I have that tattooed on my arse, so all of the stupid fat lazy suburbanites (who are behind me, because they're slow from being stupid, fat and lazy) can see it :D

Your instructor was wrong. Unless he was driving a 914 with a 450 hp conversion with standard brakes...

That hurts...

Z-man! Mike is being a poopy head!

They're stupid fat lazy suburbanites, you drive without pants...

I call it a draw. :p

Did Bankrupt Runaway Prius Driver Fake "Unintended Acceleration?" - Toyota Recall - Jalopnik

http://jalopnik.com/5491543/bankrupt-runaway-prius-driver-owns-adult-swing-website

links courtesy lfot

As I understand it on many, if not most of them, you can not defeat the traction control entirely. I would expect none of them to have an off switch in the future due to liability concerns. I would be far more surprised if you could turn off traction control than if you could not for this reason alone.

That's right. And turning off traction control defeats the purpose of why it was engineered into a car in the first place; to enable safer driving.

That makes me wonder if insurance companies would pay claims to a person if traction control was turned off at the time of an accident.

I'm sure any onboard computer would keep track of a car when its traction control has been disabled.

best comment in the link...
ha!

Why wonder rather than going and finding out? Traction control and ECU logging has been around for 15+ years on higher-end cars.

After seeing him conduct an interview with the press on the news the other night, I started to come in here and say that IMO, this dude did not have an honest face.

He had that... uh... semi-cheesy-I'm-comfortable-lying look that John Edwards has always had IMO.

Now he says he's not planning to sue. We'll see.

It also made me wonder whether the on-board computer "black box thing" is capable of showing if he was standing on the gas as well as the brake.

The officer that was helping him wouldn't be able to tell, but he did say he could smell the brakes.

I don't know the guy's daily schedule... don't even know what time if day it occurred, but it seems that it could've been premeditated in that he was able to have this crisis occur on a stretch of road that gave him room to go that fast long enough to call 9-1-1 and get help before he crashed.

I always thought they had multiple systems operating in different modes in case of failure?

rjp

No one will dispute the fact of the benefits to power and economy DBW offers - the question is, are the gains worth the potential chance of deadly failure?

We replace clutch cables and throttle cables after a certain amount of time on Porsches- no problems with that. Black box will fail anywhere, anytime with no warning.

I'm not a big fan of black boxes - I wouldn't want the thing squealing me out to the police every time I disabled traction control or floored it plus like I said, on snow and ice I find it unsafe. It will leave you stalled in traffic if you're not careful.

Drive a BMW and stop on an ice patch and try to pull away- see what that gets you..

rjp

You guys are still talking as though DBW throttle is a new, unproven and dangerous technology. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of unintended accelerationj on a DBW car that was actually attributable to the DBW system itself, other than perhaps the Prius?

You're still talking as if it's a necessity.

It's not.

Many critics think ALL of the unintended acceleration issues with Toyotas is software/computer related.

I like my cables thanks.

Maybe the other systems have had better system level design than these.

My issue is not with a DBW throttle. My problem is that everything goes through the computer, so you are at the mercy of the computer. A full computer failure has been considered, but not an instrumentation/wiring failure.

The computer get 2 inputs: WOT and BREAK HARD. The priority of these signals is something control engineers should be designing into the systems. I know I did as I designed "Fly by wire" Gas Turbine controls.

In our industry, the "Fly by wire" was replaced with "Fly by Network". They removed the control cables for each instrument and substituted a network cable with everything coming over on that. Many of us FORCED the group to consider a control-net failure. Even triple redundant, we still kept a dozen of the really important outputs hard wired.

Anyway, these systems need to be able to deal with 2 appearently conflicting inputs (You can press the brakes and the gas at the same time! Yeah? You've got 2 feet, right?) and design it to take the safer path.

I do not have the software in hand, so I can't tell you what is going on in there. But, if the California incident is real, I expect it will come out that the software was not designed failsafe. We can tell from reviewing the hydraulic diagram, that system is not fail safe.

Man at Wheel of 'Out-of-Control' Prius Has Troubled Financial Past
Friday, March 12, 2010
AP

The man who became the face of the Toyota gas pedal scandal this week has a troubled financial past that is leading some to question whether he was wholly truthful in his story.

