To add to the prior post, the article below was also sent out by ASQ
(American Society for Quality)
Friends don't let friends drive toadas You stand a good chance of
ending up incinerated. It was sickening to hear about a bright
outgoing 20 year old girl being incinerated so badly that it took two
weeks just to identify the remains, simply because she was driving a
new toada.
Experts Say Recalls May Not Solve Problem
CNN.com
February 10, 2010
In his hectic, noisy laboratory at the University of Maryland,
Michael Pecht is wary when it comes to assessing whether Toyota's
suggested repair of sticky gas pedals will have any real impact.
"They are in a bit of a quandary," said Pecht, a professor at
Maryland's Clark School of Engineering. "If they announce that
electronics is a problem, they are probably going to be in a lot of
trouble, because nobody's going to drive the car. So at this stage,
they don't want to announce there is any electronic problem."
But according to Pecht, who is an expert in failure analysis and has
written a book on sudden acceleration in automobiles, complicated
electronics-not a mechanical issue with the gas pedal-lie at the
heart of Toyota's problems. And three other independent safety
analysts contacted by CNN also conclude that neither floor mats nor
stuck gas pedals are an overwhelming issue.
"From what people have told me about their sudden acceleration
incidents, most of them have got nothing to do with the sticking
pedal at all," said Antony Anderson, an electronics consultant in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
Anderson said electronic throttle controls, which largely have
replaced mechanical accelerators, can malfunction in ways he compared
to an occasionally disobedient child. "We've all had that type of
experience, and I'm afraid that is the sort of experience that can
happen with any piece of electronics, with an electronic throttle,"
he said.
Sean Kane, who runs a company called Safety Research Strategies in
Rehoboth, MA, said, "Toyota's explanations do not account for the
share of unintended acceleration complaints that we have examined."
Toyota officials dispute any assertion the complicated array of
electronics in its cars has an impact on the acceleration issues that
have dominated headlines in the past weeks. "After many years of
exhaustive testing by us and by other organizations, we have found no
evidence of an electronic problem in our electronic throttle control
systems that could have led to unwanted acceleration," said John
Hanson, Toyota's spokesman on quality-control issues.
But experts such as Anderson say the tests conducted by Toyota are
not adequate. "Those tests do not reproduce what actually happens in
everyday life," he said. "They are testing for certain conditions,
for certain standards, but they test, for example, signals one at a
time. They don't do a whole lot of signals altogether. Whereas in a
car, you've got a great cacophony of electromagnetic interference
going on all the time, and you really can't rely on testing of a
single frequency at one time."
As for the U.S. government's testing of Toyota's problems, the man in
charge of the Center For Auto Safety, Clarence Ditlow, said a 2007
test on a Lexus-a Toyota brand-by the National Highway Safety and
Traffic Administration to find possible electronic interference was
amateurish.
"They didn't do any real testing," he said. "For all I know, they
just took a garage door opener, pointed it at the engine compartment
and snapped it, and that's electronic interference to see whether or
not anything happened. They closed the hood, and off they went. No
problem."
Efforts to contact the NHTSA in snow-bound Washington were
unsuccessful. But Toyota spokesman Hanson said, "It's very easy to
look from outside and say, 'There is no problem with the pedal.' But
this is the problem, and we are fixing it." He said the company
invited further testing and pointed out that NHTSA officials
announced a "fresh look" into the whole area of electromagnetic
testing, not just Toyota.
End quoted article, now back to my opinion:
For at least 20 years, Toyota in the USA has been so arrogant:
Dealers charging over sticker if you wanted one; ridiculous prices
for a used one; salesmen to stop talking to you if you as a technical
question and don't just follow the sheeple and say"oh! I've gotta
have one!" etc. In a way, I am glad to see them get their
comeuppance.
The heart of the matter is the same as the airbus: fly by wire
systems malfunction, and people die un-necessarily. When I first
heard about the recall, I was not too concerned. Now that the
evidence is being brought to light, it shows arrogance on the part of
toada in avoiding even a serious investigation into the problem. It
also shows the ineptness of federal bureaucracy. This article is
particularly disturbing because it indicates the recall is window
dressing and does nothing to address the root cause.
In light of this evidence, I think we should insist that vehicles be
refitted with hardware throttle linkages. And keep on driving our
old MBs with mechanical throttle linkages.
In honor of Herr Doktor Booth:
Loren Faeth, CQE, ASQ Senior member
(owns no fly by wire veeee-hicles)
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