The runaway Prius saga

Tonight, my co-host, Danny Cooper of priuschat.com and I record our weekly What Drives Us podcast. Rather than write out my thoughts, I’m spending more time digging into this. If you’re interested in an update, please check out our podcast. We’ll have a lot to say about it.

Suffice to say, for now, that the reporting on this continues to be abysmal, the stories fantastic and no rational explanation backed up by physical evidence has yet been offered, by anyone. Aside form Toyota, the big loser here is the American car buyer who is being slathered in innuendo and assumption and none the wiser for it.

Ouch

Now the Today show’s fake news segment is doing “re-creations” of alleged Prius acceleration incidents.

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No matter what’s going on here, Toyota has a serious problem and they need to get on this because I guarantee, the Today show won’t be doing informative updates on the issue.

This story is just bizarre. A two year old Prius suddenly does this. And the guy can’t slow until a CHP car comes alongside?

And can we see just one of these stories where the driver isn’t a grandparent?

UPDATED: The more I read about the less it makes sense. His pedal was “floored” but he was only going 90? I know for a fact the Prius tops out way above 90. The CHP officer states on the video he could see the brake lights on and could smell brakes but the car wouldn’t slow down? Then the driver states he never wants to drive the car again, somewhat reasonable under the circumstances but it also brings to mind the idea that if you wanted to get rid of your Prius, this is one great way to do it and get some face time on national news.

And although this issue is fraught with difficult details, situations like this might be the best argument yet for detailed EDR findings to be publicly accessible. I don’t know what the EDR records but it could possibly tell us whether or not this guy just wanted to dodge a speeding ticket or if the demons had possessed his Prius and it was out of control.

Toyota and unintended acceleration

It’s trite but it’s true. Like any complex problem, chances are, it’s unlikely there will be a simple solution. But simple solutions are what people want. Want? Demand. The idea that these sudden acceleration incidents could be the cause of many things, some driver error, some software defect, isn’t one most people want to hear.

As the cast of characters grows, as the networks decide to tap into this vein for melodramatic effect and as the omnipresent vultures of politics, the judiciary and consultants begin to smell blood in the water, I doubt we’ll be gifted with much more clarity. And so the numbers, from handfuls to dozens to thousands of incidents changes, so do the circumstances.

Here’s my take.

The time in front of congress was mostly worthless to citizens and car owners. It gave a lot of otherwise undistinguished congressional reps a chance to grandstand on C-SPAN with the hopes of catching some replays on their various local news shows. It gave a few consultants a chance for some billing. It gave some victims a chance to cry in public.

Some, random but interested tidbits…

Why has David Gilbert’s name been scrubbed from the SIU website? And just to make it more confusing, he’s not this guy.

Toyota proved, via a live webcast, that you can make any car with an electronic throttle accelerate out of control and not throw a fault code if you’re willing to re-engineer the pedal wiring (link to Autoblog coverage) as Mr. Gilbert, the automotive expert did. I guess that’s a net win for Toyota, sorta.

Sean Kane was put on the table as the opening bet, Toyota raised with Exponent. As expert guns for hire go, Toyota may be ahead on points but not by much.

Rhonda Smith took the stand to shame Toyota and thank god (for stopping her car) none of which really addresses why her car “went out of control” in the first place.

Driver error is still the phrase which must not be intoned. At least according Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton who demanded to know if her Camry hybrid was safe. Norton’s exceptionally pathetic performance was only matched by her lack of listening skills. After she went on at length about how aggrieved she was at not being able to buy an American made hybrid, she bought a Camry hybrid. When TMS president tried to tell her that in fact, the Camry was made in Kentucky with a significant number of American parts Norton deftly, if not somewhat bizarrely contended that he was trying to blame American victims for Toyota’s problem.

Yeah, it was that uplifting and informing.

In the end, which isn’t here yet, we’re left not really knowing what’s going. That isn’t to say I’ve parked my car nor should you. I think that, some time in the future, we’ll learn that this was a large part of driver error and a system in Toyota that doesn’t take lightly to defect allegations. That’s just my guess based on the number of incidents involved. I think the only thing I can say I’ve learned from this entire gymkhana thus far is that another part of our system is broken. Defunding and defanging NHTSA over the last decade was a dumb decision. Getting the government involved in a corporate bailout of a company that would, unquestionably, make its priorities even more complicated doesn’t help. Toss in a wilted salad of craven congressional reps. who can’t figure out if they should be kissing butt or whipping ass and you’ve got the situation we’re in.

Of course, as news develops, stay tuned here. I’ll be posting it.

What we can learn and what we will not learn

An interesting op-ed from Electronics, Design Strategy News on drive-by-wire and how we evaluate these systems. Here’s the closing graph;

The only parties in this little tragedy with an interest in improving the state of the art are the engineers, whom no one will consult, and the victims, whom the lawyers will silence. It would be better for everyone if it were a principle of civil law that, when a failure inflicts damage, the vendor and independent parties must place all of the diagnostic information they find into the public domain, and the courts may not use this information to assess or assign damages. Such a notion might somewhat restrict the income opportunities of litigators, but it would unquestionably assist the engineering community in learning from its mistakes.

I couldn’t agree more.

The one thing I learned from watching over ten hours of the House hearings was that the entire charade was merely an opportunity to grandstand for the various House reps’ own causes, whatever they might be, free trade, more business in their district, championing for “victim’s rights” the whole thing was, if you’ll forgive the term, Kabuki of the most tawdry sort exemplified by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton using the excuse of standing up for Toyota owners world-wide when she attempted to extract a commitment from Akio Toyoda that her Camry hybrid “would never be recalled”.

Transparency is the one thing that we all benefit from, car company, car owners, engineers. It’s the one thing we’re least likely to get.

