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What's your source? All I found are civil suits against Toyota asking for the EDR data but nothing criminal for "withholding crash data from the government reg

What's your source? All I found are civil suits against Toyota asking for the EDR data but nothing criminal for "withholding crash data from the government regulators".

eli 16y ago
Sorry, my wording was confusing. I meant they were hiding the fact that people were getting into accidents from "sticky gas pedals" not that they were hiding actual EDR crash data. "Toyota Motor Corporation agreed to pay a $16.375 million fine - the largest fine permitted by law - for failing to notify the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of a dangerous pedal defect for almost four months" http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10 http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10
- potatolicious 16y ago
  This seems to conflict with mukyu's post above: "As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed. That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly."
  - eli 16y ago
    Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet), Toyota certainly couldn't have known that at the time. It is totally unacceptable (and illegal) to hide a potentially fatal problem with your products, even if you think it's probably not widespread.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      > Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet) Test enough cars and you'll find consistent defects. Test yet more and you'll find consistent and potentially life threatening defects. Is this a fatal problem with your product? Yes. Is it acceptable? Yes. No one would envision my hifi burning my house down, but if it turned on (and it turned itself on at 9pm and off at 11pm every day, I never found out why because it didn't even have a timer or alarm circuit) and something failed in just that right way then yes my house could burn down. If my accelerator has a defect and fails in just that right way then yes I could crash... or I could put my car into neutral like a non-retarded person, or I could drop into 1st or 2nd gear (even in an automatic, which way too many people don't even know they have a 1st and 2nd gear), or I could just take my foot off the accelerator and apply it to the brake. I'm sorry, but when it comes down to the simple facts that all these accidents were caused by driver error, or in the very few cases where defects did exist the accidents were ultimately caused by inexperienced drivers, and yes a person driving for 30 years can be way more inexperienced than someone who just got their license. Vehicles ultimately fail-safe. If you turn you engine off, you're left with a vehicle with no power steering and no power brakes. If you're on a highway your power steering is largely irrelevant anyway, unless they suddenly started introducing hairpin turns on all the national highways that I've yet to learn about. Your brakes, again, don't need to be power assisted for them to work, all you have to do is get to a shoulder and let your vehicle roll to a damn stop. There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous, but that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of the wheel, which would be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still driver error. There's only one thing I find dangerous that car manufacturers have let remain for a long time, is that your brakes are a fail-deadly system. Hydraulic brakes need manual-pressure to activate whilst air-brakes are a fail-safe system requiring manual pressure to release. This would mean that in that situation where you have to turn your engine off at highway speeds, your brakes would gently start applying as the PSI drops in the air compressor. You're claiming it's unacceptable to hide a problem with your product, but you're naively not understanding that there is always a defect margin and if that's within the government required percentage then they really shouldn't need to publicly disclose anything at all because it's in the publics best interest not to know that every appliance we own has the potential to defect in a way that could kill us. I had a humble old school MP3 player that melted itself because for some bizarre reason it tried to charge the alkaline battery in it. Worse yet, the battery connectors were actually gold plated and managed to burn a series of parallel lines into my desk. If it had been set on a piece of paper and had been equally as unattended, I'd have likely set my desk alight.
      - brisance 16y ago
        >There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous, but that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of the wheel, which would be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still driver error. It is stupid and dangerous. You forgot about the steering lock.
        electromagnetic 16y ago
        No, you're a fucking retard if you pull your key out triggering the steering lock. Electrical and mechanical steering locks only activate after the key has been removed, or in the case of electrical locks after about 10-15 minutes. However you can keep all instrumentation running without having the engine running, so the electrical lock wouldn't kick in until 10-15 minutes after turning that off. Why do they do this? Oh, because it's still possible to tow or push-start a vehicle and the point at which you cannot start your engine is long before you cannot power your instrumentation and thus deactivate your steering lock.
        SoftwareMaven 16y ago
        You can't get the key out of the ignition until the vehicle is in park. You can't get the vehicle in park until it stops. Steering lock is not a problem.
        _djo_ 16y ago
        Steering locks only engage when the key is removed from the ignition, not when the engine is merely turned off.
      - eli 16y ago
        "there is always a defect margin and if that's within the government required percentage then they really shouldn't need to publicly disclose anything at all" Um, that was my point. It was NOT within government regulations. It was illegal. And they paid the maximum fine allowed by law for it.