On Monday, James Sikes called 911 to report that he was behind the wheel of an out-of-control Toyota Prius going 94 mph on a freeway near San Diego. Twenty-three minutes later, a California Highway Patrol officer helped guide him to a stop, a rescue that was captured on videotape.

Since then, it's been learned that:

— Sikes filed for bankruptcy in San Diego in 2008. According to documents, he was more than $700,000 in debt and roughly five months behind in payments on his Prius;

— In 2001, Sikes filed a police report with the Merced County Sheriff's Department for $58,000 in stolen property, including jewelry, a digital video camera and equipment and $24,000 in cash;

— Sikes has hired a law firm, though it has indicated he has no plans to sue Toyota;

— Sikes won $55,000 on television's "The Big Spin" in 2006, Fox40.com reports, and the real estate agent has boasted of celebrity clients such as Constance Ramos of "Extreme Home Makeover."

While authorities say they don't doubt Sikes' account, several bloggers and a man who bought a home from Sikes in 2007 question whether the 61-year-old entrepreneur may have concocted the incident for publicity or for monetary gain.

A man who bought a house in the San Diego area from Sikes in 2007 told FoxNews.com he immediately questioned the circumstances surrounding Monday's incident.

"Immediately I thought this guy has an angle here," the man said on Friday. "But I don't know what the angle is here."

The man, who asked not to be identified, said the home he purchased from Sikes had undisclosed problems, particularly "waterproofing issues," that cost him $20,000. He tried to sue in civil court, but Sikes had filed for bankruptcy during the process.

"It got to the point where it wasn't worth me paying legal fees to go after a guy who was broke," he said. "I ate the 20,000 bucks."

The man said Sikes came off as a dishonest businessman who was difficult to work with during the transaction.

"It didn't surprise me," he said of Sikes' recent troubles with his Prius. "I thought this guy is trying to pull a scam here."

Toyota executives, who have talked extensively with Sikes, have said they're "mystified" by Sikes' account.

"It's tough for us to say if we're skeptical," Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales, said Thursday. "I'm mystified in how it could happen with the brake override system."

Esmond said all Priuses are equipped with a computer system that cuts power to the wheels if the brake and gas pedals are depressed at the same time — something Sikes was doing.

Sikes' reputation apparently precedes him in Northern California, as well.

"I've been warned that he used to do business here," Jim Pernetti of AAA California Document Services told Fox40.com, "and that I should be very wary of anything with him."

Sikes called 911 on Monday to report that his gas pedal was stuck and his blue 2008 Prius was speeding at 94 mph down a freeway near San Diego. A CHP officer helped bring the car to a stop, but not before two calls to police dispatchers that spanned 23 minutes.

Asked why he didn't simply put his car in neutral, Sikes said: "You had to be there. I might go into reverse. I didn't know if the care would flip. I had no idea how it would react."

Sikes, who did not return several calls and e-mail messages, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the incident was no hoax.

"I've had things happen in my life, but I'm not making up this story," he told the newspaper.

Roughly 8.5 million vehicles worldwide have been recalled by Toyota, including more than 6 million in the United States, due to acceleration and braking problems in several models. Regulators have linked at least 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent experts to a New York City suburb where a 56-year-old woman said her 2005 Prius sped up on its own as she was leaving a driveway.

The latest Motor Trend (I think) had an article about runaway Toyotas. The synopsis of the artile was that the brakes generate more horsepower than the engine. They tested an Avalon, something else, and a Roush Mustang. Foot to the floor...stomp on the brakes and all cars stopped relatively well.

What they didn't do was see how long it took the engine HP to overwhelm/overheat the brakes, turning them into flaming debris.

The CHP cop that was murdered by his toyota had the misfortune of having his brakes catch on fire from overheating.

Maybe he had a troubled financial history.

It was Car and Driver. The only car that didn't stop in a reasonable distance was the Roush Mustang (500hp+). I have my own opinions but I don't want to poke a stick at Sniper.

WHATTT?????

The very fact that he said "I'm not making up this story" is enough to cause one to think he's probably lying.