
How Real are the Defects in Toyota's Cars? - bfung
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/how-real-are-the-defects-in-toyotas-cars/37448/?rss=37448
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nreece
I want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. It seems like the Toyota defects
are not defects but isolated incidents, which the US congress has exploited to
get back to a Japanese corporation that created devastation for the entire US
auto industry.

~~~
evgen
An alternative theory is that Toyota, in its hubris-driven quest to surpass GM
for automotive production, broke a lot of its own rules regarding quality
control and long-term relationships when it comes to part sourcing. A lot of
this seems to be driven by the fact that the car maker that has a problem is
Toyota; not because they are a Japanese car company, but because they are a
car company who have spent decades building a (justified) reputation for high-
quality automobiles with a very low defect rate and over the past few months
all of that work disappeared in a puff of smoke.

~~~
potatolicious
I've worked in the auto parts industry - while it's true that Toyota is
ruthless in that market, so is everyone else. In fact, during my short time
there we all hated GM with a raging passion - they constantly demanded more
and more from suppliers while slashing prices thinner and thinner. Threats of
outsourcing manufacturing to China and Korea were common, and because of these
tactics suppliers were going belly up day by day.

None of the major car companies are saints - all are guilty of failing to
maintain an effective ecosystem. Their behaviour is as deplorable as Wal-Mart
but far less infamous.

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minus1
What we're missing here (and in all of the Toyota articles I've seen recently)
is a comparison to the number of 'sudden acceleration' incidents reported in
non-Toyota vehicles. If this is simply elderly-operator error, I would expect
the Lincoln Town Car to have a far worse record.

~~~
sliverstorm
if it's operator error based, with the driver thinking they hit the brake when
they really hit the gas... footwell space and pedal size and spacing-
ergonomics, basically- would be very important. It's plausible Toyota's pedal
layout is simply a little more vulnerable to this kind of mistake. (not a lot,
cause it's still a limited occurrence, but a bit)

~~~
jacquesm
I doubt it, there is substantial evidence by now to rule that out, some very
experienced drivers have had this happen to them.

Software glitch seems to be a good candidate.

~~~
vannevar
Two anecdotal reports do not constitute 'substantial evidence.' I'm
particularly skeptical about the incident last week, which could very well
have been staged in the hopes of a big settlement. No one inside or outside of
Toyota has been able to reproduce the alleged defect under controlled
conditions, despite the great potential reward for doing so. On the other
hand, incompetent, greedy, and crazy drivers are very common.

Given a simple explanation (human incompetence/greed) and a complex one (a
serious mechanical flaw that cannot be reproduced and displays a bias toward
the elderly), we should prefer the simpler explanation.

(Update on new questions surrounding last week's Prius incident:
[http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2010/03/questions-
rais...](http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2010/03/questions-raised-on-
toyota-prius-sudden-acceleration-cases-san-diego-new-york.html)).

~~~
jacquesm
It's possible that the American 'sue happy' culture will create it's own
incidents but from the amount of government involvement and the numerous
recalls and 'fixes' it would seem to me that there really is some kind of
issue.

What I don't get though, is that given the number of Toyotas of just about
every model in service that there aren't more incidents like this. You'd say
that on a given day there ought to be several malfunctions if it is a systemic
error.

It would have to be a fairly rare set of conditions satisfied at the same time
to bring about the bug, and I find it hard to believe that Toyota devs would
not be able to come up with a bunch of scenarios after looking at their system
with a magnifying glass (which I don't doubt they've been doing) that might
trigger the issue until they found it.

Personally I'd have absolutely no problem in buying / driving any model
Toyota, even knowing this, but I've always been wary of drive-by-wire systems
and I like to figure out how to force a car to a stop.

I've owned a Honda Civic hybrid and one of the first things I did when I
learned the throttle was automatic was figure out how strong the handbrake
was, and what happens when you try to force the shifter in to 'N' while at
speed. (be very careful not to push it one step too far :) ).

The main issue is that if the electrical system on one of these would go
haywire that the torque the electric motor can put out is way stronger than
what you can overcome with the brakes. The article suggests the brakes are
'electrical', that's only partially true, the brakes are 'regenerative', but
there is a back-up disc system as well.

Just like any electro-mechanical industrial machine a car that has this kind
of control should probably come with an 'abort' switch that shuts down the
power to the engine. That in itself is also not without issues because that
means your power steering goes instantly to '0' and it can be surprisingly
hard to steer a car that has not been designed for manual control. On the
highway that is a doable trick, at lower speeds it is more than most people
(especially the ladies) can handle.

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caller9
Time to get a great deal on a Toyota.

I had a sudden acceleration incident when I was maybe 12 learning to drive a
80 something Chevy 1500. I was being forced to use only one foot instead of
two. When I got close to the house while parking at like 2 MPH mom yelled
STOP. So of course I floored it and did a little bumper adjustment and brick
relocation. I want to say this was throttle body injected, so yeah 'puter did
it.

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natch
The fine article had some glaring unasked questions. The most alarming one
being, if the number of immigrants is so striking, what happens when you
normalize the number to take into account the high proportion of Camrys that
are driven by Asian immigrants. Same question about the numbers skewing to the
elderly: Very few young people drive Camrys, so why is it a surprise that
people involved in Camry incidents were not young?

Age and immigrant status may still be at work in other ways. Maybe there is a
defect, and older but paradoxically relatively less experienced drivers (those
who came from countries with awesome public transit and very few cars) simply
don't have good coping skills when an actual real defect happens. Most of us
would just slip the car into neutral, but some less savvy drivers wouldn't
think of it.

