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I think a lot of the outrage is justly squared on the possibility that Toyota covered the issue up for years.

by m0th87 17y ago

elblanco 17y ago
I've been driving for a long time, a few years shy of 20, and I even polled my father who's been driving for something like 65 years, at one point as a professional long haul truck driver. If we add up all the times we've accidentally hit the gas when we meant to hit the brakes, we come up with zero cases. That's about 80 years of combined, daily, multi-hour a day driving. Of course there are cases where this happens, usually with the elderly around a farmer's market. But this doesn't appear to be the case. Other manufacturers have had various dangerous issues, and they take care of them pretty quick. It's the ones that are denied for a decade, then internal memos are leaked where they coldly calculated the cost of a recall vs. the cost of lawsuits from the loss of human life that stand out in history....anybody remember the Pinto?
- lief79 17y ago
  It depends a lot on the positioning of the petals. There are some makes and models where it's rather easy to accidentally hit the wrong petal, is it's only an inch or so away from the right petal. I tend to drive Toyotas, and their petal placement has not been problematic. My mom's Subaru makes it far easier to accidentally hit both petals, which I've managed to do once or twice.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    If the placements of the accelerator and brakes are too close , then perhaps that too is an engineering challenge...perhaps more of a user interface one than a "does it work" problem. But an interesting engineering challenge nonetheless. I've driven a few cars where I did notice the placement was a bit tight, but it just made me extra cautious. However, I could totally see accidentally hitting the wrong pedal if you wore the wrong shoes or panicked or something in those cars. I don't think the Toyota cars under discussion suffer from this design flaw.
- arantius 17y ago
  > That's about 80 years of combined, daily, multi-hour a day driving. Not to belittle your point, but you're making a common mistake. Just because "80 years" feels like a big number doesn't make it significant. You've presented the data point of two (2) drivers. On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of drivers, just in the USA. Even a vanishingly small percentage of failure cases would still cause hundreds of failures, across so many billions of hours of driving. And easily not appear in any sample of two drivers' experience, no matter how much driving they've done.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    You do make an important point. I was simply attempting to counter one anecdote with another. But I think the argument of "the pedals are too close so people are probably just hitting the wrong one", while an interesting thought exercise, digresses from the actual problems: 1) The cars made by Toyota, on occasion, even when under the control of an experienced driver, with years of experience with not only that make/model of vehicle, but even with that exact vehicle, operate in a way which is out of expected operating parameters. This happens with cars from other makers, but #2 and #3 clarify this. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc_pIFqke7WxQovY3MnhcyIYiLgwD9EB15EO0 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc_pIFqke7... 2) Toyota has known, very clearly about this problem for quite a while and has refused to address it. As far as the public knows, Toyota has done no engineering exercise to discover the nature of the flaw and has so far engaged in finger pointing. When Steve Wozniak found another, similar flaw in the brake system after doing a fairly extensive engineering review of his car, he was initially ignored, then met with surprise at such a wild discovery. 3) Similar problems have been found in other cars, even ones with a strong reputation for quality and reliability. Those makers responded almost immediately and took it seriously. The cat is out of the bag that Toyota was not taking it seriously, or rather that Toyota was calculating public safety vs. the cost of lawsuits. This speaks to a particularly broken internal corporate climate. Which is surprising to anyone who has studied Toyota's corporate management philosophy. While two data point (mine and my father's) are rightly taken as anecdotal data, there are not, in any real sense that many more reported cases of car crashes -- yet we're all taking it very seriously. When does a collection of events become "statistical data"? My stats prof in uni said that statistics are simply a large collection of anecdotes. The number of people with reported unexpected acceleration problems is actually very small. What's the line that separates anecdotes from "vanishingly small percentage"? I'd argue that the definition of this line is precisely the mental exercise that Toyota found itself caught up in when it was trying to decide to recall or wait for the law suits. In the end, the company erred on the side of ignoring statistically insignificant anecdotes to their peril.

