobel
What's your source?

All I found are civil suits against Toyota asking for the EDR data but nothing
criminal for "withholding crash data from the government regulators".

~~~
eli
Sorry, my wording was confusing. I meant they were hiding the fact that people
were getting into accidents from "sticky gas pedals" not that they were hiding
actual EDR crash data.

" _Toyota Motor Corporation agreed to pay a $16.375 million fine - the largest
fine permitted by law - for failing to notify the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration (NHTSA) of a dangerous pedal defect for almost four
months_ " <http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10>

~~~
potatolicious
This seems to conflict with mukyu's post above:

"As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress
in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed.
That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became
trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang
back too slowly."

~~~
eli
Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet), Toyota
certainly couldn't have known that at the time.

It is totally unacceptable (and illegal) to hide a potentially fatal problem
with your products, even if you think it's _probably_ not widespread.

~~~
electromagnetic
> Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet)

Test enough cars and you'll find consistent defects. Test yet more and you'll
find consistent and potentially life threatening defects. Is this a fatal
problem with your product? Yes. Is it acceptable? Yes.

No one would envision my hifi burning my house down, but if it turned on (and
it turned itself on at 9pm and off at 11pm every day, I never found out why
because it didn't even have a timer or alarm circuit) and something failed in
_just that right way_ then yes my house could burn down. If my accelerator has
a defect and fails in _just that right way_ then yes I could crash... _or_ I
could put my car into neutral like a non-retarded person, or I could drop into
1st or 2nd gear (even in an automatic, which way too many people don't even
know they have a 1st and 2nd gear), or I could just take my foot off the
accelerator and apply it to the brake.

I'm sorry, but when it comes down to the simple facts that all these accidents
were caused by driver error, or in the very few cases where defects did exist
the accidents were ultimately caused by inexperienced drivers, and yes a
person driving for 30 years can be way more inexperienced than someone who
just got their license. Vehicles ultimately fail-safe. If you turn you engine
off, you're left with a vehicle with no power steering and no power brakes. If
you're on a highway your power steering is largely irrelevant anyway, unless
they suddenly started introducing hairpin turns on all the national highways
that I've yet to learn about. Your brakes, again, don't need to be power
assisted for them to work, all you have to do is get to a shoulder and let
your vehicle roll to a damn stop.

There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous, but
that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is
one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of
the wheel, which _would_ be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still _driver
error_.

There's only one thing I find dangerous that car manufacturers have let remain
for a long time, is that your brakes are a fail-deadly system. Hydraulic
brakes need manual-pressure to _activate_ whilst air-brakes are a fail-safe
system requiring manual pressure to release. This would mean that in that
situation where you have to turn your engine off at highway speeds, your
brakes would gently start applying as the PSI drops in the air compressor.

You're claiming it's unacceptable to hide a problem with your product, but
you're naively not understanding that there is _always_ a defect margin and if
that's within the government required percentage then they really shouldn't
need to publicly disclose anything at all because it's in the publics best
interest not to know that every appliance we own has the potential to defect
in a way that could kill us.

I had a humble old school MP3 player that melted itself because for some
bizarre reason it tried to charge the alkaline battery in it. Worse yet, the
battery connectors were actually gold plated and managed to burn a series of
parallel lines into my desk. If it had been set on a piece of paper and had
been equally as unattended, I'd have likely set my desk alight.

~~~
brisance
>There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous,
but that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is
one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of
the wheel, which would be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still driver error.

It _is_ stupid and dangerous. You forgot about the steering lock.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
You can't get the key out of the ignition until the vehicle is in park. You
can't get the vehicle in park until it stops. Steering lock is not a problem.

