Toyota's Stuck Accelerator Problem: The Real Cause

The real cause of the stuck accelerator may alarm some. And it should. It's a much bigger problem than people think, and plagues any vehicle or system that uses signal wire and electronic controls.

Signal wire has what they call "shielding" to protect circuitry for transient electronic signals called EMI (electromagnetic interference)

Cars, aircraft, trains are full of EMI that could potentially cause circuitry problems.

In circuitry, tiny transistors act as switches, turning things on and off. To activate the switch, a minute voltage triggers it. Any transient voltage introduced into the system, can trigger this switch. That's why it's crucial to keep the circuit "clean". If this transistor happens to trigger your throttle for example, there is no way to override it, and no way to detect it in real world environments, without logging throttle input.

Here is a video of what really happens.



Thanks to Brian Ross and ABC for that report. It's eye-opening, isn't it?

Now shielding cable has a catch-22. The shielding, if not properly grounded (contacting earth) will act as an antenna. It is not uncommon at all to find TV, FM, and other electronic signals on the shielding itself.

A car is not properly grounded, due to the tires. Aircraft are not properly grounded. This I believe has caused many aircraft crashed, due to the fact there are more and more "fly by wire", meaning there is no mechanical link between input and control circuitry.

The truth is, sudden acceleration has been going on since the 80's. About the time transistors started making their way into vehicle control systems.

The problem can't be fixed. As long as there is transient signals from cell phones, satellite, HAARP, military drone control, deliberate sabotage, and transistor ran circuitry, there will be plane crashes, car crashes, etc.

The effects of EMI have proven costly and impossible to duplicate since its discovery. With billions upon billions of signal combinations possible through the myriad wiring circuits lumped into wiring harnesses in the average car testing is not economically feasible. The automotive industry refuses to follow in the footsteps of other industries and design out the potential for EMI up front.

www.autonetworks.co.jp...

Other references;
www.rane.com...
pin1problem.com...
www.patentstorm.us...
suddenacceleration.com...
www.antony-anderson.com...



[edit on 2-3-2010 by 911stinks]

reply to post by 911stinks


Why do you mention HAARP? It can only broadcast to within 30 degrees of vertical, directly above it.

would this explian why womenare such terrible drivers? they're sending all that extra brain juice into teh wires and it just jacks the car up?

Originally posted by davesidious
reply to post by 911stinks

 

Why do you mention HAARP? It can only broadcast to within 30 degrees of vertical, directly above it.

HAARP transmits signals through the ionosphere.

Principal instruments installed at the HAARP Research Station include a high power, high-frequency (HF) phased array radio transmitter (known as the Ionosphere Research Instrument (IRI), used to stimulate small, well-defined volumes of ionosphere, and a large and diversified suite of modern geophysical research instruments including an HF ionosonde, ELF and VLF receivers, magnetometers, riometers, a UHF diagnostic radar and optical and infrared spectrometers and cameras which are used to observe the complex natural variations of Alaska's ionosphere as well as to detect artificial effects produced by the IRI. Future plans include completion of the UHF radar to allow measurement of electron densities, electron and ion temperatures, and Doppler velocities in the stimulated region and in the natural ionosphere using incoherent scatter techniques.
..
Since the sun's radiation creates and maintains the ionosphere, sudden variations in this radiation such as those caused by solar flares can affect the performance of radio systems. Sometimes these natural changes are sufficient to induce large transient currents in electric power transmission grids, causing widespread power outages. Lightning is known to cause substantial heating and ionization density enhancement in the lower ionosphere, and there are indications that ground-based HF transmitters, including radars and strong radio stations, also modify the ionosphere and influence the performance of systems whose radio paths traverse the modified region

www.haarp.alaska.edu...

[edit on 2-3-2010 by 911stinks]

It is now imperative that HAARP be mentioned in any scenario which does not offer a clear-cut explanation.

In fact, just this morning HAARP made one of my Cheerios suddenly sink in my bowl!