I think a lot of the outrage is justly squared on the possibility that Toyota covered the issue up for years.

by m0th87 17y ago

I think a lot of the outrage is justly squared on the possibility that Toyota covered the issue up for years.

I've been driving for a long time, a few years shy of 20, and I even polled my father who's been driving for something like 65 years, at one point as a professional long haul truck driver. If we add up all the times we've accidentally hit the gas when we meant to hit the brakes, we come up with zero cases. That's about 80 years of combined, daily, multi-hour a day driving. Of course there are cases where this happens, usually with the elderly around a farmer's market. But this doesn't appear to be the case. Other manufacturers have had various dangerous issues, and they take care of them pretty quick. It's the ones that are denied for a decade, then internal memos are leaked where they coldly calculated the cost of a recall vs. the cost of lawsuits from the loss of human life that stand out in history....anybody remember the Pinto?

lief79 17y ago
It depends a lot on the positioning of the petals. There are some makes and models where it's rather easy to accidentally hit the wrong petal, is it's only an inch or so away from the right petal. I tend to drive Toyotas, and their petal placement has not been problematic. My mom's Subaru makes it far easier to accidentally hit both petals, which I've managed to do once or twice.
- elblanco 17y ago
  If the placements of the accelerator and brakes are too close , then perhaps that too is an engineering challenge...perhaps more of a user interface one than a "does it work" problem. But an interesting engineering challenge nonetheless. I've driven a few cars where I did notice the placement was a bit tight, but it just made me extra cautious. However, I could totally see accidentally hitting the wrong pedal if you wore the wrong shoes or panicked or something in those cars. I don't think the Toyota cars under discussion suffer from this design flaw.
arantius 17y ago
> That's about 80 years of combined, daily, multi-hour a day driving. Not to belittle your point, but you're making a common mistake. Just because "80 years" feels like a big number doesn't make it significant. You've presented the data point of two (2) drivers. On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of drivers, just in the USA. Even a vanishingly small percentage of failure cases would still cause hundreds of failures, across so many billions of hours of driving. And easily not appear in any sample of two drivers' experience, no matter how much driving they've done.
- elblanco 17y ago
  You do make an important point. I was simply attempting to counter one anecdote with another. But I think the argument of "the pedals are too close so people are probably just hitting the wrong one", while an interesting thought exercise, digresses from the actual problems: 1) The cars made by Toyota, on occasion, even when under the control of an experienced driver, with years of experience with not only that make/model of vehicle, but even with that exact vehicle, operate in a way which is out of expected operating parameters. This happens with cars from other makers, but #2 and #3 clarify this. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc_pIFqke7WxQovY3MnhcyIYiLgwD9EB15EO0 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc_pIFqke7... 2) Toyota has known, very clearly about this problem for quite a while and has refused to address it. As far as the public knows, Toyota has done no engineering exercise to discover the nature of the flaw and has so far engaged in finger pointing. When Steve Wozniak found another, similar flaw in the brake system after doing a fairly extensive engineering review of his car, he was initially ignored, then met with surprise at such a wild discovery. 3) Similar problems have been found in other cars, even ones with a strong reputation for quality and reliability. Those makers responded almost immediately and took it seriously. The cat is out of the bag that Toyota was not taking it seriously, or rather that Toyota was calculating public safety vs. the cost of lawsuits. This speaks to a particularly broken internal corporate climate. Which is surprising to anyone who has studied Toyota's corporate management philosophy. While two data point (mine and my father's) are rightly taken as anecdotal data, there are not, in any real sense that many more reported cases of car crashes -- yet we're all taking it very seriously. When does a collection of events become "statistical data"? My stats prof in uni said that statistics are simply a large collection of anecdotes. The number of people with reported unexpected acceleration problems is actually very small. What's the line that separates anecdotes from "vanishingly small percentage"? I'd argue that the definition of this line is precisely the mental exercise that Toyota found itself caught up in when it was trying to decide to recall or wait for the law suits. In the end, the company erred on the side of ignoring statistically insignificant anecdotes to their peril.