Toytoa Prius that couldn't stop? It's probably a hoax.

[Phantasee]

Forbes

Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax
Michael Fumento, 03.12.10, 1:37 PM ET

"On the very day Toyota was making a high-profile defense of its cars, one of them was speeding out of control," said CBS News--and a vast number of other media outlets worldwide. The driver of a 2008 Toyota Prius, James Sikes, called 911 to say his accelerator was stuck, he was zooming faster than 90 miles per hour and absolutely couldn't slow down.

It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and "To get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes." During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC's report, Sikes "did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius." Others said, "Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral."

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes's story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he'd tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he'd pull such a stunt, beyond the all-American desire to have 15 minutes of fame (recall the "Balloon Boy Hoax" from October) and the aching need to be perceived as a victim.

The lack of skepticism from the beginning was stunning. I combed through haystacks of articles without producing such needles as the words "alleges" or "claims." When Sikes said he brought his car to a Toyota dealer two weeks earlier, recall notice in hand, and they just turned him away, the media bought that, too. In Sikes We Trust. Then the pundits deluged us with a tsunami of an anti-Toyota sanctimony .

Where to begin?

Well, the patrol car didn't slow down the Prius; the bumpers never touched. The officers used a loudspeaker to tell Sikes to use the brakes and emergency brake together. He did; the car slowed to about 55 mph. Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt. He stopped the car on his own.

There wasn't anything wrong with the transmission or the Prius engine button either.

Over a 23-minute period the 911 dispatcher repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused and then essentially stopped talking to her except to say that he thought he could smell his brakes burning.

"I thought about" shifting into neutral, Sikes said at a televised press conference the day after the incident. But "I had never played with this kind of a transmission, especially when you're driving and I was actually afraid to do that." Sikes, who has driven the car for two years, also said "I figured if I knocked it over [the gear knob] the car might flip."

He told CNN, "I was afraid to try to [reach] over there and put it in neutral. I was holding onto the steering wheel with both hands--94 miles an hour in a Toyota Prius is fast." Yet for much of the ride he had a phone in one hand. And this is especially interesting: Most gear shifts are on the console, requiring the hand to drop to shift. But, as this image shows, in the 2008 Prius it's located on the dash within inches of the steering wheel precisely to allow shifting without the hand leaving the wheel. I sat in one and did it easily. Another unique feature of the shift is that it's amazingly simple, with only forward, reverse, neutral and "B." The express purpose of "B" is to slow the car while preserving the brakes, as in a steep descent. Sikes actually could have shifted into two different gears.

Moreover, why would Sikes describe shifting gears as somehow "playing with the transmission." And apparently he's never shifted while the vehicle was moving and thought somehow a gear shift could flip his car.

The dispatcher also pleaded with him repeatedly to hit the ignition button. Again, he says he was simply afraid to.

Early in the press conference he said it was because "There was too much traffic to just shut the car off. You know, turn off the vehicle and get hit in the rear." But that's always true when you slow down; just make sure nobody's right behind you. Later he switched gears, pun not intended, saying he was afraid the steering wheel and wheels would lock up.

Then there are the brakes.

Sikes said his brakes had just been checked out a few weeks earlier, but during the incident he "was laying on the brakes. It was not slowing down."

Others have made similar claims, so Car & Driver magazine recently put them to the test. They found a V-6 Camry at full throttle could be stopped at 435 feet. But to really test the claim, they used a powerful 540-horsepower supercharged Roush Stage 3 Mustang. It took 903 feet, but stop it did. By comparison the Prius can only muster 110 anemic ponies. Further, as Newton's Second Law reminds us, weight is inherently a factor in slowing a moving object. The Prius weighs about two-thirds of what the Roush does.

But while these other cars were brought to full stop, Sikes says he couldn't even reduce his speed. A video on the Web also demonstrates a 2008 Prius easily slowed to a stop with the accelerator fully depressed.

An assisting officer said he saw Sikes apply the brakes and smelled them. But of course that was only when he drew close to the vehicle. The officer doesn't know what Sikes was doing before he arrived on the scene.

Now here's the potential smoking gun: Sikes told the reporters that "I was reaching down and trying to pull up on the gas pedal. It didn't move at all; it was stationary." That's awfully daring for somebody who insisted he didn't even want to take a hand off his steering wheel, notwithstanding that he did so to hold his phone.

