http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ Share you experience with Sudden Acceleration en-US Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:38:19 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/search.php http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=3#post-25 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:43:50 +0000 Anonymous 25@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>Any one hear of a Mercedes with sudden acceleration? I had that experience in 9/2009. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=1#post-9 Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:45:46 +0000 Anonymous 9@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>To Mike: get your head out of your ass and stop posting to these sites when you obviously have no grasp of the problem! </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=2#post-8 Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:39:48 +0000 Anonymous 8@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>To Mike: get your head out of the sand; you sound like a Toyota PR man!<br /> To Charles B : I appreciate your ABS problems but this SAI problem with Toyota has nothing to do with ABS brakes.<br /> I had an incident about 2 weeks ago in my 2008 Camry. While pulling into a parking space in a large parking lot with my foot lightly on the brake (and nowhere near the gas pedal) going approx. 1 mph, and with about 6 feet of space between my car and a pickup truck in front of me, my car suddenly accelerated to full throttle and although I pressed on the brake as hard as I could I was unable to avoid hitting the truck at probably 20 mph. The force of the crash made a huge bang and rocked the truck which was noticed by several pedestrians (thank God none of whom were in front of me at the time). For die-hard Toyota PR men I had no floor mats in the vehicle! The throttle returned to idle as a result of the impact. My licence plate and holder were pushed in but no damage to the truck's tow hitch which I hit squarely. This shook me up pretty badly as I had never heard of this problem before then.<br /> I phoned the Toyota dealer who dutifully informed me that there was some sort of problem with the floor mats! What complete and utter BS!! I then went on the Web and researched the problem and found that I was far from alone in my experience. Toyota has been stone-walling for a decade or more first saying there was no problem, then sticking floor mats, gas pedal design, driver error (the most insulting BS excuse of all)! Just before Christmas 4 people including a CHP officer were killed in a runaway Lexus and now Toyota is in full damage control mode with massive recalls, production halts, and other smoke and mirrors tactics but still refuse to acknowledge the real problem!! They have a drive by wire system which ties the accelerator, brakes, and cruise control together to the computer. They removed the mechanical throttle cable and unlike other manufacturers failed to install an override sytem that drops the engine speed as soon as the brake is applied. They probably saved $10 per vehicle which helped them overtake GM as the #1 automaker worldwide, but left their loyal customers in the dark about a very serious and possibly life-threatening problem!! This is reminiscent of the Pinto where Ford could have fixed the exploding gas tank problem at a cost of $11 per vehicle but found it more economical to pay the claims of the wounded, burnt, and killed drivers and their families, in effect trading lives for profits!<br /> There are class action lawsuits in the USA and one starting in Canada. There is strong evidence that Toyota has known about this for a very long time and has in fact destroyed company documents that revealed that their own people were aware of this problem.<br /> Sorry if I have gone on too long but this type of corporate irresponsibility really gets me where I live. I am stuck with a vehicle which my wife and I are reluctant to drive while Toyota blathers on about floor mats and gas pedal designs. Give me a freakin' break !!!!! </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=2#post-7 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:02:23 +0000 Anonymous 7@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>I have personally experienced an ABS brake failure in two different cars which may be the source of many unexplained accidents in the last couple decades.</p> <p>There are two types of accidents caused by this failure.</p> <p>Type 1 - The brake pedal goes to the floor and there is no braking force on the wheels. The car will roll because of momentum to a stop or be stopped by running into something. The rolling into an object will likely have few fatalities. But if the car rolls though a stop sign or a light signal, the speeding cross traffic will likely cause a serious deadly accident especially if the cross traffic is a large truck. This type of accident I believe is responsible for many of the "distracted driving" accidents reported these days and laws being generated to solve them. It is far easier to prove that there are many idiot drivers than to find an illusive problem of a malfunctioning ABS system.</p> <p>To further complicate the resolution, after each failure I experienced, the ABS brakes worked perfectly as designed the next time the brake was pushed.