Another point made on a radio discussion I heard today was that the number of deaths in Toyotas on a per car basis is lower than other cars. But since Toyota has so many cars on the road, the numbers of issues seems larger.

I wonder how many people, including highway patrol officers, may have been killed in similar situations in other types of cars, but they never had sufficient numbers to draw attention to one manufacturer, meaning people like CNN wouldn't be able to make a huge drama out of it so easily.

I think it is ridiculous that people don't realize you can simply nudge your car into neutral if anything is wrong.

But for the record, in that fatal Lexus RX accident, the man was trying to use the brakes to stop and he was telling 911 that they weren't working or slowing him down. Then the expressway ended and he blew through an intersection and rolled his car several times before it burst into flames. So maybe sometimes the brakes fail too? lol I don't know.

But I know he could have thrown that RX into neutral even without brakes...

in nor cal prius rarely do less than 80.
usually the fastest car on fwy.
and the most dangerous as well.

Another thing that amazes me is that people in this situation actually have the time and presence of mind to call 911 on a cell phone while apparently feeling their car is totally out of their control. Perhaps if their first instinct was not to pick up the phone, but to think of how to resolve their situation, they might be able to help themselves rather than expecting someone else so solve it for them while they're careening down the road at 90 mph.

So many people today believe that the minute anything happens to them, they have to pick up the cell and tell someone. I've been in the telecom business for most of my long career, and I can tell you that the phone would be the last thing I'd grab in a situation where my car seemed out of my control.

As an aside, one lesson here is that in business, you can spend decades carefully building a reputation, and in minutes, if you somehow miss some fundamental aspect of it, tragically mess things up - fair or not fair - perception, and not reality, can be what judges your business.

With respect to work, I am using this as a lesson to stress within my team (and looking for specific disaster recovery plans) that while we are all off delivering our results and making our customers happy, that we don't get complacent on the 3-5 fundamental items that almost always go smoothly but in rare cases can massively go wrong and seriously damage our team reputation.

In the flying business we learned a long time ago that it's more important in an emergency to fly the aircraft than to call the ground and talk to someone about a problem, that they can do little about.

Interesting observation... actually makes me think there's more to his story, probably all made-up to get some money out of someone... if my car was out of control at 90MPH, I totally wouldn't have time to call 911!

Old (fading) memories from Aerospace engineering school: In a fly by wire, you have at least 4 different redundant sets of calculators, constantly checking eachother. In addition, they should be of at least 2 different types, designed by different teams so you avoid any possibility of a systemic error and groupthink.

When plan crashes, it usually goes very wrong. Until now, cars were considered low risk, because worse case, you can always stop on the side of the road and walk away. I guess they will have to change that assumption and build redundancy.

(Can't really do this with a plane... Funny thought is that most of the times, real problems for passengers occur when the aicraft touches the ground, not while in the air. As long as you are in the air, you are probably alive. The ground is the real enemy here...).


FM

But your 911 is just starting to get into its groove at 90mph...on a prius you would be fighting to keep control. ;)

I've got a prius for my commuter. It's a fantastic car for what it is. I believe this hoopla w' Toyota is out of control. They build a great car. There could possibly be some remote issues but not as widespread as the media is making it out to be. Geesh....you would think these cars are "Christine". Re: the ordeal w' the Prius, it almost seems like the car was stuck in a "cruise control" mode w' no response from the brakes. Hard to "monday morning quaterback" without actually being there. I fly planes for a living & anytime there's an accident, the non pilots that I know ask me what happened. I always say, don't know but the investigators will find out. Hopefully, they'll figure these issues out & Toyota can move on. In the meantime, it's a great time to buy a Toyota!

That's why Porsche charges you extra for the carpet...so it is your fault that it stuck to the gas pedal

I was a porter for a Toyota dealer for 2 years and I'm pretty sure that floormats are extra in most of their models. Obviously sometimes they are thrown in for free during the deal.

Porsches suffer from INTENDED acceleration.

I also recently purchased a Lexus HS 250h for commuting purposes (hybrid gets single driver access to HOV lanes) and really like the car. Have no worries about an unintended acceleration situation...figure it will be a good test of my HPD skills :) Besides, with ten airbags and a "good" rating from the IHS, I'm covered (I think).

Something tells me that an airbag didn't help that state trooper I mentioned:

http://www.autospies.com/images/user...cene%20(1).jpg

I guess the scariest thing for me isn't the current set of problems, which seem for the most part to have the attention of the automaker and are being addressed, it's what I said before, that a car company could produce millions of cars with the single most basic item in the car improperly engineered. We're not talking rocket science here, but we are talking engineers that are supposed to be capable of it. It just makes me wonder, what else they screwed up, and if I'd be the one whose life it would take to figure out what it was.