I tried to imitate Sikes' alleged effort in a 2008 Prius. From the front bottom of the steering wheel to the front bottom of the accelerator in up position it's 28.5 inches; while fully deployed it's 2.5 inches farther away. I have average-length arms (33-inch shirt sleeve) and no gut. But even though the steering wheel was as flush to the dashboard as it goes, it prevented me from all but touching the accelerator in the up position.

To reach behind a deployed accelerator and get any kind of a grip you'd have to add at least three more inches. In my case, it required squashing my face against the radio and completely removing my eyes from the road. Only the tallest men could physically do what Sikes claimed he did and no press accounts refer his being exceptionally tall. But to settle this issue (albeit not the others), Sikes would simply have to sit in his Prius and show he could reach behind the pedal while it was fully depressed. Why has nobody asked him to do so? Moreover, even for an orangutan it would be an incredibly awkward move for somebody afraid to pop a car into neutral or hit the ignition button.

So why did he do it? Sleuth work at the Web sites Jalopnik.com and Gawker.com reveals that Sikes and his wife Patty in 2008 filed for bankruptcy and are over $700,000 in debt. Among their creditors is Toyota Financial Services for a lease on a 2008 Toyota Prius, with value at time of bankruptcy of $20,494. The Jalopnik Web site shows a copy of Toyota's secured claims form, though when Jalopnik questioned Sikes by e-mail he denied being behind on his Prius payments.

Sikes also has a history of filing insurance claims for allegedly stolen items that are slowly coming to light. In 2001 he filed a police report with the Merced County Sheriff's Department for $58,000 in stolen property, including jewelry, a prosumer mini-DV camera and gear, and $24,000 in cash, according to Fox40 in Sacramento. His bankruptcy documents show a 2008 payment of $7,400 for an allegedly stolen saxophone and clothes.

For what it's worth, Sikes owned and operated a Web site called AdultSwingLife.com. More salacious material on this man will continue to pour in.

But the press conference alone makes it clear Sikes' story didn't wash. Journalism schools are supposed to teach that skepticism is paramount. "If your mother says it, check it out," goes the old adage. Yet comments on Web sites across the country reveal that practically everyone thought the Prius incident was a hoax--though they couldn't prove it--except for the media.

They have been as determined to not investigate Sikes' claims as Sikes was to not stop his car. It's a Toyota media feeding frenzy and the media aren't about to let little things like incredible stories and readily-refutable claims get in the way.

Michael Fumento is director of the nonprofit Independent Journalism Project where he specialized in science issues. He can be reached at fumento@pobox.com.

[Phantasee]

And op-ed piece from the Washington Examinerthat looks into what might be the real source of the problem:

Theodore H. Frank: I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius
By: Theodore H. Frank
OpEd Contributor
March 11, 2010

I’ve been driving Toyota Priuses since 2001. As a junior defense lawyer in the mid-90s, I litigated a number of bogus sudden acceleration cases that were brought against General Motors.

So the recent kerfuffle over alleged mysterious electronic problems with the Prius and other Toyotas has certainly caught my attention beyond just throwing my floor mat in the trunk.

I knew the public hysteria had reached unprecedented proportions when my father, a Ph.D. geologist skeptical of everything from George W. Bush to global warming (and that’s just the G’s), credulously emailed me repeatedly to demand I read a press release from a plaintiff’s lawyer on how to prevent runaway vehicles.

The short answer: hit the brake and stay on it. Every vehicle on the road today has a braking system more powerful than its engine. Shift into neutral. Then turn off the power.

So James Sikes, who made a dramatic 911 call from his Prius on Interstate 8 in San Diego earlier this week, is effectively claiming he had an electrical problem that affected his throttle, his brake, and his power system, because it took him over 20 minutes to stop his car.

Somehow no one in the press has asked Sikes how it is he could stop the car once it had slowed to 50 mph, but not when it was going 90 mph. Have Balloon Boy and the finger-in-the-chili taught us nothing?

Even if one believes all the hype, the reaction so far has been a giant overreaction. Fifty-odd deaths over 10 years and millions of Toyotas is a drop in the bucket compared to the general risk of being on the road at all.

It’s entirely possible that more people will be killed driving to the dealer for the recall than lives will be saved from going through the safety theater demanded by the Department of Transportation.

As Carnegie Mellon University Professor Paul Fischbeck calculates, I face 19 times more risk walking home the mile back from my Toyota dealer than I would driving a car that one assumes has the electronic defect.

