[tinwhiskers] Toyotas, deaths and sudden acceleration - Los Angeles Times
- From: Bob Landman <rlandman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Leadfree@xxxxxxx" <Leadfree@xxxxxxx>, tin whiskers forum <tinwhiskers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 15:00:59 -0500
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/28/business/la-fiw-toyota-deaths-list28-2010feb28
The death toll is 56 as of Feb 28 when this article was written.
Unlike the other articles, this one lists each victim and the reported
curcunstances at the time of the crash.
I noted the following:
1) most of the reports of sudden acceleration happen when the driver
is not accelerating the vehicle. A stuck pedal would act like cruise
control, wouldn't it? The sudden ACCELERATION is most striking to
me. The driver would have had to press the pedal down much farther to
induce that degree of acceleration.
2) quite a few incidents have happened to vehicles not being recalled
3). some incidents happened to vehicles as old as 1996 (the incidents
got reported due to the recent rash of complaints. So, unless Toyota
went leadfree much earlier than has been reported on their corporate
website, tin whiskers cannot be the explanation for all these in
incidents. Some, perhaps, but not all. It is more likely there are
many causes for these accidents.
4) many reports indicate problems in braking inability to put the
transmission in neutral. I am more familiar with aviation accidents
(we make a product for the avaition industry) and it is common there
to require 3 failures of separate systems (including crew behavior) to
result in a crash. What appears to happen in the Toyota cases is
acceleration, failed brake and/or inability to shift into neutral.
Bob Landman
H&L Instruments, LLC
Sent from my iPhone
Other related posts:
- » [tinwhiskers] Toyotas, deaths and sudden acceleration - Los Angeles Times - Bob Landman
