
Toyota Reaches $1.2B Settlement in Criminal Inquiry - greglindahl
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/toyota-reaches-1-2-billion-settlement-in-criminal-inquiry.html
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jedmeyers
A times B times C equals X. If X plus $1.2B inquiry settlement is less than
the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

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unclebucknasty
Exactly. Which is why people should be going to jail.

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drakaal
While I think some of the claims of consumers about the car were overblown,
and the testimony of a few consumers who basically claim the car caused them
to speed down the highway (what you never heard of using the emergency break)
was more amusing than "scary", I think that this does show how as software
starts to do things that could threaten a consumers life that we need to have
solid protocols for how that is dealt with.

Do we say "nobody use your toaster until the firmware is updated" or do we do
the traditional recall thing and offer an exchange to those who registered
their product, or do we go full in and use the internet to say, "your toaster
will not work until it is updated".

We see some of this in Windows 8. It routinely says you need to install the
update in the next hour, your PC is going to reboot, do so now or later. This
is an attempt to keep your computer safe even if it creates a bad user
experience.

Should cars do the same thing? Should Toasters? How unsafe does it need to be
to warrant preventing use?

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ceejayoz
> what you never heard of using the emergency break

Put yours on, put it in drive, and you'll find that applying throttle will
likely easily override the emergency brake. It's there to stop the car from
rolling down a hill, not to fight the engine.

Hell, I once drove my parents' car about a mile without realizing it had the
brake on.

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tacticus
Are you talking about the parking break?

That should certainly have enough force to hold a car stopped or at least stop
a pair of wheels from spinning.

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ceejayoz
Not in my experience. I'd imagine it varies somewhat from car to car.

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greglindahl
Previous article and discussion of Toyota's safety-critical firmware woes:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6636811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6636811)

Edit: and the title got edited to be the NYT title, which obscures the
relevance to Hacker News. Ah well. This settlement is directly related to the
court case Toyota recently lost, with expert testimony about the poor quality
of Toyota's embedded safety-critical firmware...

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mzr
The people making comments about killing the engine is a monumentally bad
idea. If the car has a conventional key ignition, turning the key even to the
accessory position can engage the steering wheel lock. Without a running
engine, you could lose power brake and steering assist. Not all power steering
systems are hydraulic, some are pure electric and some are electro-hydraulic.
The majority of braking systems are assisted by a booster driven off of engine
vacuum. You have two or three pedal pumps before the vacuum is gone.

~~~
joe_bleau
The handful of cars I've checked (after Bob Pease wrote about it) won't lock
the column unless you remove the key. Some might lock, but only when the
tranny is in park. Worth checking out.

Do you even want/need power steering assist in a runaway situation?

~~~
ethanhunt_
When a car with power-steering loses power, it doesn't become like a car
without power-steering. I've had a car shutdown at highway speeds, and turning
the wheel is _incredibly_ difficult. At the time I was a fairly muscled
weightlifter, and I could not turn the wheel more than a few degrees (I
managed to change one lane into a turn off).

mzr's comment above gives good advice: don't turn off or remove the key in a
moving vehicle. Shift to neutral if the gas pedal is stuck.

~~~
tadfisher
This is correct. In cars with hydraulic-assisted steering, you're forcing
fluid back through the pump, which is quite hard to do in addition to the
fighting the bulk of your car and steering rack. In cars with electric-
assisted steering, like the Prius, you're working against the electric motor
using a belt and pulleys.

Which begs the question: why isn't the electric-assist motor designed to
freewheel when power is lost? Losing steering assist at speed would be a more
manageable situation.

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suprgeek
The really unfortunate part of this is that when the reports started surfacing
of this issue, Many people reacted with SCORN.

No "lets wait for the facts" but outright derision about stupid drivers
hitting the Accelerator and then blaming the car. The fact that there were
many reports and many consumers affected did not seem to matter.

Well $1.2 Billion proves that not everyone was mistaken which "pedal" they
hit. When will people start going to jail over this?

~~~
DavidAdams
Scorn may be a strong word, but the reality of the situation is that a driver
faced with an unintended acceleration incident can avoid disaster by applying
the brake and/or putting the car in neutral. No Toyota's engine is strong
enough to keep the car moving with the driver mashing the brake with all of
his or her might. Previous incidents of unintended acceleration such as the
infamous Audi 5000 were usually found to be caused by the driver flooring the
accelerator while thinking they had their foot on the brake.

The problem comes because when your car starts doing something completely
unexpected and terrifying, most people panic, so if your gas pedal gets caught
on the floormat, you won't have the presence of mind to go through a mental
checklist of things you can do to stop the car. My guess is that to the extent
that floormat problems caused gas pedals to stick, for 99% of the drivers,
they hit the brake and kicked the gas pedal free and they were fine. But 1% of
the people, in their panic, hit the gas by accident or just freaked out and
froze, and crashed their cars.

Now, since it appears that Toyota tried to cover up the fact that there was a
legitimate engineering or design problem at play, then they probably deserve
the fine. Even if panic and driver error contributed to each and every
incident, it doesn't mean that Toyota wasn't responsible for creating a
situation wherein a driver had to cope with a terrifying, unexpected car
malfunction.

What this whole incident proves to me is that we're very cavalier about the
dangers of having millions of poorly-trained, distracted operators of powerful
machines zipping all over the streets of our planet. Self-driving cars can't
come soon enough.

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fefy
Link with no paywall:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDIQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F03%2F20%2Fbusiness%2Ftoyota-
reaches-1-2-billion-settlement-in-criminal-
inquiry.html&ei=hzsqU5vqFMOIogTtxYDgBQ&usg=AFQjCNEBLRabAimGGs7GSRqWuteMwbmOkg&bvm=bv.63316862,d.cGU)

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cpncrunch
I wish people would stop posting paywalled articles here...

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michaelry
hint: open in private window

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pdq
Hooray, a new batch of insanely rich lawyers.

~~~
tzs
Department of Justice lawyers are not on commission.

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rayiner
Not only that, but DOJ fines go straight into the Treasury, not through the
agency:[http://traceblog.org/2009/02/13/fcpa-fines-where-does-all-
th...](http://traceblog.org/2009/02/13/fcpa-fines-where-does-all-the-money-
go).

~~~
justin66
On the other hand, and contrary to what a lot of people think about their
government, lawyers for the DOJ are often at the top of their profession and
if they aren't making a lot of money right now... they will be.