What Drives Us #6 for February 26, 2010

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This week Danny and Russell are joined by Tony Schaefer and Eric Powers to discuss, the new Lexus CT-200h plug-in, Bloom Energy and the death of the Hummer. Eric Powers also gives us a great, in-depth view of the 2010 Chicago Auto Show.

Download it through iTunes here.

“Lexus lady”

Here’s some discussion from Leo LaPorte regarding the “Lexus Lady” some of who’s testimony you’ll find down below.

Once again, the one thing most parties in this can’t say is that drivers make mistakes and sometimes when they do, it leads to terrible things. I can’t say, without seeing the evidence, which incidents are driver’s mistakes or potential defect issues but I can note that this is the option NO ONE is talking about in the media. Apparently, in congress and in the media, all drivers are perfect it’s only vehicles and regulators that screw up.

UPDATE: Oh man, and I thought what I wrote was pretty harsh. Check this out.

Privacy

One of the things that came up several times during the congressional hearings are the “block boxes” in Toyotas. Of course, when one uses the term “black box” most of us tend to think of the flight data recorders in airplanes, mandated by law and regulated tightly by the FAA. Whether or not the data recorders available in some vehicles record as much data are airplane recorders isn’t self-evident. I’m looking into that. However, apparently, at least according to the testimony before congress, Toyota is the only one that encrypts this data so it is not readily available for examination without Toyota’s help. I don’t know if that’s true or if it is not. But that’s not exactly the point of this post.

Let’s pretend that Toyota’s data recorders are in every Toyota vehicle. Let’s further pretend that these data recorders gather a wide range of detailed data that might help determine, in the case of an accident, what happened. While congress is demonstrating their affected outrage that Toyota encrypts this data the thing not being said is, what if that data only proves that “sudden acceleration” is driver error? What if the data is inconclusive?

Now, let’s hypothetically deal with another scenario. If, in fact, data from vehicle data recorders would point to a reason for “sudden acceleration” that puts Toyota to blame. Then, I would opine, that Toyota should be taken to task for these mistakes/defects, whatever we wish to call them. I’m not here blindly defending Toyota against all reason. I’m merely suggesting that without evidence, Toyota is not necessarily the first, best place to look for blame.

Back to the vehicle data recorders. How many of you want to make public, information from a vehicle data recorder that would, hypothetically, deliver all the details of your driving? Think about it. Were you speeding? Will it show that the Bluetooth was active at the time of the crash? Will it show that you were engaging a high G turn at the time of the accident? How many drivers want this vehicle data made public after an accident when it demonstrates that the driver was or might have been at fault?

My point is obvious, yes, the data should be made public for the good of all drivers, no matter what car we’re talking about. Just keep in mind that, as history and statistics show us, most of the time it’s the driver, not something else, that caused the accident. When you have irrefutable data to prove that, suddenly “personal responsibility” takes on a whole new dimension. We should have detailed data recorders in all cars as a safety measure but we also need to keep in mind that data may not always be our friend. It is, what it is, data, and bytes are notoriously unsympathetic to human feelings.

Perhaps the wrong history to cite

How long before someone invokes the Audi’s “SAI”s (Sudden Acceleration Incidents) from the 80’s thinking this will further bolster their case against Toyota?

I’m waiting.

“God intervened”

This is possibly the most utterly pathetic tale of “out of control” I’ve ever heard.

And wow, you’re thinking how can I mock someone so emotionally affected by something obviously potentially deadly to her? Well, I’m not necessarily mocking Ms. Smith. I am however mocking her story, none of it makes sense. Remove the emo element, listen and watch with your brain. This is the kind of thing makes for great 24 hour cable news fodder but in the end, what does it tell us? What does her testimony mean?

I’ve said this before and I’l say it again, this is much ado about very little. And my heart goes out to the families of those who have died but I don’t know that this is Toyota’s fault. There’s this thing that no one, and mean NO ONE in the media or the political sphere is discussing because they’re not allowed to discuss it. It’s called pilot error. Sometimes pilot errors cause heinous plane crashes. Sometimes pilot errors cause cars crashes, well, not sometimes, frequently. It’s also human to not want to accept blame. None of that change the actual circumstances to make it more palatable for us or the families of victims. It doesn’t surprise me that no one in congress can even bear the mention of “human error”. When brought up yesterday one congresscritter went into full metal, “How dare you” mode. Of course one of her constituents couldn’t be at fault. It had to be evil Toyota dodging blame. The pathologically spineless humans that seem to infest congress appear to be only capable of expressing outrage when the source of their ire doesn’t contain any possible votes (or campaign money, hmmmm, Toyota).

Without any evidence to the contrary, I’m going with the cause of most accidents, human error. At least until the human stories sound better than this one.

Hey, it’s the POG on the brake recall on the BBC

BBC World News Hour, one of my favorite shows called me to talk about the Prius braking issue. If you want hear the interview, here it is…

BBC World News interview

What Drives Us Episode #5 for the week of February 17th, 2010

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This week Danny and Russell joined by Tony Schaefer to discuss, sorry, more on the Toyota recall, ton foil hat conspiracies, why does “sudden acceleration” occur (hint: it has to do with the gas pedal), more on the Nissan Leaf and the return of Maximum Bob Lutz, GM’s prognosticator supreme. We also pass along our most sincere sympathies to the families and staff of Tesla Motors for the tragic loss of three of their engineers in a terrible plane accident.

Download it through iTunes here.

Random thought

Did you ever stop to think about doors? I have.

You know, a door that opens out is great for a house. It makes sense. On a car, it’s ridiculously stupid. Car doors should open up (like a rotating gull wing door). Imagine all the dings in the side of your car that wouldn’t be there if car doors opened sensibly?

Yeah, I know. I do think about this stuff though.