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n1 writes:
"U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal wire fraud charge against Toyota for defrauding consumers by issuing misleading statements about safety issues in Toyota and Lexus vehicles.
On the same day, The Department of Justice also announced a deferred prosecution agreement with Toyota under which the automotive company accepts a $1.2bn penalty and admits that it misled U.S. consumers by concealing and making deceptive statements about two safety issues affecting its vehicles, each regarding unintended acceleration. If Toyota conforms to all the terms of the agreement, the government will defer prosecution on the information for three years and then seek to dismiss the charge."
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Toyota Admits to Misleading Consumers on Safety
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Sunday March 23 2014, @12:58PM
Problems were also reported in Europe, and Toyota was able to reproduce them during their own testing. But they did not fully disclose the results of internal tests to NHTSA, and did a half-assed recall which didn't address all the problems (while publicly claiming that it did so). Hence why they are in hot water.
I personally find it hard to imagine a situation where my car is accelerating wildly and I have time to call 911 but can't perform any action to bring the car under control. But car manufacturers are the ones building more complexity into vehicles, changing controls around, and in some cases taking control away from the driver. If a minor defect causes an unsafe condition that people don't know how to respond to then that is largely on the car maker.
Interestingly, TFA only mentioned floormat-entrapment and "sticky pedal," but not ECU firmware bugs http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyot a-s-killer-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequenc es [edn.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 24 2014, @01:48PM
I personally find it hard to imagine a situation where my car is accelerating wildly and I have time to call 911 but can't perform any action to bring the car under control.
That's because there is no such situation. Car drivers in the US are simply too stupid and shouldn't be allowed to drive themselves.
Even in a brand-new car with everything highly automated, there's ways to bring the car under control, even if you have an ECU firmware bug that results in full-throttle acceleration: 1) hit the brakes. There isn't a car made where the engine can overpower the brakes (unless perhaps you get into territory like the 1000+HP Bugatti Veyron or other supercars, and even there those cars have massive brakes so it's unlikely the engine is more powerful). 2) Shift into neutral. Your engine may redline and bounce off the rev-limiter, but that's better than dying and won't cause any permanent damage if you do #3 quickly. 3) Turn off the engine. Many new cars now have push-button ignitions, but to turn them off all you do is push and hold the button for several seconds. Yes, this kinda sucks compared to the older cars where you just turn the key off and it kills the engine instantly, but it's good enough after doing #1 and #2.
The fact that so many drivers can't think to do these simple actions (esp. #1 and #2) in an emergency is nothing short of pathetic. We should have driving simulators where drivers are required to prove their driving skills, including dealing with emergencies like these, and if they fail, they get their license revoked. If you can't handle an emergency, you have no business piloting a 5000-lb vehicle.