Apparently, geography is everything

Good thing for James Sikes he lives in California and not Japan. From BusinessWeek…

Japanese police are recommending criminal charges against a driver who says his Toyota Prius crashed because of brake failure after an analysis of “black box” data showed no defects.

No small crime either…

The charge that Japanese police are recommending in the Prius accident is negligence in driving resulting in damage or injury. It carries a maximum punishment of up to seven years imprisonment or a fine up to 1 million yen ($11,000).

I still think it’s more than curious that the CHP refused to investigate the incident and would not even cite Sikes for his driving and, one might opine, filing a false report. As I’ve said before, my next driving trip should be fun if Prius drivers can do as they please in California.

Funny Prius video WARNING: NOT SAFE for work, children or the emotionally sensitive

This is pretty funny. I don’t agree with some of his ranting but the kind of drunken rage I can relate specifically regarding these “acceleration” incidents.

Want to see a 2010 Prius update?

Here it is, from yesterday…

One Prius owner’s tests results

Bob Wilson, one of the geniuses on the Prius Technical Group email list, with the use of an accelerometer claims he has managed to reproduce the 2010 braking issue. According to his findings when all the right conditions occur there is a 600 millisecond delay between the regenerative braking system and the stand friction braking system.

You can click on any of the graphs and see the in larger format.

Basically, what this shows is what we already knew. There is, in this case a 600 millisecond zone where the braking doesn’t increase (it doesn’t decrease either). Immediately after this the curve knees downward and the velocity of the vehicle decreases precipitously.

Again, this isn’t proof, per se, of anything we didn’t already know, just proof to confirm owners estimates the lag was about half a second long. Keep in mind, this is one test under one set of conditions and it is not necessarily indicative of what happen under different circumstances.

It’s clear that there is massive pressure for Toyota to address this issue and it’s clear to me that at this point, “education” isn’t going to cut it. They have to do something to change this lag time. From the reports I’ve read, new Priuses (made since sometime in December of 2009 to January of this year) have already incorporated a new set of ECU instructions that address this issue. More on that very soon.