Mar 18, 2010
Feds say no brakes, full throttle in N.Y. runaway Toyota Prius crash

03:53 PM





Toyota representatives examine a crashed Toyota Prius, today in Harrison, N.Y. Toyota recalled more than 8 million cars because their gas pedals could become stuck or be snagged by floor mats. In addition, the government is looking into complaints from at least 60 Toyota drivers who say they got their cars fixed and still had problems.


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Updated: 4:53 p.m. ET to add Toyota's comment.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is leaving a cryptic message with reporters that points to driver error, not unintended acceleration, in a key case involving the Prius. Specifically, this is regarding the housekeeper who ran a 2005 Toyota Prius down a driveway and crashed into a wall across the street from the house, saying she was the victim of unintended acceleration last week. The e-mail reads:No further explanation. Sounds like the implication is this is another case of driver error, a case in which the accelerator pedal was mistaken for the brake pedal. Toyota's John Hanson says the investigation is officially being handled by the Harrison Police Department and it won't comment until then.


On Monday, Toyota held a San Diego press conference to dispute the claims of James Sikes, driver of the runaway Prius that sped up to 90 miles an hour on a San Diego freeway. Toyota attempted to show how his claims didn't match the capabilities of the car.


http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-prius-crash/1

 

Ohhhhhh Nooooooooooo!!!! I just came across your quote Westy.... This is soooooooo WRONG! Humbley admit to knowing a tiny bit more about radiation than the average bear and I will tell you that Alpha particles are the least penetrating of radiations. Alpha particles will barely penetrate the skin.

From Wiki: "They are a highly ionizing form of particle radiation, and (when resulting from radioactive alpha decay) have low penetration depth. They are able to be stopped by a few centimeters of air, or by the skin. ....
This energy is a substantial amount of energy for a single particle, but their high mass means alpha particles have a lower speed (with a typical kinetic energy of 5 MeV, the speed is 15,000 km/s which is 5% of the speed of light) than any other common type of radiation (β particles, neutrons, etc). γ rays, being an electromagnetic radiation, move at the speed of light. Because of their charge and large mass, alpha particles are easily absorbed by materials, and they can travel only a few centimetres in air. They can be absorbed by tissue paper or the outer layers of human skin (about 40 micrometres, equivalent to a few cells deep)."

No way is an Alpha particle going to penetrate an electronic component.

As to Radium (Ra-226), Uranium and its daughters being 'inadvertently' added to the plastic/ceramics used in the electronics manufacturing process. Well, Buddy, if that's true... we got HUGE problems... like WICKED HUGE PROBLEMS...

Cheers Mate!

 

 

 

I thought he said he reached down to try to release the gas pedal if it was stuck in the full forward position. What is your first thought with a runaway hybrid drive system and with no response to the brake pedal...?

I have driven at 90+ mph. It is not a time that I would have ever considered doing anything but concentrating on driving, let alone reaching down to the gas pedal to see if I could 'release' it.


Also, Toyota has written that if you should experience UA, put the car in N, and as a secondary item press the START button for 5 seconds to turn the car off. (Mailed to me for my TCH)


What is your first thought with a runaway hybrid drive system and with no response to the brake pedal...? Push transmission lever to N.

NOTHING prevents the e-brake from full braking action. BTW, what happens if you lock the rear wheels with anything but the car in a perfectly straight trajectory? From my experimenting this winter with my other car it is a good way to do some 360s.

 

Quote:
Apparently he read the owners manual which has a definite caution warning against putting the system in neutral while underway. Besides which for most people, even me(***) the CVT/PSD is a worrisome mystery in this situation.
ENd of quote
You mean, your life is in grave danger, you put others in danger of getting killed and you're evaluating what cautions manual had?
Let me tell you what I would do: I would look for something to crash into, like those absorbing crash barriers at bridges, runaway ramps at long downhills, anything to stop the car, but first I would stand on the breaks, try to put it into neutral, reverse, low gear or parking and shutdown the car, even if it was going to lock the steering, ok maybe I would wait for some little straight away before locking the steering.

quote:
With the engine AND MG1, 2 in a runaway state I would approach any alternative action with tripidation...wouldn't you...? Sudden HIGH regenerative braking on ONLY the front wheels might very well result in "flipping" the Prius.
End of quote
With all due respect that's a complete nonsense, I hope you're just kidding. You never locked the breaks in non ABS car? Yes, the tires will lock and slide with weight shifting up front and you can flip motorcycle or bicycle , but not the car, otherwise we would have flip overs every time somebody has to stop in emergency.

I always thought Prius has drive by wire throttle, just like TCH. Now he claims the throttle pedal went to the floor and he even tried to pull it up by hand, but couldn't. Since I don't own Prius I'm not sure, but in TCh throttle pedal is not connected to anything, except electric wire and it can't go down by itself, unless pressed from outside. For example when driving under cruise control the pedal doesn't move, it stays up in idle position even if computer demands full power from the ICE. SO if Prius is anything like TCH, his story about throttle pedal would make no sense whatsoever, but it would make sense for any other, non drive by wire car.