But one shouldn’t believe the hype. We went through this a generation ago with the Audi 5000 and other autos accused of sudden acceleration, and, again, mysterious unknowable car components were supposedly at fault.

In a North Carolina case I worked on, the plaintiff’s expert theorized that electromagnetic transmissions from submarines might have set off the throttle via the cruise control, though, unsurprisingly, he was not able to duplicate the effect while driving around electrical towers with much greater electromagnetic interference.

Back then, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) spent millions studying the issue. They found that sudden acceleration was several times more likely among elderly drivers than young drivers, and much more frequent among the very short or someone who had just gotten into a vehicle.

Electromagnetic rays don’t discriminate by age and height, which suggests very much that human factors were at play: in other words, pedal misapplication. A driver would step on the wrong pedal, panic when the car did not perform as expected, continue to mistake the accelerator for the brake, and press down on the accelerator even harder.

This had disastrous consequences in a 1992 Washington Square Park incident that killed five and a 2003 Santa Monica Farmers’ Market incident that killed ten—the New York driver, Stella Maycheck, was 74 (and quite short); the California driver, George Russell Weller, 86.

We’re seeing the same pattern again today. Initial reports of a problem, followed by dozens of new reports “coming to light” as people seek to blame their earlier accidents on sudden acceleration.

Again, mysterious car components are at issue, this time, speculation of software or electronics going haywire. But if the problem is software, it is manifesting itself a lot like the Audi sudden acceleration did.

The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota “sudden acceleration” fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking.

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

But Toyota is being mau-maued by Democratic regulators and legislators in the pockets of trial lawyers—who, according to the Associated Press, stand to make a billion dollars from blaming Toyota for driver error.

And that is before hundreds of past run-of-the-mill Toyota accidents that killed or injured people are re-classified in future lawsuits as an electronics failure in an attempt to win settlements against the company.

Media irresponsibility severely damaged Audi’s brand for years in the U.S.; GM’s litigation expenses from sudden acceleration and similarly bogus product liability suits contributed to its recent need for a taxpayer bailout.

Certainly, the dozens of deaths reported to NHTSA are real tragedies—as are the tens of thousands of other automobile-related deaths that occur every year. While it’s certainly possibly the case that floor mat troubles have caused a handful of accidents, the media needs to exhibit more skepticism before it does trial lawyers’ bidding against Toyota on a speculative theory of electronic defect that is absent of evidence.

Theodore H. Frank (http://tedfrank.com) is the founder and president of the Center for Class Action Fairness. He does not speak for General Motors.

[Stark]

That is pretty funny stuff. The 'hoax' sure cost Toyota a shitload of money.

[Darth Wong]

I expressed my incredulity at this story when I heard about it, especially the obvious question about why he didn't just shift it into neutral. My exchange with Rebecca went something like this:

Me: "Why didn't he put the transmission in neutral?"

Her: "I'm not sure. I think they might have said on the radio that he was afraid to."

Me: "What? Why the hell would be afraid to? Shouldn't he be more afraid of being in a car that's out of control?"

Her: "Well, I might be afraid to do it too."

Me: "Why?"

Her: "Well I don't know, maybe he was afraid the car would spin out or something."

Me: "Why on Earth would it do that?"

Her: "I don't know. I don't know anything about transmissions."

Me: "Well of course you don't. You're a girl. But this is a man. He has a fucking responsibility to have at least some kind of knowledge of what a transmission does."

Her: "That's pretty sexist, isn't it?"

Me: "Yes."

[SirNitram]

As an avowed Pedestrian And Mass Transitter, my knowledge of yanking it into neutral on this situation is limited. It'd halt the engine's push on it, I know that.. I also vaguely remember this is a way to wreck your transmission, which is also an excellent way to ensure a stop, when bits start grinding together.

Failing that, man up to a handbrake turn.

[Dominus Atheos]

I was once driving a car that had the gas pedal stick and you know what I did? I turned the engine off! Anyone who encounters a situation like that and needs to have a cop car stop them must be either a retard or a liar.

[cosmicalstorm]

I figured he was looking for some nice lawsuit money. I'm sure we'll see more people try this.

[Phantasee]

Nitram, there's not much yanking or grinding involved. You put it in neutral, your drive axle is no longer engaged with the engine. This means no power to the wheels, so the throttle can be wide-open and the engine can redline all it likes, it won't accelerate your car. Car is coasting. It's like riding your bike once you've got some speed built up, you can stop pedalling.

