Capital Hill - Recall Testimony

I watched some of the testimony today and all Toyota owners should be very proud about the Public College System.

A professor @ Southern Illinois (Dr. Gilbert) with 30+ years of automotive technical experience and a passion for his trade created a lab experiment that would simulate the "Sudden Unintended Acceleration" ("SUA") claim that Toyota executives have been adamant until today was not possible.

Dr. Gilbert's work does not indicate he found the smoking gun, however, he did wake Toyota and the NHTSB by proving that a SUA is possible and it can happen without a default code, meaning all the safety overrides that Toyota have in their cars and trucks do not work. Also, since there are no default codes, every time a suspect car is inspected by Toyota there is no evidence of a problem, which is probably why all credible witness have been treated as suspect.

Needless to say, this discovery sent Toyota and the NHTSB back to the lab. This SUA and "drive by wire" issue that has plagued Toyota since 2004 will finally get the attention it deserves.

Due to the research of a Public Teaching Professional all of our roads will be much safer. I would like to thank Dr. Gilbert for his hard work.

ABCNews did an expose on Dr. Gilbert's experiment. check it out.


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/testing-toyota-9914148

 

Link to Dr. Gilbert's opening remarks:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20100223/Gilbert.Testimony.pdf

above correction:

"should be very proud of the Public College System."

 

i think its great he is testing this on his own and it is making toyota go back and re look the situations.. ill give you Dr. Gilberts rep vote

 

If its legitimate and will make the roads safer, why not?

 

The lady that gave the testimony beforehand claimed that shifting into neutral had no effect. If this is really the case, then what a terrifying situation to be in. If you can't shift it into neutral, I wonder if you can at least turn it off. If not, I guess you just stand on the brake and the parking brake and try to steer away from danger.

 

Toyota said the floor mats and the metal doo-hickey are NOT a fix and to still put the car in neutral when shit hits the fan.

 

Finally! I wonder what all the people saying that there was no way it could ever be the throttle control will do. I know we all love our trucks, but that doesnt mean we should stand up for toyota when they put out shady products. Dont get me wrong, like I said I love my truck. But transmission tsb? Rear leaf tsb? Floor mat recall? Gas pedal recall? Whatever the new brake over ride thing is? A&E's intervention needs to pay toyota a visit before they make the next gen tacoma. That thing better not have these issues!

 

Very interesting read... it requires a double fault to reproduce the UA but that's a pretty simple manipulation. I would be surprised if Toyota techs didn't find this or something similar since it's something a lot of folks with an electrical troubleshooting background would try just to see what happens. Maybe they did and just dismissed it as too unlikely... either that or the automotive world's dependence on DTCs and readers has reached the point of idiocy.

 

Not sure, maybe she's full of it. I wish they would have asked Dr. Gilbert what to do in the ABC news video. Would've been useful if he could've said what counteractions worked / didn't work in the situation he discovered.

 

Great Post!!! Thanks for the info.

 

If you watch it again, he says to shift it into neutral and apply brakes. I think that lady is full of it. She probably panicked And called her husband until God took over. Gotta get me one of those license plates.

 

I thought she also stated she put it in reverse and that didn't work? In my experience troubleshooting supporting software, it's usually the guys who writes the code that can't find the bugs until someone else has to inform them how to reproduce the scenario. Then they can write a fix for it. For example: if I right mouse click while chewing my gum my browser shuts down. Oversimplification of course but it's what comes to mind when this professor was able to reproduce by doing A + B = C.

 

It's Capitol btw...

 

Supposedly she went through every gear including reverse. I assume gear selection is mechanical, not software or electronically.

 

There's always one! LOL

 

Well, maybe there is a limit because a buddy of mine actually did something stupid the one day with his Taco. He was rolling forward slowly in N and accidently went into R (auto tranny). He played a nice tune for the neighbors. Nothing stopped him from doing it. Of course, this happened under 5mph.

 

Ok, the guy shorts out the two sensors at the same time (let's say you're really unlucky and that happens) then produces another separate short circuit in the system that we have no idea how he did it (could have rewired it, I don't know). I work in the electronics field and my understanding of a short circuit is sending a particular amount of current (higher or lower) where it shouldn't go, usually happens if you make a wrong connection. I don't see how this "test" makes any sense, the only thing I get from this test is no error code was registered, but he could have bypassed that by shorting out the two sensors at the same time (if they don't correspond that's when you get the code). This makes no sense, unless you do a really crappy stereo install.

 

Ok, before people try to discredit him simply because they have a hard time believing anything could possibly be wrong with our beloved trucks, he has a doctorate, and has been teaching at an university for 28 years.

 

At what point in the video does he say to shift it into neutral? I watched again but didn't hear that ...

 

Yes he is a professor and he was asked to produce an SUA scenario which he did, all praise to him. My question is what are the chances of that happening ? He didn't even explain what created the short circuit. Did he do this experiment on other brand vehicles ? etc. You should spend the day in a courtroom sometime and you'll realize you can make these "experts" say whatever you want.