Federal Investigation Finds No Electronic Glitches in Toyotas

That isn't to say there aren't scary things going on over at toyota and poor programming their safety features.

lostboyz, I'd be interested to hear what these "scary things" are and what "poor programming" is going on with their safety features. I don't own a Toyota, never have, and am not planning to buy one. Just curious as I haven't seen anything apart from the allegations related to drivers reporting having experienced SUA.

What is up with all the negative media surrounding Toyota lately? Something tells me this has more to do with unknown forces trying to turn the tide against foreign automakers to increase sales in domestic vehicles. For too long Toyota has been known to be a very reliable automaker, but ever since they worked their way in to NASCAR, there has been nothing but bad news in all forms of American media.

+1 kevm14. Does Ray LaHood get fired now for making stupid comments? I assume no one got the grand prize from Edmunds for finding the cause of Toyota's SUA.

lostboyz,
What "scary" things are you talking about? Like cars catching on fire or axles locking up?

pchang1, in the Forums @ Edmunds.com, we do see some owners who are dissatisfied with the performance of their Toyota vehicles, and shoppers who are less interested in Toyota vehicles. However, these seem to be due more to features and perceived value relative to some other manufacturers' offerings, and some reliability/performance issues. I haven't personally seen a noticeable increase in complaints related to safety - mostly related to preference in content and driving experience.

Driver error, not a surprise. These days in America it's never your fault. It must be the car, or the tires, or the road, or....

Its a conspiracy....Adolf Hitler and the legion of doom are planning to assassinate Jesus...in Quahog lake....and toyota is there too...

i got rid of my 07 rav4 because of an acceleration problem. The problem was that when you press the gas pedal to briskly join traffic from a stop, you never knew if you would actually get the power you requested with the pedal. Too many times i was trying to turn right from a stop sign or red light and the vehicle would get out into the lane then just bog down and stop accelerating. Many people on the rav4 forum had the same problem. Something is strange about toyota drive by wire system and it was too bad because otherwise the rav4 is great.

Possible Alternate Reasons...
1) Gremlins
2) Aliens
3) OJ did it
4) Bieber Fever
5) Have you ever driven near a Camry or Corolla driver or their rich cousins the ES350 driver? There you have it.

Hey, isn't that the guy who held a press conference, telling Camry owners that their cars are unsafe and should be TOWED to the dealership for recall?

Idiota

I wonder how much Toyota Paid the appropriate parties off to get the verdict they wanted..they are just shifty enough to do that...LaHood..resembles a Hood..I wonder how much of the payoff ended up in his pocket...Toyota is Guilty and very good a hiding the problem.

I was just watching CNN, and the they are saying it is the floor mats and sticky gas pedals. So, the lawyers will still get their millions.

Oh God... even after the Federal Govt (which arguably has a vested interest in Toyota not coming out well) finds that these issues were driver error and not cars there are still fools out there who want to blame Toyota.

Toyota is far from perfect and to be honest, I think their quality (Lexus included) isn't what it once was and could be again, but let's face facts folks... driver error is to blame here.

It's far, far, far too easy to get a license in the US and the avg. American driver is simply ill prepared, ill trained, and ill equipped to handle most routine driving scenarios let alone an emergency situation.

The blow back from all this nonsense will be felt for years with the federal govt requiring more and more safety items and car companies (esp. Toyota) recalling cars at the drop of the hat.

I think all the politicians who jumped on the bandwagon and showed up for every anti Toyota photo-op should now have to go on the air and apologise and admit they had no idea what they where talking about.

Toyota should also be able to sue those who organized the Congressional hearing witchhunts.

Sure is tin foil hat in here. I could have told you it was driver error from day one.

This was most likely an intentional setup to hold Toyota for a few months, so the government can get its investment returns on Ford and GM.

The government under the table owns Ford and GM. It has to protect its own money makers while keeping the illusion of fair market.
All countries do this. The Japan government gives its own motor companies tons of money too. Such is international commerce.

It's funny how they suggest the cause isn't electronic and people assume there isn't a problem at all.

Yes, of the cause is driver error. Per an article I read earlier today, they do believe there are likely mechanical reasons for the UA. As ed124c said, sticky pedals and floormats being the chief candidates.

To me, the floor mats are still generally operator error (don't stack them). The sticky pedals, however, were a faulty design.