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ghshephard
Alternative Hypothesis: The Toyota vehicles with this defect are the more
expensive brands which typically are purchased more often by the elderly.

Younger people are driving 98 Honda Civics, etc...not 2007-2010 Camrys, so
they would be expected to make a smaller part of the population.

With that said, my gut does tend to find the age-pattern of people
experiencing unintended acceleration to be worth following up...

~~~
Jun8
I second your hypothesis. The data definitely needs to be normalized by the
population distribution of Toyota cars under question. First, I wouldn't call
55 year-olds as "old people" who are so senile as to mistake pedals. Second,
assuming her data is accurate (a risky assumption judging from the informal
tone of the post and total lack of rigor), what if the age-unknown group is
included with, say, the 30 year-old group (could be, since the ages are
unknown), the conclusion then seems so much weaker.

I have noticed that many bloggers and journalists have come to Toyota's aid
recently. As another conspiracy theory, could this be somewhat fueled by
Toyota's PR?

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spudlyo
When I was in college, I once had the accelerator stick on my 1979 Toyota
Celica GT. I punched it in order to merge onto a 4 lane highway, and it stuck
down. I braked a bit which was not very useful, and ended up putting it into
neutral and then killing the engine. Scared the crap outta me. To this day I'm
not sure why it stuck, I thought it could have been the floor mats at the
time.

~~~
akamaka
This happens on my Corolla, which is quite old now. If I floor the gas on the
highway, it continues to accelerate for a while after letting go the gas. It
freaked me out the first time. The folks in the shop told me that I have a
build-up of carbon on the throttle body, which causes the throttle to be
sticky. They offered to clean it off, but I couldn't be bothered to pay for
it. There's definitely nothing wrong with the pedal or any electronic control
systems, it's just a car that needs tuning up.

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jsz0
People should really focus their energy into demanding better safety features
on all cars instead of getting caught up on one defect. We should also be
focusing on getting bad drivers off the road and requiring on-going driver
education/testing at least past a certain age. In all this controversy with
Toyota I haven't seen much media discussion over why "cheap cars" lack such
basic safety features of higher end models including some of these throttle
fail-safe systems that would have nullified the Toyota problem.

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tptacek
Um, isn't it the case that all this suggests is that _some_ of the incidents
were operator error? And didn't we assume that all along? It clearly isn't
happening to most drivers. Or even many. Or even a remotely significant
sampling of drivers. That's not the point.

~~~
jdminhbg
No, unless you're assuming that only old people are capable of operator error.

This suggests that 'sudden acceleration' is biased towards old people, and we
know that operator error of the wrong-pedal type is as well. It doesn't
suggest that only cases involving old people could be operator error.

~~~
tptacek
The story on NPR where the highway patrol officer is doing 90MPH for several
minutes next to the guy who's trying to pry up the gas pedal with one hand
while controlling the car with the other doesn't sound too much like someone
getting the wrong pedal.

Maybe a bunch of these cases are just the ambient stupidity that we've always
had. That doesn't mean there's nothing to the story.

~~~
mos1
That story was complete and total horseshit.

I've listened to the full 911 tape recording, and none of it adds up... he
doesn't sound scared, he doesn't try to put it into neutral, he doesn't try to
turn it off (he claims he was afraid the car might flip), but he does claim he
tried to pry up the gas pedal (which is an essentially impossible physical
move, to do with your hand while driving).

Not to mention that he has a ridiculously shady past (bankruptcy, $700k of
debt, runs an adult website, entire kitchen of his house was stolen during
foreclosure, former business partner accuses him of theft)

Honestly... if you're going to cite him as an example of anything, he seems
like proof that a lot of these incidents are pretty obviously frauds.

~~~
tptacek
I'll concede that my brain went "NPR, corroborated by highway patrol", and got
on with my life. If I didn't prefer German cars, I'd buy a Toyota.

~~~
jonah
My first car was American, the second Japanese, now I have a German car. Is
Italian next? ;)

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tsally
Regardless of the details of the actual defect, I think this whole Toyota
fiasco highlights a problem in training. The sad reality is that the vast
majority of the fatalities could have been prevented if the driver had simply
shifted into neutral.

It's important to understand our machines instead of depending on them.

~~~
nollidge
One way to understand cars better is to learn how to drive a manual
transmission. You'll become more attuned to engine speed, which gear you're
in, the responsiveness of your gas pedal, etc.

~~~
weaksauce
That and even if my drive by wire throttle sticks open and the clutch cable
breaks(or lose fluid if it's a hydraulic system.) I can still force the car
into neutral and stop quickly with the brakes, then shut the engine off to
avoid over revving it.

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recurser
Have there been many cases outside the US? This whole thing seems very US-
centric, considering these cars are sold all over the world.

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johnl
It would be interesting to find out the computer literacy of those people
involved. For a non computer literate person, having a computer take over for
even a second I would think would scare them in doing all sorts of things.

~~~
rdtsc
It's very irrational as when they fly on an airplane it is the computer that
flies the plane most of the way. (Perhaps I naively think that even a computer
illiterate person knows about the use of autopilots).

On the other hand, their other experience with "computers" has been seeing
blue screens of death and having to reboot to "fix it".

But perhaps because of this, Toyota has to engage heavily in perception
management. Even if they identify a software problem, they would love to blame
it one a 'floor mat' as that makes it clear and predictable in people's minds
("oh it's just a floor mat, I understand that") as opposed to saying it is
some electronic brain that is damaged that decides randomly to take over and
kill drivers.