[SirNitram]

Nitram, there's not much yanking or grinding involved. You put it in neutral, your drive axle is no longer engaged with the engine. This means no power to the wheels, so the throttle can be wide-open and the engine can redline all it likes, it won't accelerate your car. Car is coasting. It's like riding your bike once you've got some speed built up, you can stop pedalling.

Thank you, for increasing my sum total knowledge. This is why I'm avowed pedestrian(That, and my mind can never get a good handle on how far the car extends from me in every direction..).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I have done the following to a automatic transmission vehicle in motion:

1. Shifted into neutral at speeds in excess of 60mph.
2. Deactivated overdrive, thus downshifting from fourth into third gears.
3. Shifted from third to second gear at speeds as high as 45mph.
4. Shifted from second to first gear at speeds as high as 30mph.
5. Shifted from neutral back into drive at speeds above 50mph.
6. Turned the car's engine off while driving 60mph when a bunch of warning lights came on, and drove over to the side of the road after punching on my emergency lights using my velocity to help turn the wheel without power steering.

Total damage to my car? None, nor would there ever be.

It is part of the normal operating capabilities. Automatic transmissions are designed to adapt to the engine speed and wheel speed, that's why they're automatic; secondly, they're all designed for manual override so you can use engine braking like in a manual, and I engine brake automatic transmission cars all the time, as I've explained in prior threads on the subject of vehicle transmissions on this board before. Removing power from the wheels at speed by shifting the car into neutral causes a slight wobble in FWD cars as your ingrained correction for the slight engine steering of a FWD vehicle causes you to veer to the side, and absolutely nothing more.

Literally, the only reason this is happening is because American drivers receive no training whatsoever in how their vehicle operates and how it can actually be controlled on the highway. I know by experience: My driving test consisted of making four right turns around an eight block rectangle and then parallel parking, and after having done that successfully I was licensed to drive any non-commercial two axle vehicle in the United States without supervision, reservation, or limits! As well as passing a written test in which half the questions were about the punishments for speeding and driving while intoxicated instead of the vehicle handling regimen. I unsurprisingly got in an accident with two weeks of getting my license and didn't learn the true capabilities of my vehicle until after I'd gone through pilot's licensing training and gotten my pilot's license, then I back-applied that knowledge to driving and realized just how much I'd been missing and just what operational functionality and capabilities in an automobile actually existed.

Only the failure of the average American to learn on a manual lets this bullshit be possible: If they were driving manuals they'd at least know that the clutch disconnects power from the wheels while at speed in operation all the damned time, which is no different from shifting a torque converter into neutral!

[Phantasee]

I've had this nagging suspicion for a while now, and I want to get it out, and I hope you guys don't think me a conspiracy nut for it.

This is a conspiracy to ruin Toyota's reputation. The problems are blown way out of proportion, the only people claiming there is an accelerator problem is some think tank in Massachusetts, and their numbers are somewhat dodgy. The Transportation Secretary told people to park their Toyotas. He may have withdrawn his comments later, but we all know the effect of a statement: once it's made and repeated enough, it is the truth, no matter how much evidence stacks up against it. First impressions and all that.

The US government probably didn't instigate this, of course, but it's got an interest in continuing it: it owns part of GM and Chrysler, Toyota's direct competitors. So there's a clear motive.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The ONLY way you could damage a car by shifting is if you went from drive to park at 90 mph. That MIGHT cause a spin or flip, but you'd have to try really hard to make that happen.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Maybe if those US companies make good cars, they won't need to whip up a flurry over a superior competitor.

I smelt a rat from the start, especially when I heard the old guy's account of an "out of control" Toyota in this country. Which was almost comical in how depressingly dull it was.

[Phantasee]

Constantly shifting an automatic up and down will increase wear on an automatic transmission, and depending on how old it is, increase the shocks to the CV joints or the drive shaft. Newer transmissions will probably have less of an issue with that, but those have more computer control anyway so you might as well let the car handle that for you.

Manuals have fewer parts and are designed to be constantly shifted by hand, so they're a bit tougher. Either way, unless you're on a mountain road, or facing an uncontrolled acceleration issue (a real one), it's not really worth it to fuck around with your gears. Especially if you're driving an older car, particularly if it's an American car. Chrysler's minivans may be the most popular vehicle in N America since the model T, but they have poor transmission lifetimes.

