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I really don't get this Toyota problem Update - HE FAKED IT


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The jury is still out on that. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100314/ap_on_...s_runaway_prius

How could he do that:

"The memo said both the front and rear brakes were worn and damaged by heat, consistent with Sikes saying that he stood on the brake pedal with both feet and was unable to stop the car. But if the fail-safe system worked properly, the brakes wouldn't have been damaged because power would have been cut to the wheels. "

Dunno if he faked it or not, but it wouldn't surprise me. BUT, on the issue of the brakes showing wear and heat damage.....it wouldn't matter if he used one foot or if ten people stood on the brake. You can only apply pressure on the pedal up to a certain point, then it reaches its max, at which point you can keep adding pressure on the pedal and it doesn't change how much braking performance you get out of it.

Because of that, he easily could have had one foot on the gas and one on the brake. You can get the max braking effort with one foot these days. He wouldn't even have to hit the brakes that hard to damage them. I have alot of experience at slowing from high and moderately high speeds, and I also have first hand experience with burning brake rotors (yes new ones and old sets of rotors).

Also, if you can look up Car and Driver online or in print, they did a neat article on how to stop not only the Camry but the ES300's as well if you have a stuck pedal. The way to cut the car off at speed is simply to hold the button for the correct amount of time. It was something like 3 seconds for one car and 4 for the other car, for them to cut off.

Oh, and they tested the ability to stop those cars under full throttle, and were successful, as long as you didn't do it repeatedly or with already hot brakes. It was an interesting article. They also tested other vehicles besides the Camry and its clones.

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But if you apply the brake at all it cuts power to the wheels. Brakes stop the 'gas'.

Yet his brake pads were burned away?

If he were giving it gas, taking his foot off the gas and hitting the brakes it would have slowed down if he were applying lots of pressure. If he was faking it and only lightly hitting the brakes so that he didn't slow down and then gassing it again to keep going fast his brake pads wouldn't have burned away.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has had a problem with a car or appliance that when the technician checks it he can't duplicate the problem. It's happened to me countless times.

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There are other ways to tell if he was faking it or not. One way is to check the distance he traveled and see what the average mph would be. It is not like he did not give enough info in the 911 tapes to find out if his speeds are credible. Would rather see kids from a university use science then Toyota or the GOV with this kind of thing tho. Not like you can trust either of the last two to find the truth.

In the video Scooby has shown tho. I am under the impression on the highway the car is in Drive? That would put N forward not to the left like the car would be running off the B for battery.

Edited by Wayne S
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Interesting. I didn't know that hitting the brakes in a Prius it cuts power to the drive wheels. I guess that is a function of its energy saving features. I don't know of other cars that do that though.

I do know you can burn up the pads with enough stops, but that wouldn't explain if his brake lights were lit up while he was driving. It would be nice to see the dash cam from the cruiser, but I dunno if that will ever happen. I wasn't there, so most of this is speculation of course.

Brandon

EDIT: I can't watch You tube videos at work, so I don't know what is on the link Scooby posted. Sorry if that is the dash cam video and I didn't know it. If I can, I will watch it and give you my best opinion.

Edited by BrittMac
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I do know you can burn up the pads with enough stops, but that wouldn't explain if his brake lights were lit up while he was driving.

Technically speaking here, a brake light has nothing to do with actually applying brakes. You can ride your brake light without applying brake.

Many times I will ride the Light or tap it without using my brakes, to make sure those being me know I am stopping or decelerating. Specially when riding a motorcycle.

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Technically speaking here, a brake light has nothing to do with actually applying brakes. You can ride your brake light without applying brake.

In a Prius?

So how did he burn the brakes down to nothing?

He claims he had the brakes checked last week.

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If this is a computer problem. i am sure you can do other things like pull the hand brake, I know that the transmission is mechanical so you can shift the car into another gear. Also if the car is stick **** you can throw it into netrual. Many people who buy cars now a days don't even know how to change a tire. Which is sad to think of . I for one Change my oil in my truck, Change my own light bulbs and wash my car myself. i never take it to a car wash ever.

Our sociaty has become lazy.

Frank

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Technically speaking here, a brake light has nothing to do with actually applying brakes.
In a Prius?
In any vehicle that I have driven or worked on. The brake light is operated by a plunger switch. The switch is also another way to shut off cruise control when applying brake.
So how did he burn the brakes down to nothing?

He claims he had the brakes checked last week.