Quote:
The skid control computer can prevent, totally so, the frictional brakes from working conditional on the query reponse from the HSD control computer. NOTHING prevents the e-brake from full braking action.
End of quote
So how do you explain worn out breaks in his Prius, front and back?

As far as radiation affecting computers, it's a known fact for decades. I think it's mostly gamma and high energy cosmic radiation. Important computer servers have parity bit in memory modules and connecting lines. The parity bit is always set for the full number to be either even or odd, so when one bit of data is changed, then the parity will be wrong and indicate error. The problem is what do you do now: computer usually will put hold on all operations, to stop the error from spreading and possibly affecting other data. In a car you shouldn't really stop the computer in a middle of operation, besides that this technology is more expensive (extra memory, extra com lines, extra hardware processing for parity checks etc.). There are other ways of dealing with this problem: for example Prius throttle has 2 hall effect sensors to read throttle position: both have to agree to some degree or you get an error code. I don't know proprietary specifics of Toyota computers, but I'm sure they run some self checks, maybe reset themselves etc. etc. but IMO, it would be rather rare for radiation to knock out just the right bits to get UA. Mostly it should manifest itself as other unexplained glitches. In other words it is possible, but not very likely IMO. SO how many runaway Priuses did we have so far besides the one in Cali, for which I have more questions than answers?

 

I tried many times and I can't lock rear tires with parking brake on dry surface and they should be properly adjusted since I set parking brake everytime I park. I hit the floor, pedal won't go anymore and tires are breaking but not locking .
Actually I locked rear tires on ice few times in a parking lot for practice and I found it difficult to spin it, I really had to work the front to spin it and I found it easy to correct to get out of the spin, unless it was already rotating past about 45 Deg off track. I also found my car heavily understeering, when cornering too fast on ice (without using parking break) , but I think that's compliments of stability control. I don't think I ever managed to spin the car on ice without using parking break. I need to redo all those tests without stability control, now that we have instructions how to disable it, but it seems weather got warmer now, may need to wait to next winter.

 

Peter said: "As far as radiation affecting computers, it's a known fact for decades. I think it's mostly gamma and high energy cosmic radiation."

Exactly.... except for the gamma part. Gammas themselves will harm insulation on wiring at high levels over long periods of time. Hardy ever... if ever... damage an electronic package. They may create some 'activation products' in the materials. Hot but nothing that would affect the chips.

The intense gamma radiation produced in an atomic explosion will create a strong ionization effect generating an electric field. Its the electric field that's the problem as that will suck electrons off of anything and everything. But again, its a NUCLEAR explosion... not your everyday industrial use gammas & xrays.

Cosmic rays & electromagnetic pulse (EMP) are worrisome. Close strikes of lighting and atomic bombs will do it although most electronics are pretty well shielded against lighting's EMP effects. It takes something about this big to do the job.... The TRESTLE project.

http://www.cerezo.name/archives/000006.html

What's not stated in the article is that the US considered soviet aircraft avionics to be 'stone age' as they used vacuum tubes. The old Russian Bear was smarter than the average bear. The Soviets had figured out that vacuum tubes were resistant to EMP and solid state stuff wasn't.

 

Here's a more fun and descriptive article...

http://www.chucksville.org/trestle.html

I'd dis-agree with Chuck's comment that people were unaffected. I helped investigate EMP researcher's claims concerning health effects at a facility. The short answer is that EMP does affect people.

 

The radiation problem is not that it will damage electronics (which it can, but have to be rather intense and it would be very harmful to humans), but that it can change state of memory location at random, making the computer accepting wrong data and either crash or give wrong results. As far as source of radiation, again mostly I would suspect those are from outer space (both xray and gamma) not local, especially nuclear weapons. We have some protection from atmosphere and Earth's electromagnetic field, but very high energy radiation coming from Supernova or even our Sun could change memory location, without leaving any trace.
As far as EMP is concerned I would kindly disagree as it being an issue, since we no longer, as far as I know test nuclear weapons above our heads. I think it was US above ground nuclear test in the Pacific, that knocked out lights in half of the Hawaii, that brought EMP effects on electricity into plain view.
I think it was Russian pilot escaping to Japan in MIG 25, that gave us good look into Russian state of the art electronics in fighter planes. Originally US team was shocked finding electronics in this modern fighter still based on tubes, as very low tech and way behind US. It was later, that some realized that in case of nuclear strike and resulting EMP, those tubes would be much less affected by such EMP, than transistors and IC's used in US planes. I still think it was 50%/50% chance the Rusians used those tubes for protection from EMP and not simply because they didn't have the technology solid enough to use transistors and IC's in the plane when it was being developed.
Going back to cars, the problem is, if some radiation hits the memory cell or accumulator in CPU and changes just one "0" into "1", the whole instruction or piece of data has now different meaning and in the right circumstance, it could cause computer crash or some other unpredictable effect. Later you reset the computer and check everything and everything is fine, so how do you find the problem? Not only it's totally random, but usually doesn't leave much evidence behind. Albeit, why rush of those UA now, all of a sudden, is Sun activity increasing all of a sudden, I know our Sun was very quiet past few years, with no Sun spots at all, but it should be increasing now.