[Coalition]

My thoughts when I heard it on the news were that he was afraid to take his hands off the wheel (due to the speed) to shift into neutral (or that shifting into neutral didn't work, but that would be really weird). For the phone, you have the Jupiter jack, where the phone broadcasts through the car's radio. He uses voice to call 911, then talks to them through the car's radio.

I was wrong.

[Falkenhorst]

With a manual transmission you can't really screw it up by downshifting or going to neutral. If you downshift at high speeds it just causes the engine to rev way higher for a minute until the motor syncs up with the axle again. You could probably screw up your transmission if you managed to shift into like first gear going 50 or 60 but you have to jam the gearshift hard and if you do that you're a butthead anyway. Same goes for shifting into neutral or pushing the clutch in at highway speeeds, the motor will just freewheel. You can park a manual transmission facing down a hill and start it by getting it rolling about 20 MPH and dropping it in 3rd gear, turning on the ignition and letting out the clutch. Obviously if your motor is revving way out of control you should shut it off as quick as you can so you don't blow it up, but on newer vehicles there is a governor that prevents the engine from exceeding a set rev limit. You're supposed to just shift to neutral, get the vehicle off the road safely, and shut the motor off in that order so you still have power steering and brakes. The governor is supposed to stop the engine from damaging itself by overrevving. Just like the Duchess said, if people knew what the hell they were driving they wouldn't have these "problems".

[tim31]

The ONLY way you could damage a car by shifting is if you went from drive to park at 90 mph. That MIGHT cause a spin or flip, but you'd have to try really hard to make that happen.

To get to Park in an AT you have to go through Reverse, and I reckon most auto transmissions* out to the last 20 years(at least) have reverse locked out while in forward motion.



*read: all the AT equipped cars I've driven

[eion]

Don't even have to press the stick release on my AT to shift into neutral from drive, but it won't go up one more into reverse without the pressing the stick release.

Having both shifted my car into neutral at highway speeds many many times, and driven my car at over 100mph on highways (I know, naughty naughty.) I concur that American drivers in general are shit and have not place complaining about anyone else's driving until they sort theirs out. It is far to easy to get (And keep, look at all the old people who drive but shouldn't be) a license in the United States.

[Broomstick]

As an avowed Pedestrian And Mass Transitter, my knowledge of yanking it into neutral on this situation is limited. It'd halt the engine's push on it, I know that.. I also vaguely remember this is a way to wreck your transmission, which is also an excellent way to ensure a stop, when bits start grinding together.

As mentioned, putting it into neutral shouldn't damage the transmission. And even if it did, you can buy a new transmission - you only get one body. As we say in aviation "Save the skin, not the tin".

It's not like stuck throttles are limited solely to Toyotas - last summer I had a stuck throttle in my Ford Ranger. I put it in neutral, hit the emergency flashers, pulled into a parking lot, popped the hood, did a quick fix, drove it home, and then had a real mechanic look at it to make sure it was really fixed and would stay that way. Nobody hurt, nothing broke.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that driver's ed in the US provides NO training for such emergency situations. So you have ignorant fucks driving around, with predictable results.

I unsurprisingly got in an accident with two weeks of getting my license and didn't learn the true capabilities of my vehicle until after I'd gone through pilot's licensing training and gotten my pilot's license, then I back-applied that knowledge to driving and realized just how much I'd been missing and just what operational functionality and capabilities in an automobile actually existed.

I managed to avoid getting in car accidents, despite the fact that I was never required to pass a road test to get my license! At the time I got my license in Michigan simply passing a high school driver's ed course got you out of the road test part of licensing - I hear they have eliminated that loop hole. If I didn't get into an accident it's to the credit of my driver's ed instructor, who actually gave a damn about teaching kids to drive properly, and my parents, who wouldn't let me get my license until THEY were happy with how I drove. Of course, we all know that a lot of "teachers" and parents are not so conscientious.

And, I, too, did not become a good car driver until after I got my pilot's license. Probably fortunate for all concerned that I didn't do much driving before I needed to get myself to and from the airport (I was lucky to live where there was actual mass transit). Also, pilot training taught me how to deal with emergencies - and that can mean the difference between an annoyance and a fatal accident.

Only the failure of the average American to learn on a manual lets this bullshit be possible: If they were driving manuals they'd at least know that the clutch disconnects power from the wheels while at speed in operation all the damned time, which is no different from shifting a torque converter into neutral!

