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Automatic transmissions back then were quite the hydraulic maze, as they operated entirely on hydraulics. These days, they're electronically controlled. I don't

Automatic transmissions back then were quite the hydraulic maze, as they operated entirely on hydraulics. These days, they're electronically controlled. I don't think the failure rate has changed. In a manual, you can of course clutch out as long as your clutch cable (or hose for hydraulic clutched cars) doesn't fail, which is not an option you have for automatics. These kinds of failures do occur today, though. See the famous Toyota "unintentional acceleration" scandal, where a software error read "0% throttle" as "100% THROTTLE GO GO GO GO", causing death in a few cases. There's also a case of a person that was stuck in a car that could not stop, driving at constantly increasing speed on the highways of France, IIRC. He couldn't turn the car off or get it out of gear. You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. Up here, manuals are normal (with automatics slowly getting more and more popular), mostly because everyone knows just fine how to drive them, and automatics are much more expensive. I, personally, can't decide which I prefer. I'd much rather drive fully manual than a "retrofitted" automatic like the one in a Lupo 3L, and I still have to try a dual clutch transmission, for which I might end up having similar opinions. They always seem to change wrong, the changes are rough and slow, and the clutch engagement is very binary, leading to odd engage/disengage. I like conventional automatics in cars that haul heavy loads (pushing a 4 metric tonne trailer over a curb in reverse at low speeds without the possibility of gaining some speed first make you worry a lot about your clutch in a manual), and our busses and trucks are generally fully automatic, with more gears than you would bother counting.

hx87 10y ago
> You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. The typical car has brakes that can dissipate 4x the engine power, so either the driver failed to press hard enough or the brakes failed in that case.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 3poundkilograms 10y ago
  I suspect that your brakes will seize very quickly if you try to battle your engine at full power.
petre 10y ago
Current VW DSG automatics are okay, butter smooth. I drove one from Germany this year. Too bad it's a VW, since I don't like their cars that much. My normal car is a manual Suzuki Jimny DDIS which drives like a tractor.
Grishnakh 10y ago
There is no such thing as a modern passenger car with an engine more powerful than the brakes. All cases of "unintentional acceleration" where the driver "could not stop" are cases of driver error: the driver refused to use the brake pedal, or was pressing the gas pedal instead. The other thing these dummies are forgetting to do, in their panic, is to simply turn off the engine.
- 3poundkilograms 10y ago
  In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. Reasons that a driver might not simply turn off the engine: 1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. 2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. 3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Oil buildup in the intercooler (which any used car will have) that ends up sucked into the intake is a fairly normal way for a diesel engine to self-destruct if you're not quick enough to clutch in so you can keep the engine under control with some load. Reasons a driver might not be able to hold the engine at full throttle: 1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. 2. Brake failure. 3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van that was idling in first gear using only the brake (long story), and that required a lot of effort. I would not have been able to do it if any throttle had been applied.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. That wasn't what happened. People were driving at high speeds on the highway and claiming they couldn't stop. They were wrong. >1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. That's why you turn the engine off and then turn the key back on, or don't take the key out. Usually you have to take the key out to engage the steering lock. Besides, which is worse, accelerating uncontrollably until you reach the car's maximum speed, or killing the engine and not being able to steer? >2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. Wrong. All such designs let you turn off the engine by either holding the button down, or by pressing it multiple times. People just were too dumb to learn how their cars worked. >3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Wrong and stupid. We're not talking about 1960s diesel engines with mechanical fuel pumps here, we're talking about modern vehicles with engine computers and electric pumps. Kill the power and they stop. >1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. That's why you press them hard right away instead of trying to modulate the engine power with them.... >2. Brake failure. Impossible. The odds of having a separate brake failure at the same time as an unintended acceleration failure are astronomical. >3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van We're not talking about big diesel vans here, we're talking about regular cars in America which run on gasoline having unintended acceleration problems. Americans do not drive diesel cars, and certainly not diesel vans. Do you have any more completely irrelevant anecdotes to try to disprove my assertions?

hx87 10y ago

> You can disengage a manual if you're quick with an intact clutch cable, but you're a bit lost in an automatic, especially if it's too powerful to hold on the brake. The typical car has brakes that can dissipate 4x the engine power, so either the driver failed to press hard enough or the brakes failed in that case.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
3poundkilograms 10y ago
I suspect that your brakes will seize very quickly if you try to battle your engine at full power.

petre 10y ago

Current VW DSG automatics are okay, butter smooth. I drove one from Germany this year. Too bad it's a VW, since I don't like their cars that much. My normal car is a manual Suzuki Jimny DDIS which drives like a tractor.

Grishnakh 10y ago

There is no such thing as a modern passenger car with an engine more powerful than the brakes. All cases of "unintentional acceleration" where the driver "could not stop" are cases of driver error: the driver refused to use the brake pedal, or was pressing the gas pedal instead. The other thing these dummies are forgetting to do, in their panic, is to simply turn off the engine.

3poundkilograms 10y ago
In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. Reasons that a driver might not simply turn off the engine: 1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. 2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. 3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Oil buildup in the intercooler (which any used car will have) that ends up sucked into the intake is a fairly normal way for a diesel engine to self-destruct if you're not quick enough to clutch in so you can keep the engine under control with some load. Reasons a driver might not be able to hold the engine at full throttle: 1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. 2. Brake failure. 3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van that was idling in first gear using only the brake (long story), and that required a lot of effort. I would not have been able to do it if any throttle had been applied.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >In case of Toyota, the error was not with the driver. Not having ninja reflexes when your car misinterprets throttle input as you are parking is not user error. That wasn't what happened. People were driving at high speeds on the highway and claiming they couldn't stop. They were wrong. >1. Twisting the key to turn off the engine engages the steering wheel lock, which might not be a good idea if you're moving fast. That's why you turn the engine off and then turn the key back on, or don't take the key out. Usually you have to take the key out to engage the steering lock. Besides, which is worse, accelerating uncontrollably until you reach the car's maximum speed, or killing the engine and not being able to steer? >2. Modern cars with start/stop buttons might end up with issues that disallow stopping the engine - physical button failure, or software issues related to the button handling. Wrong. All such designs let you turn off the engine by either holding the button down, or by pressing it multiple times. People just were too dumb to learn how their cars worked. >3. Diesel runaway - diesels are quite difficult to stop, as they need very little external assistance, and can run on basically anything. Wrong and stupid. We're not talking about 1960s diesel engines with mechanical fuel pumps here, we're talking about modern vehicles with engine computers and electric pumps. Kill the power and they stop. >1. Brakes seize up at load, and "full power" is certainly a lot of continuous load. That's why you press them hard right away instead of trying to modulate the engine power with them.... >2. Brake failure. Impossible. The odds of having a separate brake failure at the same time as an unintended acceleration failure are astronomical. >3. The sheer difficulty of holding the car. I have once in my life stopped a diesel van We're not talking about big diesel vans here, we're talking about regular cars in America which run on gasoline having unintended acceleration problems. Americans do not drive diesel cars, and certainly not diesel vans. Do you have any more completely irrelevant anecdotes to try to disprove my assertions?