What's your source? All I found are civil suits against Toyota asking for the EDR data but nothing criminal for "withholding crash data from the government regulators".

eli 16y ago

Sorry, my wording was confusing. I meant they were hiding the fact that people were getting into accidents from "sticky gas pedals" not that they were hiding actual EDR crash data. "Toyota Motor Corporation agreed to pay a $16.375 million fine - the largest fine permitted by law - for failing to notify the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of a dangerous pedal defect for almost four months" http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10 http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10

potatolicious 16y ago
This seems to conflict with mukyu's post above: "As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed. That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly."
- eli 16y ago
  Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet), Toyota certainly couldn't have known that at the time. It is totally unacceptable (and illegal) to hide a potentially fatal problem with your products, even if you think it's probably not widespread.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    > Even if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet) Test enough cars and you'll find consistent defects. Test yet more and you'll find consistent and potentially life threatening defects. Is this a fatal problem with your product? Yes. Is it acceptable? Yes. No one would envision my hifi burning my house down, but if it turned on (and it turned itself on at 9pm and off at 11pm every day, I never found out why because it didn't even have a timer or alarm circuit) and something failed in just that right way then yes my house could burn down. If my accelerator has a defect and fails in just that right way then yes I could crash... or I could put my car into neutral like a non-retarded person, or I could drop into 1st or 2nd gear (even in an automatic, which way too many people don't even know they have a 1st and 2nd gear), or I could just take my foot off the accelerator and apply it to the brake. I'm sorry, but when it comes down to the simple facts that all these accidents were caused by driver error, or in the very few cases where defects did exist the accidents were ultimately caused by inexperienced drivers, and yes a person driving for 30 years can be way more inexperienced than someone who just got their license. Vehicles ultimately fail-safe. If you turn you engine off, you're left with a vehicle with no power steering and no power brakes. If you're on a highway your power steering is largely irrelevant anyway, unless they suddenly started introducing hairpin turns on all the national highways that I've yet to learn about. Your brakes, again, don't need to be power assisted for them to work, all you have to do is get to a shoulder and let your vehicle roll to a damn stop. There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous, but that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of the wheel, which would be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still driver error. There's only one thing I find dangerous that car manufacturers have let remain for a long time, is that your brakes are a fail-deadly system. Hydraulic brakes need manual-pressure to activate whilst air-brakes are a fail-safe system requiring manual pressure to release. This would mean that in that situation where you have to turn your engine off at highway speeds, your brakes would gently start applying as the PSI drops in the air compressor. You're claiming it's unacceptable to hide a problem with your product, but you're naively not understanding that there is always a defect margin and if that's within the government required percentage then they really shouldn't need to publicly disclose anything at all because it's in the publics best interest not to know that every appliance we own has the potential to defect in a way that could kill us. I had a humble old school MP3 player that melted itself because for some bizarre reason it tried to charge the alkaline battery in it. Worse yet, the battery connectors were actually gold plated and managed to burn a series of parallel lines into my desk. If it had been set on a piece of paper and had been equally as unattended, I'd have likely set my desk alight.
    - brisance 16y ago
      >There's claims that switching the engine off while in motion is dangerous, but that's a wholly unproven and rather stupid claim. The problem, if there is one, is that people would panic and over-steer because of the resistance of the wheel, which would be deadly at 70mph. However, that's still driver error. It is stupid and dangerous. You forgot about the steering lock.
      - electromagnetic 16y ago
        No, you're a fucking retard if you pull your key out triggering the steering lock. Electrical and mechanical steering locks only activate after the key has been removed, or in the case of electrical locks after about 10-15 minutes. However you can keep all instrumentation running without having the engine running, so the electrical lock wouldn't kick in until 10-15 minutes after turning that off. Why do they do this? Oh, because it's still possible to tow or push-start a vehicle and the point at which you cannot start your engine is long before you cannot power your instrumentation and thus deactivate your steering lock.
      - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
        You can't get the key out of the ignition until the vehicle is in park. You can't get the vehicle in park until it stops. Steering lock is not a problem.
      - _djo_ 16y ago
        Steering locks only engage when the key is removed from the ignition, not when the engine is merely turned off.
    - eli 16y ago
      "there is always a defect margin and if that's within the government required percentage then they really shouldn't need to publicly disclose anything at all" Um, that was my point. It was NOT within government regulations. It was illegal. And they paid the maximum fine allowed by law for it.