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Sudden acceleration is more likely to result in a (deadly?) crash for drivers with longer reaction times. Elderly drivers have longer reaction times.

giardini 17y ago
Sudden acceleration is more likely to result in a (deadly?) crash for drivers with little experience. Young, especially teen-age, drivers have little experience. Young drivers kill and injure far more people than elderly drivers.
- Groxx 17y ago
  They also drive significantly more often.
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Which implies an even more skewed number of old people dead per Prius-mile driven.
    - Groxx 17y ago
      Ignoring that young people live through stuff better. And ignoring that the comment I was replying to merely said that young people account for more injuries, not more often, much less more per mile.
- shpxnvz 17y ago
  Sudden acceleration is more likely to result in a (deadly?) crash for drivers with little experience Very few people, regardless of how long they've been driving, ever get experience with uncontrolled sudden acceleration.
  - ericwaller 17y ago
    I think it's more that experienced drivers are presumably more defensive and therefore more likely to avoid situations (tailgating, etc.) where a sudden acceleration would be tough to recover from.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    If I got plenty of experience noticing I have no breaks in situations where I really needed them ... does that count? (drove a piece of shit of a car for quite some time) I also ended up in situations where my instinct or experience told me to accelerate instead of pushing the breaks. This happens often. Got plenty of experience driving on glazed frost. I even crashed once because of the car skidding ... went off-road, with the car rolling over a couple of times, and me and the other passenger survived with minor injuries. From that experience I learned that whatever you do (besides wearing a seat-belt) you have to avoid trees. IMHO, more experienced drivers are better, and I've seen some pretty good instincts coming from 40-50 year-old or so acquaintances. I really don't know what I would do with a sudden acceleration problem. I would probably try to remain calm and wait for it to recover (pushing the acceleration / brake to trigger events, try to stop the engine), and try not crashing. On a side note ... that's why I don't like cars with automatic transmissions. If my current car experienced a sudden acceleration problem, I could just take it out of gear or do an old-fashioned motor-brake.
- ericwaller 17y ago
  I actually almost included inexperience in my comment, but I thought it muddled the point since this article is asking why the elderly are over-represented in the toyota acceleration related deaths. It seems like you're correcting me, but how is your point anything but tangential? If you're wondering why inexperienced drivers aren't also over-represented, it's probably because not many 16-21 year olds drive priuses.

giardini 17y ago

Sudden acceleration is more likely to result in a (deadly?) crash for drivers with little experience. Young, especially teen-age, drivers have little experience. Young drivers kill and injure far more people than elderly drivers.

Groxx 17y ago
They also drive significantly more often.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Which implies an even more skewed number of old people dead per Prius-mile driven.
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Ignoring that young people live through stuff better. And ignoring that the comment I was replying to merely said that young people account for more injuries, not more often, much less more per mile.
shpxnvz 17y ago
Sudden acceleration is more likely to result in a (deadly?) crash for drivers with little experience Very few people, regardless of how long they've been driving, ever get experience with uncontrolled sudden acceleration.
- ericwaller 17y ago
  I think it's more that experienced drivers are presumably more defensive and therefore more likely to avoid situations (tailgating, etc.) where a sudden acceleration would be tough to recover from.
- bad_user 17y ago
  If I got plenty of experience noticing I have no breaks in situations where I really needed them ... does that count? (drove a piece of shit of a car for quite some time) I also ended up in situations where my instinct or experience told me to accelerate instead of pushing the breaks. This happens often. Got plenty of experience driving on glazed frost. I even crashed once because of the car skidding ... went off-road, with the car rolling over a couple of times, and me and the other passenger survived with minor injuries. From that experience I learned that whatever you do (besides wearing a seat-belt) you have to avoid trees. IMHO, more experienced drivers are better, and I've seen some pretty good instincts coming from 40-50 year-old or so acquaintances. I really don't know what I would do with a sudden acceleration problem. I would probably try to remain calm and wait for it to recover (pushing the acceleration / brake to trigger events, try to stop the engine), and try not crashing. On a side note ... that's why I don't like cars with automatic transmissions. If my current car experienced a sudden acceleration problem, I could just take it out of gear or do an old-fashioned motor-brake.
ericwaller 17y ago
I actually almost included inexperience in my comment, but I thought it muddled the point since this article is asking why the elderly are over-represented in the toyota acceleration related deaths. It seems like you're correcting me, but how is your point anything but tangential? If you're wondering why inexperienced drivers aren't also over-represented, it's probably because not many 16-21 year olds drive priuses.