Reply #58: Who says they have many times the number of incidents?

[pipoman]

why Toyota has many times the number of such incidents as other makes.

And are we talking about reports which have surfaced since the initial reports came out. It appears to me from the link in post #6 of this thread that nearly every make and model has reports.

Please explain why Toyota has now added a "safety feature" that lets the brake override the accellerator, something that should have been there from day one.

As for the added 'safety feature', I suspect a couple of factors are in play. One may be that they are willing to do or try anything to take away any doubt. The other revolves around congressional hearings and the like. If, let's say, your neighbor began complaining about rats coming to his house from your house. Now you have never seen any rats at your house or even on your property, you have looked around and found no sign of rats anyplace on your property, yet your neighbor kept complaining until the neighbor sued you. You go to court and the judge orders, after hearing your neighbors story, and your denial that you have rats, that you must take action to stop the rats from going to your neighbor's house, what would you do? I suspect you would place bait or traps, maybe mow the grass a little shorter or remove any possible attractant on your property. Even though you still don't believe the rats were coming from your property, if you are taken back to court you know you had better have done something demonstrable to stop the rats...see where I am going here. I have seen this very scenario play out a number of years ago in a case I worked on briefly.

You clearly understand nothing about technology if you think some independent "scientist" could afford to spend millions of dollars and perhaps years of time to find a problem like this on spec. It's not their job and there is no reason for them to do it.

You don't think there is a small army of mechanics, scientists and engineers who are or have spent hundreds of thousands of hours trying to isolate a problem? Scientists, mechanics and engineers employed by government, insurance companies, lawyers, other car manufacturers, media, etc.? That there is the possibility for great personal and professional gain and notoriety for the person or team who isolates a verifiable problem? There are plenty of reasons for many non-Toyota people to be investigating this issue and in fact they are.

The idea that that state trooper has a stuck gas pedal or floor mat is ludicrous. I've had both of those happen to me and I reached down and fixed it. One's FIRST INSTINCT when the gas pedal is stuck is to physically unstick it. That didn't help these folks because the pedal was not down to begin with, a software or hardware failure made the computer think it was.

Troopers are humans. They are no less inclined to human error than anyone else. I don't believe that most of the reports of UA in the article posted in post #6 of this thread are caused by mats or because the pedals stick. I believe, like the scientists who investigated the Audi UA in the 1980's, that there is a somewhat rare phenomenon of human error related to panic which results in a person stepping on the gas believing it is the brake. I also believe that since this story broke there are many klingons (a term we used to call people who would try to inject themselves into class actions who really didn't have a legit claim).

And lastly, the ridiculous story floated last week wherein it was proclaimed that the "black box" showed that the gas pedal was down is laughable. If anything it proves MY CASE, in that the SYSTEM THOUGHT the pedal was down, just like the system that controls the throttle opening THOUGHT the pedal was down. Unless these use separate sensors, something I highly doubt, this information proves nothing.

As for this I have no idea. I wasn't in the car so I have no idea if the driver had the accelerator depressed or not. How do you know the pedal wasn't down?

If tomorrow it was decided that the position of pedals in Toyotas were, because of their positioning, more inclined to result in a person mistakenly hitting the gas instead of the brake, I could maybe buy that. But until someone says, this is the problem, and watch while I demonstrate, I am not a believer in massive cover ups, or impossibly illusive mechanical/electronic issues without answers. I am however a believer in the fallibility of humans.