Reply #91: It's a bit more than Audi II, but not much more. [View All]

[Tesha]

My take on this is that there really were five-and-a-half problems with Toyotas:

1. Floor mats in many Toyotas, combined with "long" gas pedals,
lead to the floor mats actuating the accelerator. If I'm not careful,
my Porsche (and its aftermarket but Porsche-branded mats) has
exactly the same problem.

2. The CTS pedals really did have the problem with their too-deeply-
engaged gearing that Toyota has described and now corrected.

3. The automatic transmission shift lever on some of the Toyota models
is simply far too difficult to operate with its gate that requires too
many sideways motions of the lever to get into "Neutral"; this is a
human-engineering failure.

4. The motor start-stop button of the keyless Toyotas has poor
human factors as well. Yeah sure, allowing a three-second press
to shut off the motor is good because it employs the same training
that people have built-up with their PCs, cell phones, and other
electronic gadgets (where a long press of the Power Button shuts
down even a hung system), but Toyota should have included the
same feature that Nissan has where three fast presses of the button
*ALSO* shuts off the engine. This would support users who are
panicking and repeatedly jabbing the button to also shut off
the engine.

5. Hard applications of the brakes should *DEFINITELY* over-ride
the setting of the accelerator. Again, many other car models
do this, even Porsches that still manage to allow heel-toe
braking in ordinary circumstances but know when you're
jamming on the brakes.

6. I think Woz has correctly identified either a firmware defect or
a hardware failure of the "speed-up" switch with the cruise
control of his Prius. Either way, I think this is a real-but-minor
defect in at least his Prius.


But there's *NO QUESTION* in my mind that the media "piled on" and
did everyone a really, really bad service in the way they've reported
this whole problem. Toyota became the media's "flavor of the month"
and they played the story as a "Panic! Panic! Terra! Terra!" story rather
than actually reporting the facts as they emerged.

Tesha