To the OP - I think this is something that the automakers certainly know and are just biding time until it can be proven. Until then I'm sure the "acceptable loss policies" are in full swing

reply to post by 911stinks


No, it heats a small section of the ionosphere, which other equipment then measures or bounces signals off. All closely contained to the HAARP establishment.

That's what the text you just posted said.

reply to post by 911stinks


this fits in with my original thoughts. I didn't believe the floor mat thing. But I thought the problem might be in the computer. Since these newer cars have a drive by wire system instead of an old fashion accelerator cable. Of course I went to the conspiracy angle and suggested a virus was planted in the firmware. Electrical noise induction is a hard problem to isolate. perhaps this will change the way cars are built and they will go back to mechanical systems for acceleration and braking.

reply to post by network dude


Or they can figure out a decent way to deal with it (fibre optics) and not leave us stuck in the late 1900s, as we would be if everything had to be mechanical.

reply to post by network dude


What concerns me is not just that the problems are hard to troubleshoot, but that this problem will go on for years as the tests will be done in EMI sterile conditions. If the problem is simply 'cross talk' in the car's own wiring it can be isolated. If however it is a cumulative effect from real world enviroments it will be virtually impossible to discover in a lab (especially if they don't want to find it).

To the OP - I think this is something that the automakers certainly know and are just biding time until it can be proven. Until then I'm sure the "acceptable loss policies" are in full swing.

Absolutely.

The congressional hearings were a nice PR move to show the American people that steps are being taken (especially since Toyota's internal documents were leaked showing that congress let them off cheap/easy).

How many states stand to lose revenues from production of either components or finished cars?

I get the impression that this is going to evolve into an industry wide problem. Sadly, there is too much money at stake for the manufacturer's to willingly revert to a mechanical system.

Always comes back to money.

[edit on 2-3-2010 by [davinci]]

The problem can't be fixed.

Yes it can. Instead of using idiotic amounts of electronics, go back to good ole MECHANICAL DEVICES in the cars! All this electronic stuff is for is to only 'sex up' the car anyways.

[edit on 2-3-2010 by wylekat]

911 stinks, I was wondering if you could reconcile two parts of your post for me.

1.) The video which claims to recreate the sudden accelerator

2.) The snippet later claims "The effects of EMI have proven costly and impossible to duplicate since its discovery"

How did that scientist recreate something that its apparently impossible to recreate?

I think you are talking about two different things here...

[edit on 2-3-2010 by thedarklingthrush]

There is something going on for sure!
Toyota isnt the only one............

In february:
430.000 honda and 72.000 in january
445.000 suzuki
around 100.000 Peugeot Citroën
around 70.000 volvo
vw around 50.000 and 200.000 january

General Motors 1.300.000 (mars)
add that to toyotas several millions...

ohh.. nothing is going on here....

Suddenly something is causing some trouble with the analogue signals....
When you watch televizion, why you think we switched from analogue to digital...
What is chemtrails...
What is RFID....
What was in the vaccine...
What is smartdust...
Combine that with haarp...

I dont know for sure, but i could take a wild guess...
The military have some new fun technology in the air, and we are the rabbits!

Nice post.

I'm not clear on what the design engineers have done here because all the recent model cars I've worked on have a physical mechanical cable (non-electric) connecting the accelerator pedal to the air flow control on the manifold so there's no way it can open (the air-flow control) without human input by depressing the pedal. The position of the control has a transducer which feeds back to the engine management system along with a myriad of other transducers to determine the required injector opening for the conditions. About the worst thing that could happen (and it commonly does) is that a wiring, connector or sensor problem could cause the EMS to think the engine was in 'cold-start' mode and cause the idle speed to rise a bit via cold start throttle bypass opening but that's not enough to cause a catastrophe like a runaway car.