I did not see the brakes, so what he wore down I have no clue on. I can assume he did not ride the brakes for his entire journey tho. There are other things that will fail before the brake pads do, if the pads are what your thinking of.
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:D, We've had a few such instances here in Australia. To my knowledge the latest 4 have involved 2 Toyotas and two Fords (well one Ford and one Mazda rebadged as a Ford). The Toyotas were both Priuses and these aren't conventional cars, the electronics have far more say in what happens. They do have a start/stop switch but if this or the electronics it controls fail for some reason you can't just switch it off. From what I have read, you should, note, should be able to select neutral and brake to a safe stop. In both the Toyota incidents from my understanding this hasn't happened and the car has crashed into a building.

In the Ford incidents, one was on a Melbourne freeway and the car was set on cruise control. This was the Mazda/Ford, a Ford Ranger in which the young male driver said he applied the brakes when the speed limit dropped from 110 km/h to 80km/h and nothing happened. He then said he tried switching the ignition off, which should kill the cruise control as well as everything else including the ignition and again nothing happened. The second Ford incident was just last week and occurred in a tunnel on one of Melbourne's freeways when a woman driver was apparently unable to get her Ford Territory (a wholly Australian made station wagon) off cruise control. She said she eventually used the brakes and handbrake to stop the car. In both of these incidents there are things that just don't add up.

If in the first instance if the driver is found to be lying (both cars were taken away for forensic testing) he could be charged with several offences, speeding, dangerous driving and using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving. If he isn't lying then Mazda would also appear to have some kind of problem at least here in Oz. In the second Ford incident the lady could have stopped the car by simply turning off the ignition or selecting neutral and turning off the ignition which should give her at least two or three pumps on the brake pedal before it goes hard. Even then the brakes would still work, but you just have to push the pedal harder. Admittedly in the situation this lady found herself in it probably would have been difficult to think clearly and quickly enough to think of such solutions.

I think gone are the days when you can just get in a car, turn the key and drive off blissfully ignorant of how it works. With all my cars I have always learnt thoroughly how all the systems work or should work, and sat down and nutted out solutions to the problems that can happen if they ever do and as I'm driving down the highway I'm constantly thinking of what I can do if something goes wrong ie something doesn't happen as and when it should. Around town especially, having a well thought out emergency plan is another safety device. Have it firmly in your mind what to do if something unexpected does happen. Leave yourself enough room, (more than normal) just for such situations.

I know that if you're driving a car with electric power steering you lose the seteering if you turn the ignition off from driving hospital cars (Toyota Corolla and Holden Astra) at work. No I didn't try and drive it like that, I tried it with the car at a standstill and unlike a car with hydraulic power steering you can't move the steering wheel at all. I think this is a dangerous design fault ave to turn the ignition off and kill the engine it leaves you with one less safety option if the ignition is then turned back on after the engine has stopped you still have no steering. If you're out on the highway and the engine fails you have no steering, not a good situation if you're cruising at 110km/h or faster.

I once had a scary incident on the F3 freeway. I was climbing the hill out of the Hawkesbury River when the engine just quit. I was able to pull into the breakdown lane and wait a few minutes and let whatever it was cool down then was able to continue my journey home.. This happened several more times between there and home and when I got back to Sydney after days off I took the car to a mechanic who got the fault code from the ECU and told me it was the crank anlgle sensor. So I had them change the CAS and the fault remained. They changed that CAS and the fault was still there. This time on my next journey home I was in the same place as the first failure, coming up the steep hill out of the Hawkesbury and had just overtaken a B-double semi trailer and pulled back into the left lane in front of the truck when the engine died again. The truck driver must have thought I was nuts.

After several more failures on the way home I decided to do some fault finding for myself. Sure enough, the code the mechanics had gotten out of the ECU was the same as what I got, but when I had a look at the workshop manual for my car that code was for the coil pack, not the CAS. I bought a second hand coil pack and haven't had a problem since. If we have modern cars, say up to 20 years or so old it pays to learn a bit extra about them and work out a plan of what to do if something should go wrong when we don't expect it. I realize that for the non-mechanically minded this would be an extra impost, but really, what price safety. You may not have to learn thoroughly how all the systems work but talk to your friends who do know these things and work out a plan of action with them for when such failures occur. Then sit in your favourite living room chair and practise these emergency proceedures. This was recommended to me when I was learning to fly many years ago and again whenever I was getting endorsed on another aircraft type. It certainly did me no harm. My apologies for the long post, but this transcends politics and if it can help to save someone's life I can live with the length of the post.

:cheers:,

Ross.

Edited by ross blackford
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The jury is still out on that. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100314/ap_on_...s_runaway_prius

How could he do that:

"The memo said both the front and rear brakes were worn and damaged by heat, consistent with Sikes saying that he stood on the brake pedal with both feet and was unable to stop the car. But if the fail-safe system worked properly, the brakes wouldn't have been damaged because power would have been cut to the wheels. "

The report I quoted said he tampered with the fail-safe.

