[aardvarkr]

Remember the issue of Toyota’s with unintended acceleration? That was 100% due to fat feet so this is indeed a very fair starting point. This has happened so so so many times without any technology involved. The tech may have changed but the human behind the wheel hasn’t.

[belter]

"Sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles" [1]

The first major cause of unintended acceleration was found in March 2007, when an engineering analysis showed that unsecured all-weather mats had led to pedal entrapment and drivers accelerating up to 90 mph with decreased braking power...

...Early on, Toyota suggested that driver error was to blame, saying that some people may have hit the gas when they meant to hit the brake...

...This led to Toyota sending a letter to the owners of the affected car, a 2007 Lexus ES350, asking that they bring their cars in to switch out the all-weather mats...

...After this recall, Toyota decided to revise the internal design of their cars to ensure that there was "10 millimetres (0.39 in) between a fully depressed gas pedal and the floor," but decided to only implement the new designs upon the next "full model redesign", which wouldn't take place until 2010...

...In an attempt to hide these defects from investigators, Toyota switched to verbal communication on the defect rather than traceable forms of communication. As a result, many new cars were knowingly produced with the same floor mat issues that had been identified as being having the potential to cause SUA problems in association with the defective pedal design..."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

That famous quote from Fight Club seems especially relevant here…

Reproduced below, for those who haven’t seen the film:

Narrator : [20:35] A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Woman on Plane : Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?

Narrator : You wouldn't believe.

Woman on Plane : Which car company do you work for?

Narrator : A major one.

[throwaway0a5e]

The "post-pinto" addendum being "and we don't write any of this down because we're not idiots"

[LanceH]

> The first major cause of unintended acceleration was found in March 2007, when an engineering analysis showed that unsecured all-weather mats had led to pedal entrapment and drivers accelerating up to 90 mph with decreased braking power...

That doesn't doesn't really align with all the people who were 100% sure they were stomping on the brake and the car was accelerating.

I think a very large portion of their "guilt" was due to being a non-Detroit/American company at a time when those companies where hurting. Everyone just loved to pile on with no evidence at all.

The exact same thing played out with the Audi 5000 in the 80's -- people hit the wrong pedal and lie. Until this issue is fixed, I would continue to suspect that first.

[nullc]

> Toyota’s with unintended acceleration? That was 100% due to fat feet

Wait. What???

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...

and

> Toyota Motor Corporation Admits to Misleading Consumers and U.S. Regulator About Safety Issues Related to Unintended Acceleration in Its Cars ... TOYOTA to pay a $1.2 billion financial penalty – the largest penalty of its kind ever imposed on an automotive company

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

[bumby]

Probably not with the Toyota given the model, but this can often be both a human error and bad design.

In some cases, "human error" is at least partly attributable to poor human factors engineering. It sometimes happens with SUVs and large trucks with large transmission wells that effectively move the pedals towards the driver side door. When in a panic situation, people will sometimes mistake the location of accelerator for the brake out of sheer muscle memory.