The Toyota story is fascinating: somehow, despite floor mats for cars existing for many, many years without special locking mechanisms, we are supposed to believe that Toyota vehicles represented a unique risk, or that their drive/brake-by-wire software was much buggier than the rest of the industry.
The fact of the matter is that no-one has ever been able to demonstrate an actual software/hardware failure that would cause unintended acceleration (of the kind that would not stop if you pushed the brake pedal to the floor); nor show that Toyota floor mats were particularly likely to jam the pedals.
This was (almost to a moral certainty) a media-induced hysteria, with most cases being traceable to the usual cause of unintended acceleration - foot on the wrong pedal. ref https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153815/
For those who are unaware: all reasonably modern brake/throttle-by-wire cars have software that will disable fueling when the brake pedal is being pressed (that's why you need a special line-lock mode to spin the rears in your Mustang). Also, unless you're driving some kind of monstrously powerful performance special, your brakes can overpower your engine.
> Also, unless you're driving some kind of monstrously powerful performance special, your brakes can overpower your engine.
I've seen a few combinations of engine power and breaking power of car, and if I remember correctly, the breaking power was around 5x to 10x that of the engine.
It kinda makes sense, if you accelerate to 100km in 6s, you certainly don't want the breaking process to take the same time, but significantly less. 0.6s to 1.2s sound more reasonable to me.
If anybody has good data that compares these two powers in common vehicles, I'd like to see it, a quick search didn't find much useful.
The guy calculates the brakes of a late-model Corolla as almost 1000hp: if you stomp the brakes, you are coming to a stop. People in the UA cases are stomping the pedal; just the wrong one.
Stopping times vs. accelerating times are not even telling the whole story - the brake system is often not the limiting factor in stopping, it's frequently the friction of the tires on the road.
For anyone trying to test the brake + accelerator safety system in a Toyota, there are no mechanical components. It's entirely in software and only engages when specific conditions are met. (Sufficient speeds sufficient pressure on the brake, accelerator pressed before brake, etc.)
Please do not test safety systems, especially in a Toyota. They only work in specific conditions and usually too late for you to react if it doesn't trigger.
> no-one has ever been able to demonstrate an actual software/hardware failure that would cause unintended acceleration
It always disappointed me that toyota ended up paying out so much money for a 'software fault' which nobody could ever demonstrate/find, despite a lot of experts from both sides inspecting all the code.
The court deciding there probably was a bug despite nobody being able to find it seems... wrong. I understand courts doing that in cases where there is no evidence/the evidence was destroyed - but in the toyota case, the full source code/hardware was available, yet still no fault could be demonstrated.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere on the thread, but we had a 92 Camry (not included in the recall) that had an accelerator pedal that would stick. It happened to multiple drivers who have not had that problem in any other vehicle but would randomly deal with it a few times a year to know something was wrong. It’s been several decades, but I seem to recall breaking not disabling fuel line. When an issue occurs seemingly randomly it’s hard for a shop to diagnose.
I’m not sure if the Toyota recall dealt with a similar issue or not, but when it seemed so similar to the issue we dealt with that I figured it was more wide spread than just our car.
Was there hysteria? Probably. Did some Toyotas have sticky accelerator pedals? Certainly.
Your '92 Camry almost certainly had an actual throttle cable; throttle cable sticking is actually one of the many mechanical failure modes that throttle-by-wire solved. This used to be a thing for all cars; and it continues to be a common problem for motorbikes that still tend to use mechanical throttle linkage.
The fact of the matter is that no-one has ever been able to demonstrate an actual software/hardware failure that would cause unintended acceleration (of the kind that would not stop if you pushed the brake pedal to the floor); nor show that Toyota floor mats were particularly likely to jam the pedals.
This was (almost to a moral certainty) a media-induced hysteria, with most cases being traceable to the usual cause of unintended acceleration - foot on the wrong pedal. ref https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153815/
For those who are unaware: all reasonably modern brake/throttle-by-wire cars have software that will disable fueling when the brake pedal is being pressed (that's why you need a special line-lock mode to spin the rears in your Mustang). Also, unless you're driving some kind of monstrously powerful performance special, your brakes can overpower your engine.