Oh, please - it's not necessary to drive a manual to know this. My Other Half is physically incapable of driving a manual transmission yet he knew this long before I did. There's no reason on god's green earth that people who drive automatics can't be taught how things work, practice dealing with emergencies, and take the car out to a safe place to shift it into neutral while driving to demonstrate to their little pea brains that it won't cause the car to do somersaults or explode or whatever. The reason people don't know this is that driver's education in this country is a fucking joke.

I've had this nagging suspicion for a while now, and I want to get it out, and I hope you guys don't think me a conspiracy nut for it.

This is a conspiracy to ruin Toyota's reputation. The problems are blown way out of proportion, the only people claiming there is an accelerator problem is some think tank in Massachusetts, and their numbers are somewhat dodgy. The Transportation Secretary told people to park their Toyotas. He may have withdrawn his comments later, but we all know the effect of a statement: once it's made and repeated enough, it is the truth, no matter how much evidence stacks up against it. First impressions and all that.

The US government probably didn't instigate this, of course, but it's got an interest in continuing it: it owns part of GM and Chrysler, Toyota's direct competitors. So there's a clear motive.

Naw, that's not conspiracy nut stuff - I've been hearing people speculate for weeks about when the fakers are going to come out of the woodwork and how suspicious this Prius incident was. There is no question that there are people with a motivation to smear Toyota.

It's like the people who get all pissy that Toyota is a "foreign" car company. Um, yeah, the ultimate ownership is Japanese but Toyota employs a lot of Americans, which is often what the objection centers around. That Ford or GM might have been assembled entirely abroad - the company is owned by Americas, but the jobs you support by buying that vehicle are all abroad, you're not helping your neighbors by buying it unless you live next to the company CEO. Fact is, car production is a global thing. If where it was built matters to you you'll have to do more research than just looking at the brand name.

I have a Ford and I have a Toyota. Surprise, surprise - I'm happy with them both. Maybe that's because when I was looking for vehicles I bought based on my actual needs rather than brand loyalty.

[Channel72]

I don't tend to drive much, so I'll admit I just basically believed the story when I first heard it. However, I was really puzzled over how the fuck someone was able to maintain a speed of over 90 miles-per-hour for over 20 minutes on the San Diego portion of Interstate-8. I've actually driven on that road, and the traffic was generally horrible. You'd need to be a professional race-car driver to maintain a speed like that, weaving from lane to lane through the traffic, unless you were driving at like 3:00 AM in the morning.

[Netko]

Only the failure of the average American to learn on a manual lets this bullshit be possible: If they were driving manuals they'd at least know that the clutch disconnects power from the wheels while at speed in operation all the damned time, which is no different from shifting a torque converter into neutral!

This.

At the risk of doing the usual automotive thread superior European driver licensing thing - even my mom, who embodies pretty much every women driver stereotype except the reckless ones (she's been driving for 30 plus years now without a self-caused major accident), after seeing that 911 crash tape (that off-duty cop and his family) exclaimed "Why did those poor idiots not shift into neutral?!?". She literally couldn't understand it - I had to explain to her how automatics function, and then that you can actually get a license in the US on only an automatic without any real understanding of how a car functions. Then again, she learned to drive on 70-ies Yugoslav cars (a Fićo to be exact) - you pretty much had to be pretty aware of a car's basic functioning to be able to drive one - a Yugo was a great step forward in driver friendliness.

Still, I'm of the firm opinion that anyone who cannot pass a proper European-style driving exam on a manual (excepting people with disabilities) has no business being on the road.

This whole Toyota business is pretty distressing to me, since I own a Toyota Yaris original 2000 model, which has, up until now, held its price extremely well - its considered better then the followup 2005 Yaris (the one available in the US). Yet, looking at the listings, its lost something like 500-1000€ in value from this scandal - even though its not affected, being a manual manufactured before any of the problematic models (manual or automatic) - simply on Toyota's brand, which was based on extreme reliability, taking a beating.

[aerius]

I was once driving a car that had the gas pedal stick and you know what I did? I turned the engine off! Anyone who encounters a situation like that and needs to have a cop car stop them must be either a retard or a liar.