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Let me get this right. "I don't think I've ever encountered a car that could overpower it's brakes like that"

" I could hold the brake pedal down, floor the gas pedal & the car didn't go anywhere. Lots of tire smoke though & nice black lines after I did let go" :thumbsup:

Please read that to your self then tell me how you get tire smoke "without" over powering the brake system.

I am doing a brake stand in this picture. Toe on the gas, heel on the brake

track2.jpg

THE FRONT BRAKES, THE FRONT BRAKES. Those brake stands (burn outs) over power the REAR BRAKES. All cars have a significant front brake bias. Braking is not equal to all 4 wheels. Front brakes are quite more powerful than rear brakes. That is why you see rear wheel burn outs in RWD cars but the cars still do not move until the driver eases off the brakes. FWD cars cannot do a true brake stand. If you get FWD cars to do burnouts the brakes must be eased off and you start to rolling the car forward as a result. It's truly impossible to do real brake stand, burn out in an FWD car as opposed to the ones we see in RWD cars.

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next up will be dynamic breaking for priuses, just like in the big diesel electric locomotives

^_^, Hi zerosystem,

The Prius does have dynamic braking as in big railway locomotives. From what I understand, when you lift your foot from the accelerator the drive motor becomes a generator and puts charge back into the batteries when you're travelling above a certain low speed until you drop below that speed after which the dynamic braking cuts out and you have to use the foot brake. I have to go into Newcastle today and past the local Toyota dealer so I'll stop and have a talk to the service guys about this. We also have another Toyota hybrid model that's just been released here, the Camry Hybrid so I'll have a look at both the Prius and Camry Hybrid. I think at the moment the Camry is only being built and marketed in Australia. I know all the integration work was done here.

:thumbsup:,

Ross.

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THE FRONT BRAKES, THE FRONT BRAKES. Those brake stands (burn outs) over power the REAR BRAKES. All cars have a significant front brake bias. Braking is not equal to all 4 wheels. Front brakes are quite more powerful than rear brakes. That is why you see rear wheel burn outs in RWD cars but the cars still do not move until the driver eases off the brakes. FWD cars cannot do a true brake stand. If you get FWD cars to do burnouts the brakes must be eased off and you start to rolling the car forward as a result. It's truly impossible to do real brake stand, burn out in an FWD car as opposed to the ones we see in RWD cars.

You can do the same with a front wheel drive car, hardest to do is AWD depending on what it has for a center differential.

Frankly, the front brakes are not holding the car, the friction at the ground is. If I did not break traction, The car would drag/skid the front tires across the ground.

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"Guy was driving a Prius. There's your answer for how smart he is.

(No offense to people on here who drive one) "

Your comment isn't offensive, just dumb.

I own a Prius and I can tell you that I've never had a bit of trouble with it. Gas mileage is fantastic, fit and finish are great, it has more than adequate power and can carry a fair amount. I've put in 14-hour driving days and not felt at all fatigued. Plus a 600 mile trip wound up costing me $24 in gas total.

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The report I quoted said he tampered with the fail-safe.

Which report was that?

I just checked both the video and text stories that you posted and neither mentions tampering with the fail-safe.

How do you tamper with the fail-safe?

My understanding is that it is a computer module.

That would mean that he either somehow managed to re-program the software or somehow got inside of the module and made some kind of physical alteration.

Either way there would be some kind of evidence of his tampering.

I just saw a report on the TV about this story.

First off, it's Toyota who is claiming that something fishy is going on.

The NTSB merely said that it couldn't duplicate the problem.

The CHP officer involved is backing the driver and said that his brake lights were on and that he was standing on the pedal (pushed up and back in his seat) trying to get it to stop.

That he could smell the brakes burning.

That the car was not slowing down/speeding up as if the guy was alternating gas/brake.

Some analysis of the 'black box' has been released showing that the guy had pressed the brake pedal over 200 times during the incident.

Toyota is claiming that he was alternating between gas and brake and/or that he was only lightly pressing the brake and applying 10-20% pressure.

If that's the case, I'd ask again about the fail-safe that is supposed to disengage power to the wheels when the brake is pressed.

I'd ask again how you completely burn up the brake pads in the short period of time even riding them with 20% pressure. Remember that he had his brakes checked one week before this happened, that the front pads were completely burned to nothing and rears were almost gone after the incident.

Interesting discussion. I just hope we'll eventually get the truth and that nobody else gets hurt or killed.

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Some analysis of the 'black box' has been released showing that the guy had pressed the brake pedal over 200 times during the incident.

ed.