<br /> So we have "experts" which advise to not pump the brakes in a brake failure, may be partly responsible for drivers not responding correctly to this failure mode. We have accident investigators, who get in a crashed car and push the brake pedal, and if it works as expected, declares the brakes did not contribute to the accident, and proceeds to blame another cause (usually the distracted driver). I believe many accidents caused by a defective ABS brake system is incorrectly reported in the records as investigators are not informed of how electomechanical systems can fail. We have a data base of many of these failures claimed to be distracted driving because we have no president or acceptance of an ABS failure.</p> <p>Other "experts" claiming that brakes always override the accelerator, simple physics, also is giving misleading expert advice because they have no experience on this ABS brake failure where the brake goes to the floor with the braking system not being activated. Whether the car is at rest or moving on a road when it decides to not respond to a push on the brake, I consider as academic trivia. If the brake system fails to respond as the driver expects, it will mean trouble for the driver.</p> <p>If the root cause of many of the accidents is distracted driving, then the streets will start to be safer with the new laws. If the ABS failure is the root cause of the many unexplained accidents or misreported accidents, then the carnage on the road will continue. I believe many people are being punished by courts and setting in prison for the crime of driving a defective car.</p> <p>Type 2 - The third time I experienced an ABS brake failure, the car's engine was trying to accelerate the car! It wasn't until much later that I figured out that my foot was also on the accelerator. My brain knew my foot was on the brake, but did not comprehend it was also on the accelerator. When the ABS brakes failed and the brake pedal was going to the floor, the accelerator was being pushed to the floor unknown by the driver except the realization the engine / car was speeding up. I believe this was the fail mode of each of the Toyota disastrous crashes shown on the TV report which the "experts" claimed the floor mats were to blame. The recall to change the floor mats and the redesign of the accelerator pedal will do nothing to reduce accidents on Toyota's. All the drivers knew their foot was on the brake and was pushing the brake as hard as they could to the floor. They did not realize that the ABS brake / pedal had failed and the brake pedal had no effect going to the floor and the accelerator was also being depressed to the floor. The "expert" recall for floor mats is a waste of time and money. I feel this type of failure results in cars crashing into the side of buildings, single cars crashing into trees, cars crashing into trains, cars driven into bodies of water or over a cliff, etc, since the brake system fails and the accelerator is speeding the engine. The carnage on the streets goes on.</p> <p>I think Mercedes is changing the design to solve the SA issue by interrupting the fuel supply to the engine when the brake is pushed. If my assumption is correct, and the ABS failure is the issue, when the brakes fail and the pedal goes to the floor, if the pedal movement is detected in the fail mode (which is not a given in that the braking system is not responding to the pedal), the failure is only changed from a Type 2 accident to a Type1 accident which can still be disastrous. This again is because the real root cause was not found.</p> <p>I spent a career writing SW, debugging SW, and supervising many electro-mechanical designs. Some companies reported small, hard to find failures in initial system operation or soon after production started. With the proper experts - 1) engineer(s) who wrote the code, 2) engineer(s) who designed the hardware, 3) engineer(s) who did the simulation, 4) the person who wrote the specification, and 5) the customer that experienced the fail mode, we were able to solve most issues quickly. However a couple times, even having the best experts to solve the issue and being able to simulate the failure mode and the correction with the design, when retested in the real environment, the problem still existed. We simply did not find the real root cause of the failure and had to repeat the correction process.</p> <p>My point with this example is that the NHTSA does not have the key experts to find intermittent failures like this. Do they have the original SW designers and the simulation systems used to design and check out the system to spec? Do they even have the code for the system in question? What if the SA issue is caused by the ABS Type 2 Failure and the experts are looking in the speed control operation or the throttle control because that seems more logical. If the speed control is not the root cause of SA then they can look all they want which is futile because that is not what failed. The answer seems to be to make a study to blame the distracted driver which is easy to support.</p> <p>I don't want to imply that the ABS Brake failure is the only problem with cars today. Again cars have many complex systems which can fail in strange ways. But after experiencing the ABS Brake failures I can see how many accidents in the last decade reported officially as other causes could be caused by the ABS brake failure. A defective car does not know if the driver is DUI, talking on a cell phone, over 70 years old, or eating when the car decides to fail. Again, I believe many people are being punished by courts and setting in prison for the crime of driving a defective car.