@brn, thank you. I was surprised to come back to this article to see these kinds of comments

@kirstie_h, through reasons I can't explain I was able to talk to someone involved in the investigation and as I work for one of the OEMs we had some insight into the issue. Everyone uses the same pedal assemblies and yet toyota was the only one with issues (these aren't made up by the way). Whether it was a physically stuck pedal or an unrepeatable electronic issue, toyota's software for its safety check for the pedal position sensor was written so that if a bug did get into the system the check sensor would still OK everything. This is a safety concern. I can explain more if you would like. The other being toyota was one of only a few companies that didn't have a brake override system for when both full acceleration and full brake were applied at the same time. This feature has been around for years at other OEMs.

It is obvious the majority of the people claiming UA are just driver error accidents trying to get some kind of compensation. That doesn't mean nothing happened, even this article doesn't say there was no electronic issue, it just wasn't easily repeatable in a real world scenario (plenty created a scenario where it would take off which leads back the the pedal sensor software failure).

lostboyz, forgive me if I am presuming, but when you say:

"toyota's software for its safety check for the pedal position sensor was written so that if a bug did get into the system the check sensor would still OK everything"

You aren't talking about that professor from Ohio who wired up a bunch of stuff external to the system to create a failure, are you?

@lostboyz

Even though NASA examined over 280,000 lines of code over 10 months and found nothing wrong, YOU have proof that the code is faulty...

Jeez, maybe we should just ignore the 10 month investigation, fire NASA, and listen to you, since you clearly know something no one else does.

I didn't say the code was faulty, just poorly written.

Okay, ever since drive by wire you have pedal position sensors rather than a wire. One sensor determines position, there is a second to verify the position usually this second sensor has an offset then there is a camparator that will determine if the signal is valid. Toyota used an addition offset/comparator, so lets say if one reads 2, the second sensor would read 4 (with a +2 offset). I know ford and chrysler use a multiplication offset/comparator so if one reads 2 the second would read 6 with a x3 offset. The problem with toyota's is that if a conducted noise got onto the sensors the comparator would verify a valid signal even if the sensor was reporting an incorrect value because the same noise would be introduced to both sensors, so 12 and 14 when it was supposed to read 2 and 4. In a multiplication system the noise is additive so any corruption would cause an invalid response because you would have say 5 and 11 where you meant to have 3 and 9 with noise adding 2 to each sensor.

Also, like I said before toyota was one of the few left that didn't have a brake override when both gas and brake were applied full on.

They were also fined for not having proper documentation upon investigation of significant changes to their safety systems. Why would a company that does no wrong have this kind of issue.

@church123, I was referring to that in my "in real world scenarios" that experiment was part of proving why their software was not very safety oriented as far as a fail safe mechanism goes.

"NASA examined over 280,000 lines of code over 10 months and found nothing wrong"

This stuff drives me crazy. You don't learn much by simply examining code. Tossing out huge numbers of lines of code is sensationalistic more than anything else.

I was listening to a report on MPR this evening. They played audio of the Feds who said driver fault WAS responsible for some of the UA, floormats WERE responsible for part of the UA, and that faulty pedals WAS also responsible for part of the UA. NONE were excluded. ALL were included.

While the lack of a brake pedal override isn't the reason for UA, it's a safety feature that other manufacturers include. Toyota didn't included it until they were under the gun. If they had included it earlier, many of the claims would have been moot. Toyota eventually realized the liability and rushed out a fix.

Did Toyota have a UA problem? Yep. Was it as bad as some claimed? Nope. Did people take advantage of the hype? Yep. Does any of this negate their UA problem? Nope.

Ok, but that experiment was a complete sham. When the details came out, it was quite clear that he was creating a situation that would not happen in the real world short of sabotage.

I'm no Toyota fan, but they've clearly been railroaded on this one.

NPR????? ROFLMFAO

pchang7 hit it right on the nose. "ordered by president obama". Lol. That pretty much sums up exactly what's been going on.

Toyota fans side with Toyota and domestics fanboys side with the rest. Same type of comments from the same commenters just a different issue.

The UA BS is annoying, I'd buy a Ford (number two in the list of UA complaints) or another Toyota/Lexus without worrying about some pedal sticking or some floor mat taking away my ability to drive.

Even more. NASA tested 7-9 vehicles. With a suggested failure rate of 0.001%, the chances are they wouldn't get a faulty vehicle. Any conclusion drawn is meaningless.

I think it is possible that many on here may have forgotten that a lawyer who formerly worked for Toyota came forward months before all the negative publicity surrounding unintended acceleration broke. He told of Toyota intentionally destroying documents related to safety. Doesn't anybody else remember this? Can't recall his name. This whole isssue of Toyota not being willing to deal with certain safety isssues is NOT pure B.S. as some have claimed. Not saying that I know anything other than an attorney claimed he was aware of wrong-doing by Toyota.

@litewerk, whether or not they actually destroyed it, they were fined for not having certain documents related to safety systems. I'll try and find a link