There's a common misconception about 'ground' too - in an electric or electronic sense it doesn't necessarily mean the mass of the earth itself but simply refers to the 'common' side of the power supply. In the case of a car the 'ground' is the just car body which is connected to the -ve terminal of the battery although some older cars with generators have the+ve terminal of the battery connected to the body and the car body is insulated from actual earth by the tyres so the mass of earth isn't a factor in this case. What was said about the importance of shielding is correct especially when dealing with sensitive solid state devices in a hostile 'noisy' environment like a car. All that's required is to have all shielding well connected so the the earthing is very low impedance which prevents the production of parasitic voltages referenced to the 'ground' potential high enough to cause false triggering. Preventing 'ground loops' is also something to be wary of because induced circulating currents can cause the same problems if there's a high resistance joint in the circuit.


[edit on 2/3/2010 by Pilgrum]

reply to post by wylekat


Hardly, it lowers costs dramatically. If car manufacturers could sell cars cheaper, that did the same thing, they'd do it. They don't, as there are lots of benefits to electrical systems in cars, especially ones with electric motors.

reply to post by oyodo


Chemtrails have yet to be proven anything other than fevered conjecture from conspiracy theorists.

RFID tags don't emit anything

The vaccine was just that - a flu vaccine. Samples have been sent to labs all over the US, and surely one of them would have found anything untoward, but they didn't.

Smartdust? You tell me.

HAARP can only affect the ionosphere directly above it, and only by a trivial amount compared to the sun.

Please stick to the facts and don't bring this insanity into the discussion! How are we supposed to learn anything when you post nothing but conjecture, in a Glenn Beck style, on the board?

I am grateful for this thread. My elderly Mother-In-Law has a Camry and despite having the mod done is still scared to drive it. Her car is 2 years old and has less than 5,000 miles on it. She cannot financially afford to simply dump the car at a loss, so her family is all kicking in to get her another car and absorb the loss on the value she will lose. $$$

Despite the reputable track record of Toyota, I feel they have let their brand-loyal consumers down. They could have offered an incentive to buy-back the cars or give loaners, or thrown in some free maintenance and guarantee they had solved the issue.

Right now, they are advertising Zero financing for 60 months and free maintenance for 2 years to sway new buyers.

I honestly think they are not telling the truth. HOWEVER, I did find one flaw with the video. The Tach shot showing RPM's revving was faked.
As you can see, the BRAKE indicator and Door Ajar and Seatbelt icons are lit.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/89be6576d618.jpg[/atsimg]

I am a video editor by trade and spotted this upon first viewing. To be fair, it would seem logical to shoot this as a "cutaway" after the fact and edit it back in. But I felt compelled to share. Makes you wonder who to believe. There was another TV News show exposed some years ago for a similar stunt.

Regards...kk

[edit on 2-3-2010 by kinda kurious]

Originally posted by kinda kurious
I honestly think they are not telling the truth. HOWEVER, I did find one flaw with the video. The Tach shot showing RPM's revving was faked.
As you can see, the BRAKE indicator and Door Ajar and Seatbelt icons are lit.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/89be6576d618.jpg[/atsimg]

I am a video editor by trade and it would seem logical to shoot this as a "cutaway" after the fact and edit it back in. But I felt compelled to share. Makes you wonder who to believe. There was another TV News show exposed some years ago for a similar stunt.

[edit on 2-3-2010 by kinda kurious]

Wow, good find! That totally slipped by me, but then I haven't done video editing in years, so I am out of practice.

So the question is, was the simulation legit or was ABC selling a story?

I should add the point that purely mechanical throttle controls are not absolutely foolproof either. My last car had a problem with ice forming in the carburetor when conditions were just right (cold morning with a heavy dew and air temp just a few degrees above freezing). The throttle would get jammed open by the ice and if I floored it briefly hoping to clear it the throttle just jammed at full open :O but after a few years of that I got to know exactly when it was likely to happen. The cure was to slip it into neutral, turn off the ignition, pull off the road and stop for about a minute or 2 so that the manifold heat warmed up the carby and melted the ice. The first couple of times it happened in traffic were a little hairy to say the least.

I knew it was something like this. Here is the post I did shortly after the recall was initiated. Glad someone found out what happened.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by wylekat


+1! Why did we trust computers in the first place to drive our cars. I got a cable attached to my throttle body, transmission and break booster and never had a problem.