</p> <p>While I have been struggling with this issue for several years, my current question I would like to solve is if this problem is unique to one manufacturer of ABS brakes or is this issue generated by the ABS spec of how ABS works and can show up in all cars? Will your car stop the next time you push the brake. If it doesn't, you likely will not be around to complain or describe how it happened. (Mark up one more distracted driver) </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=1#post-6 Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:06:58 +0000 Anonymous 6@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>i cant agree more with Admin about the breaks. I had My explorers gear shift adjusted at a transmissoion place, as the gear shift would slip out of gear and then get locked into place while driving and you couldnt move it, after that was done the mechanic told me he had adjusted this but it would become sloppy again. about 3 months after i bought the explorer, the car's cruise control failed to disengage. I was on a very long freeway so wasnt to freaked out about it, i tried the breaks, the car slowed abit but then the engine took off and the break pedal became hard. So, i rang ford to see if there was anything else i could do, the service person on the phone told me to turn the car off, the key wouldny move, he then said it was because the car was in gear, ''ah shit its because your in gear'' he asked me to try the breaks again, he said to just jump on them to pull the car up, i tried, but again the engine sped back up, i tried to get the gears into neutral, but it would not shift either. So, to all these ''experts'' in the world who blame the driver, you need to wake up. why the hell would i call the police and have a police escort down a freeway, then be forced to go onto the wrong side of the freeway after driving over a median strip at 100klm an hour? im not interested in suing, or getting a new car at all. i love my explorer, but it does need to be fixed. ive never been so scared in my life. Parts of the 000 call recording was released to the media and what do you know. 99% of ''experts'' comments ceased. So loss of control and pumping the breaks when you shouldnt, it has happened many of times. When the car eventually stopped, by me using the breaks as much as i could and pulling the handbreak, the police opened the car door and i was SCREAMING with panic, i was taken away in an ambulance in shock and spent hours and hours at the hospital. OH and to any ''experts'' that want to say ''why didnt you try the handbreak sooner?'' Would you be stupid enough to pull the handbreak doing 100klm an hour on a freeway with other drivers around you? oh and of course the Police (who stayed on the phone to me the whole time, and police cars next to me and in front of me) and myself didnt think about the handbreak. Of course we thought about the handbreak, but its unsafe to use at that speed with other drivers around. since this hit the world news, ive gotten calls from people in other countries to share there exp with me. its been 3 weeks since that happened and im shaking now just thinking about it all. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=2#post-5 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:05:26 +0000 Anonymous 5@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>Great response admin. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=2#post-4 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:08:25 +0000 admin 4@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>Mike,<br /> Thank you for visiting our site. I will try to address each of your points as well as I can. </p> <p>First, there is no question that many so-called sudden acceleration incidents are caused by driver error. I once stepped on the gas instead of the brake, and it scared me to death. When that happened, I immediately realized I pressed the wrong pedal, and then slammed on the brakes. This is a relatively common occurrence. I have also hit both the gas and brake at the same time while wearing flip-flops (admittedly, not smart). But again, I knew exactly what I had done. These types of occurrences are, however, not the subject of this website. This website was developed to educate people about those SAIs caused by electronic defects. Specifically, those where the throttle goes wide open. </p> <p>As stated on our main page, the difficulty with these types of incidents is proving that they are, in fact, caused by an electronic defect. This is because modern cars are controlled by computers, which don't leave any trace of malfunctions. It is analogous to your computer crashing, and then being fine upon a reboot. It is difficult to "duplicate" a computer crash. Our assertion is that an electronic malfunction, most likely in the CAN bus, causes the throttle to go wide open. There simply is no other explanation for the throttle going wide open. </p> <p>As stated above, I knew immediately that I had stepped on the gas instead of the brake. People do not press the pedal all the way to the floor for an extended period of time and not realize they are on the wrong pedal. Take the San Diego incident. That family had time to call 911 while the car was going 120mph (the call is on our site, it lasts over 30 seconds.... an eternity in such a situation). Do you really think that four people would drive for over a whole minute going 120mph and not realize the driver was on the gas??? It simply doesn't happen. Logic must prevail. </p> <p>As for NHTSA, despite 30+ years of getting it wrong, they have finally stepped up to the plate in the face of mounting criticism and said that there is an "underlying defect" that causes SAIs, although they don't know what it is (see the LA Times article titled "Regulators slam Toyota over 'no defect' claim", posted in our News section). For those who have been following this issue for a long time (we have