runaway Lexus ES 350

[SSSnail]

He should learn how to use the guardrails to slow his car down along with the hand brakes. I guess he was afraid of scratching up his precious Lexus.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
He should learn how to use the guardrails to slow his car down along with the hand brakes. I guess he was afraid of scratching up his precious Lexus.

It was a precious loaner.

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
He should learn how to use the guardrails to slow his car down along with the hand brakes. I guess he was afraid of scratching up his precious Lexus.

it was a loaner... in that situation i'd throw that thing at anything I could find to stop the damn thing and blame Lexus later. Anyway, I have thought about such a scenario and neutral + ebrake is the first thing I'd try.

 

[SSSnail]

I missed the loaner part, all the easier for me to find a nice long wall to scrape against. Besides, everything should be covered by insurance, why did he care?

You know what grind my gears? People that are too stupid to realize their possessions don't worth more than their lives, these are the people that change their tires on the side of a highway, pulled over on the far left lane when they have a flat, etc...

 

[LTC8K6]

Had to have a brake failure at the same time. Seems unlikely.

Modern autos will not downshift by themselves or manually until the vehicle slows down to a speed appropriate for that gear. If you are going 60, you can drop the lever into first, or try to select first, but you won't get it because the vehicle speed is too high.

For push button start/stop vehicles, typically you hold the button in to kill the engine while in motion.

 

[Engineer]

There was a big thing a few years ago about the all weather mats getting stuck with the accelerator of the ES350. I read about it on ClubLexus.com forums, but I don't recall Lexus solution. I don't think it was ever recalled, but a TSB was issued, IIRC.

Damn sad situation for those people...damn sad.

 

[Ronstang]

I have actually had this happen to me with and older car some idiot had used the wrong air cleaner base on after an engine swap. When going WOT the bellcrank would get caught behind the air cleaner base and stay at WOT. The idiot didn't even test for this which you should always do when changing such parts under the hood. It was only scary for a second.....I pulled out the key and stopped the damn car. It is not rocket science. Even on new cars you can usually turn the engine off without locking the steering wheel and if you are afraid of that or there is no key you simply put the trans shifter in neutral and let the engine blow up.

 

[PottedMeat]

Originally posted by: Engineer
There was a big thing a few years ago about the all weather mats getting stuck with the accelerator of the ES350. I read about it on ClubLexus.com forums, but I don't recall Lexus solution. I don't think it was ever recalled, but a TSB was issued, IIRC.

Damn sad situation for those people...damn sad.

I think it's a big thing again, I thought the ES350 in OPs article triggered Toyota to inspect floor mats. When I heard it on the news they said it is not just a Toyota problem.

As to the other incidents ( Prius/Audis/Lexus accelerators ) - it must be pretty damn hard to write those software control loops for all those electronic systems, finding all the possible faults, runaway conditions, etc.

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
For push button start/stop vehicles, typically you hold the button in to kill the engine while in motion.

Like a PC? Can anyone confirm?

 

[Black88GTA]

Originally posted by: thomsbrain
I buy the floor mat explanation, especially from moron owners who don't know about or understand the purpose of the clips. That bullshit site someone posted was a joke. In the example audio clip, the guy wasn't even willing to consider the floor mats as a possibility. He said "there's no way a floor mat could push an accelerator." Are you fucking retarded? Ever picked up a floor mat before? They are heavy and stiff. When it creeps up on the gas and then you panic and start stomping around and push it up even farther, it will easily push the gas to the floor. That's why there are clips on the driver's side. If you neglect to use a safety feature of your vehicle, is the automaker at fault for your choice? That's like blaming the company for an airbag not firing when you pulled the fuse for it.

Of course, there are solutions:
Press the brake pedal.
Put the car in neutral or park.

A big problem that MANY drivers have is that they have NO CLUE how hard to press the brake pedal in a panic-stop situation. That's the reason so many companies have implemented brake assist systems, because even in the most dire situation many drivers won't use more than 50% of their car's capabilities.

There was a great quote in the last Car and Driver where a driving instructor said: "Most people, when faced with cornering beyond 0.4 g or hitting a tree, will choose the tree." I think that sums it up nicely.

If you read the statements under the second link, some of them say that it happened at low speeds (turning into parking spot, etc) in which case the accelerator would be nowhere near the floor, where it might possibly get stuck under the mat. A couple even say that they took the floor mats out after the event, and it happened again without them installed. Even if the floor mats had been interfering somehow, there is absolutely no way a mat alone can pull down the accelerator pedal. Almost all of the people state that they tried to mash the brake once it happened, but the car overpowered it.

