ZOMG Smoking Gunzors Runaway Toyota Video!!!1!

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/22/video-smoking-gun-abc-news-expert-recreates-sudden-acceleratio?icid=sphere_blogsmith_inpage_autoblog

There are two videos on the page. The bottom one is the full news story. Toyota's response is on the page, as well. Draw your own conclusions.

I'm not making light of the discoveries, if real. But the media hype is getting to be beyond what I can stomach.

Criminal charges? really?

I'm at a loss of words for the media today. I partially (a big partial) blame them for the downturn in the economy because they blow things out of proportion. Now this Toyota thing...they are doing the same thing. I'm not fan of Toyota but I don't like seeing manufacturers suffer, jobs are on the line, gives the industry parity, etc.

Give me a big circuit board in the car and a bunch of prongs and do-dads and I can make a car accelerate and brake on it's own as well (well most of this electronically controlled cars).

he he

The key thing in the video is not that shorting two wires will make the car accelerate, the key is that the computer does not recognize the short as being a problem and never throws a code. It will tell me when the MAF shorts out or the cam position sensor shorts out, but not when the accelerator shorts out? That's what they are demonstrating.

Bob

Autoblog comments on it's own column concerning ABC's smoking gun story:

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/23/abc-news-report-shouldnt-panic-toyota-drivers/

"You may have noticed that there have been a large number of reports recently about Toyota and the continuing series of recalls it has announced in recent weeks. Here at Autoblog we try to be fair and tell the story as best we can without being inflamattory. Unfortunately, the same can not be said of all media outlets. ABC News, and reporter Brian Ross in particular, have been particularly vigorous in pursuit of a story – not the story. Let's make one thing clear. Autoblog is not a cheerleading section for Toyota, or for trial lawyers, TV presenters or politicians with nothing better to do. We'd like to present the information to our readers without unnecessarily frightening anyone. We also want to avoid the sort of debacle that happened with CBS and the Audi 5000 in the '80s and NBC with the General Motors side-saddle gas tanks in the '90s. In each of those cases, tests were setup to "simulate" the purported problem, but the tests did not exactly simulate real world conditions and showed unrealistic scenarios."

The article continues, but I'm not going to quote it all. It IS worth reading, though.

I believe it was ABC? who hired a consultant back during the Audi 'unintended acceleration' furor who had bypassed something in the transmission valve body which allowed the transmission's kickdown linkage to floor the accelerator. He had done this with one of the actual cars which allegedly had the problem.

Getting rear ended by a tractor trailer will cause unintended acceleration also and is more likely for Camry drivers than having the accelerator problem.

Then again when the head of Toyota USA testified before congress they asked him if the recalls would solve the problems with unintended acceleration. His answer was no it wouldn't.

I'd like to see what that guys REAL electronics setup in the car looked like. Those Toyota pedals use hall-effect sensors instead of pots don't they?

I don't buy this theory but it is starting to emerge on the net... It originates from those who are not phased by toyotas current issues are are diehards...

http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39144 <== fo example

theory is..

goverment owns 60% of GM and needs them to succeed. Therefore they rip apart toyota to make their company look better.....

Again, I don't buy it.. But it's out there.

The 90's GM non-event was my favorite of the bunch. One firefighter who was at the event brought his girlfriend, who brought her Videocamera.... and caught the whole rocketengine/open gas cap and rag bit on tape.

I'm waiting for the full picture, first.

This still focuses on the throttle pedal unit, the problem has existed before that pedal was ever made. Not saying there can't be a problem with the pedal, even exactly as described by the creator of this article. But I do not think it is a singular cause or explanation.