been intimately involved with sudden acceleration for over 15 years), it is clear that NHTSA has dropped the ball. As a result, independent groups are currently researching this issue and pressuring NHTSA to change the way they handle reports of sudden acceleration incidents. </p> <p>In your post, you repeatedly speak in certainties, making it clear you have never actually researched this issue closely, as we have. I doubt you have ever looked at NHTSA's database of Vehicle Owner Questionnaires (VOQs). You said in your post: "Driver error is always the culprit." This is very far from the truth. The VOQs have thousands of sudden acceleration reports, and many of them are categorized as "stuck-throttle" incidents. Indeed, Ford had many problems with this issue and admitted as much. The defect was in the design of the pedals, many of which got stuck and caused accidents. This is but one example of SAIs in the NHTSA database which were not driver error. </p> <p>Your claim that sudden acceleration is the result of drivers not being "used to the vehicle" is unsupported. The layout of automobile pedals is not radically different than it was a decade or two ago. In fact, the layout has barely changed (if at all) because most drivers are accustomed to it. </p> <p>Finally, your statement: "Brakes override the accelerator. Simple physics." could not be more wrong. (Read toward the bottom of the LA Times article titled "Toyota's runaway-car worries may not stop at floor mats" AND Consumer Reports' article titled "How to stop a runaway car: don't pump the brakes") The LA Times article stated that it can take up to 225 lbs. of braking pressure to reign in a car at full throttle, far more than the average person can exert on the brakes. The Consumer Reports article includes a section "Testing theory at the track" in which their test revealed that pumping the brakes while the throttle was wide open made stopping the car "hopeless" because it depletes the vacuum assist for the brakes. Automobile brakes are not designed to stop 200+ horsepower cars with the throttle wide open. The LA Times article explains this very clearly. I encourage you to read it. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=1#post-3 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:39:23 +0000 Anonymous 3@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>Then you need to know you are alone!<br /> Sudden acceleration is on of the most blamed automotive occurances in history. It occurs when a driver presses the wrong pedal and cause the throttle to go wide open, making the person driving retarded if they cannot stop the car. It also does absolutely nothing to the brakes as they are completely seperate systems -- leaving a normal operating vehicle. Thousands of vehicles, including supsected vehicles, have been blamed for human error. Stop the insanity. It is your fault. Suck it up and drive on. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=2#post-2 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:49:25 +0000 Anonymous 2@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>First off let me explain that 'your' definition of Sudden Acceleration is completely wrong. “Sudden acceleration incidents” (SAI) are defined as unintended, unexpected, high-power accelerations from a stationary position or a very low initial speed accompanied by an apparent loss of braking effectiveness. In a typical scenario, the incident begins at the moment of shifting to Drive” or “Reverse” from “Park” (as quoted by NHTSA)notice no mention of any electrical device defect.The definition has also been modified to include Unintended Acceration, the difference being one occurs while moving and the other at a stop or very low speed. NHTSA has proven thousands of times that it is impossible to duplicate such experiences in vehicles, even in vehicles this has claimed to have happened in. Thousands. Not one duplication. Driver error is always the culprit. If it was an electrical defect you would be able to reproduce the occurance at least once, which has still yet to be done in the 30+ years this phenomena has been under investigation (Not including you crafty individuals who pull an Ed Bradley and rig a vehicle to do so). So by definition what you are "informing" people of is a lie. Do you know why most cases of this so called electrical defect happen in newer cars as you state? Bucause drivers are not used to the vehicle and basically we are a blaming culture. Brakes override the accelerator. Simple physics. I have yet to drive a vehicle that the brakes would not stop it and if you can prove this is not the case I would love to see that. The fact is, unintended acceleration or sudden acceleration is a result of driver error. Never has it been the vehicle. Not once. But feel free to challenge this with any actual proof which I can assure you you do not have. </p> http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/topic.php?id=1#post-1 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:11:37 +0000 admin 1@http://suddenacceleration.com/forums/ <p>Then you need to know you're not alone!<br /> Sudden acceleration is one of the most deadly automotive defects in history. It occurs when a car’s electronics cause the throttle to go wide open, making it impossible for the driver to return the car to idle if it remains in gear. It also severely limits the ability of the brakes to bring the vehicle under control -- leaving the unsuspecting driver at the mercy of a runaway car. Thousands of people, including drivers, passengers, and innocent bystanders, have been killed or seriously injured in sudden acceleration accidents. </p>