Problem. It's a lot harder to do this in the newer cars which use a pushbutton to start & stop the engine. You can't just turn the key to instantly shut off the engine, you need to press and hold the button for several seconds to get the engine to turn off when the car is moving. Not the easiest thing to do in a panic situation, and that assumes the driver's actually read the owner's manual and can actually recall that tidbit of info. I doubt I could find 1 in 10 drivers who can. Pushing the button several times in quick succession which is what a panicked driver would most likely do won't turn off the engine in most cars.

Problem #2 has to do with automatic transmissions. Some of the newer ones won't let you shift into neutral under load, which means if the gas pedal is floored the transmission isn't going into neutral thanks to the electronic controls.

So now you have 2 braindead "design features" which in combination can really fuck over your day. I know for a fact that Toyotas (including the Prius) do use the pushbutton start/stop ignition switch, if they also use one of these new-fangled transmissions then the driver is going to be fucked if the car suffers runaway acceleration from whatever cause.

Then you have problem #3, or the proper method of braking a runaway car which few people are going to know about unless they've taken high performance driving courses. The proper method is to slam the brake pedal down as hard as you can and keep it down until the car comes to a complete stop. And you'll need to step on the brake pedal a lot harder than usual since the brake assist comes from engine vacuum, under full throttle there's not much engine vacuum and thus there's less brake assist.

If the driver's stepping on the brake pedal with the usual amount of force, the car's not stopping since most of the brake assist isn't there, the brakes aren't applied with their full force so the brake pads just drag on the discs and get hot without slowing the car much. Once the pads overheat the car isn't stopping until you let off the brakes and let them cool off.

---

Getting back to the "runaway" Prius in the OP, I knew this one was fishy from the very beginning when it was first reported. There is no fucking way a cop car is going to bring an untrained driver to a stop from 90mph with a bump stop. You'd need highly trained drivers and a bit of luck to pull it off without someone getting spun out.

Does this mean that all the Toyota reports are frauds? No, because we have this. A nice history of coverups going back over 5 years. This isn't something that just started in the last 6 months.

[Alyeska]

She literally couldn't understand it - I had to explain to her how automatics function, and then that you can actually get a license in the US on only an automatic without any real understanding of how a car functions.

Not entirely sure what you mean by that. In the US there is a single license for general use of cars. It covers both Automatics and Manuals. So there is no "only automatic" license. That said, the person who gets the license could have only ever driven an automatic.

[Broomstick]

I have to get my Toyota driver's manual out of the car and see if it says anything about shifting into neutral while driving. (Seriously, I think I'm the only person who actually reads the manual on my vehicles). As I said, i don't you need to be able to drive a manual transmission to know what the fuck to do in a crisis. Hell, I think that, even of those Americans who do drive a manual transmission they'd freak the hell out if a throttle got stuck and still wouldn't react properly. The problem here is NOT the manual vs. automatic transmission debate, it's that driver's ed in the US is SHIT. Just plain SHIT. People are not taught things that should be essential, such how to react in an emergency, which why they fuck up so damn often. Learning to point the car in the desired direction should be only a small part of learning to drive, how to handle emergencies should be the bulk of it along with basic maintenance knowledge. That doesn't mean everyone has to learn to change their own oil, but they need to know why it needs to be done and how often, stuff like that. It's not the transmission that's the biggest fault here, it's the squdgey porridge stuff between the ears. People are fucking idiots.

[Broomstick]

Problem. It's a lot harder to do this in the newer cars which use a pushbutton to start & stop the engine. You can't just turn the key to instantly shut off the engine, you need to press and hold the button for several seconds to get the engine to turn off when the car is moving.

Who came up with this design feature and why did they think it was a good idea?

Problem #2 has to do with automatic transmissions. Some of the newer ones won't let you shift into neutral under load, which means if the gas pedal is floored the transmission isn't going into neutral thanks to the electronic controls.

Who came up with this design feature and why did they think it was a good idea?

Seriously, why did they do this? Was there an actual reason, beyond "gee, whiz, that's cool! Why the hell not?" that they came up with this?

Then you have problem #3, or the proper method of braking a runaway car which few people are going to know about unless they've taken high performance driving courses. The proper method is to slam the brake pedal down as hard as you can and keep it down until the car comes to a complete stop. And you'll need to step on the brake pedal a lot harder than usual since the brake assist comes from engine vacuum, under full throttle there's not much engine vacuum and thus there's less brake assist.

And someone explain to me what that is NOT something discussed in driver's ed? For that matter, why don't we have routine re-testing where a driver would have to demonstrate knowledge of how to handle emergencies?