Far as I know the data recorder "black box" does not give out that kind of info.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100315/ap_on_...unaway_prius_55

Toyota spokesman John Hanson said the event data recorder — a car's version of the "black box" inspected after plane crashes — would be of no use to investigators because it only stores information when the airbags are deployed. The box only stores four to six seconds of information before the airbags go off, he said.

------------------

The computer also showed that Sikes alternated from brake pedal to gas pedal at least 250 times the limit of the computer's storage ability. Toyota said the front brake pads were nearly destroyed.

Edited by Wayne S
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The computer also showed that Sikes alternated from brake pedal to gas pedal at least 250 times — the limit of the computer's storage ability. Toyota said the front brake pads were nearly destroyed.

I may have been mistaken that the report said 'during the incident'.

I guess then that it doesn't record when each recorded action occured?

Here's Toyota's preliminary findings released today:

http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/...ngs-155268.aspx

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I may have been mistaken that the report said 'during the incident'.

I guess then that it doesn't record when each recorded action occured?

Here's Toyota's preliminary findings released today:

http://pressroom.toyota.com/pr/tms/toyota/...ngs-155268.aspx

Will read the thing again at another time. Will say this tho, That does sound/read to be written by a Lawyer. Definitely not helping their/Toyota's matters any LOL.

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You can do the same with a front wheel drive car, hardest to do is AWD depending on what it has for a center differential.

Frankly, the front brakes are not holding the car, the friction at the ground is. If I did not break traction, The car would drag/skid the front tires across the ground.

True tire friction on the ground helps hold the car in place as one does a RWD brake stand, if it did not the rear wheels in a RWD car would push a skidding car down the road. But the front discs keep more pressure on the front wheels to keep them from even rolling away on you. As per a front wheel brake stand, I can't see how that is even possible as once the front drive wheels start to spin the car will begin to be pulled forward, scraping and squirming forward. The only way one can do a FWD brake stand is on a icy, snowy or very slick muddy roadways. One can do a FWD burn out but not a true brake stand as one sees in RWD cars.

It's been demonstrated that applying the brakes constantly and firmly enough will slow any car down even one with a so called stuck accelerator. Putting a car into neutral will bring the car to a safe stop as well. The fact that the Prius is built fail safe to not run away acceleration especially once brakes are applied only makes me think that it's either human error behind the wheel or human scamming.

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Will read the thing again at another time. Will say this tho, That does sound/read to be written by a Lawyer. Definitely not helping their/Toyota's matters any LOL.

How so? It is looking more like definate proof Sikes was either in serious brain fart mode, or was attempting a scam. Toyota's statement is the facts of the findings backed by the NHTSA, and congress critter lackey. The facts said the car was working properly, and the driver did not listen to the 911 operator.

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How so? It is looking more like definate proof Sikes was either in serious brain fart mode, or was attempting a scam. Toyota's statement is the facts of the findings backed by the NHTSA, and congress critter lackey. The facts said the car was working properly, and the driver did not listen to the 911 operator.

You show me facts that the car was working correctly and I will believe you. IMO they did nothing but try to discredit the owner of the vehicle. Nothing they did was what they said they will do in-front of the board. Where is the "Swat team" they talked about having? Did they pull the car apart to see what was going on? Sticking new brake hardware, then driving the car around the block a few times, down loading from sensors does not prove anything. Keep in mind they only tested the car for two days?

Sorry I call B/S

Edited by Wayne S
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How so? It is looking more like definate proof Sikes was either in serious brain fart mode, or was attempting a scam. Toyota's statement is the facts of the findings backed by the NHTSA, and congress critter lackey. The facts said the car was working properly, and the driver did not listen to the 911 operator.

Correct, and we now see how he faked it. He was alternating between the gas and the brakes. The facts from the data recorder are he was faking the incident. It is no different than a flight data recorder which I do have extensive experience with.

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You show me facts that the car was working correctly and I will believe you. IMO they did nothing but try to discredit the owner of the vehicle. Nothing they did was what they said they will do in-front of the board. Where is the "Swat team" they talked about having? Did they pull the car apart to see what was going on? Sticking new brake hardware, then driving the car around the block a few times, down loading from sensors does not prove anything. Keep in mind they only tested the car for two days?

Sorry I call B/S

Here ya go Wayne ... smiley-signs019.gif

HTH ... :cheers:

Gregg

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Correct, and we now see how he faked it. He was alternating between the gas and the brakes. The facts from the data recorder are he was faking the incident. It is no different than a flight data recorder which I do have extensive experience with.

Data recorder it seems is connected to the airbags. If Airbags do not deploy, then no data from the recorder.

Edit: I have ?s for Toyota's lawyers.

1. Did they "clear/flash" the computer after reading it.

2. Did they put 150 miles on the car afterward.

3. Is that cars computer that is in it now, the same-one during the event.

Edited by Wayne S
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