Stop making excuses for Toyota. I can only imagine the torch-and-pitchfork mob that would show up had this been a Ford / GM / Chrysler problem.

 

[RESmonkey]

jump out of the car!!

 

[KeithP]

A sales manager for the dealership, Blair Carter, told SignOn San Diego that employees' hearts sunk when they learned about the crash. He said the car was equipped with a system that should have shut off the engine if there was a major malfunction.

I suppose some sort of electronic malfunction is what happened, however...

What about a murder/suicide? If the driver of Lexus decided he wanted to kill himself and his family, pretending that the accelerator was stuck would give him an out should the attempt be unsuccessful. Granted, that doesn't make a lot of sense but nut jobs do crazy things all the time.

-KeithP

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: KeithP

A sales manager for the dealership, Blair Carter, told SignOn San Diego that employees' hearts sunk when they learned about the crash. He said the car was equipped with a system that should have shut off the engine if there was a major malfunction.

I suppose some sort of electronic malfunction is what happened, however...

What about a murder/suicide? If the driver of Lexus decided he wanted to kill himself and his family, pretending that the accelerator was stuck would give him an out should the attempt be unsuccessful. Granted, that doesn't make a lot of sense but nut jobs do crazy things all the time.

-KeithP

Kind of morbid, but an interesting theory.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Had to have a brake failure at the same time. Seems unlikely.

Modern autos will not downshift by themselves or manually until the vehicle slows down to a speed appropriate for that gear. If you are going 60, you can drop the lever into first, or try to select first, but you won't get it because the vehicle speed is too high.

For push button start/stop vehicles, typically you hold the button in to kill the engine while in motion.

There's always neutral...or park.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup neutral. i'm sure the car will refuse to go into park though. it'll high rpm your engine till it burns but well you will slow down

 

[oiprocs]

*Darwin?*

*signifies that I'm not entirely aware if this statement is appropriate, but come on....turn the car off? Put it in neutral? Get in the right lane, then turn the wheel as hard as possible to the right, to hopefully spin out on the shoulder?

 

[mafia]

This is wierd. There is so many ways to overcome and safely stop a vehicle in this type of situation. Shifting to neutral and maybe a lower gear. Holding the push/stop button would also work. (Not confirmed yet). Did he even try to change the gears? Is it possible to shift down to neutral in a automatic while the accelerator is being pressed?

 

[radioouman]

I had this happen in a 1986 Plymouth Reliant. I took the throttle body apart over the weekend and cleaned it, and I lubed it with WD40. Once that WD40 dried up, the throttle body linkages became sticky. I thought that I quick blip of the throttle would release it, but it became stuck wide-open. Fortunately the engine only had 86 hp and I was able to keep it under control using the brakes, put it in neutral and shut it off quickly. No damage done, but it was scary. I couldn't imagine having to deal with that situation with a high horsepower car. It would overcome your brain very quickly.

 

[0roo0roo]

The driver could have put the car in neutral to disengage the engine from the automatic transmission, Lyons said.

The driver also could have turned off the electronically keyed car by holding down the start switch for three seconds, but that could have locked the steering wheel, turned off the headlights and cut power-assist to the brakes, Lyons said.
http://www.google.com/hostedne...l_jGmyHMBWRVAD9ANVDU00

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: radioouman
I had this happen in a 1986 Plymouth Reliant. I took the throttle body apart over the weekend and cleaned it, and I lubed it with WD40. Once that WD40 dried up, the throttle body linkages became sticky. I thought that I quick blip of the throttle would release it, but it became stuck wide-open. Fortunately the engine only had 86 hp and I was able to keep it under control using the brakes, put it in neutral and shut it off quickly. No damage done, but it was scary. I couldn't imagine having to deal with that situation with a high horsepower car. It would overcome your brain very quickly.

he was a cop.
he was renting luxury vehicles(me thinks he spent himself into a hole)
cop cars are autos
cops take emergency manuevering courses
they are far more prepared for such things, he wasn't a granny freaking out not knowing what to do.
and again, cop cars are autos
i think it was suicide.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: radioouman
I had this happen in a 1986 Plymouth Reliant. I took the throttle body apart over the weekend and cleaned it, and I lubed it with WD40. Once that WD40 dried up, the throttle body linkages became sticky. I thought that I quick blip of the throttle would release it, but it became stuck wide-open. Fortunately the engine only had 86 hp and I was able to keep it under control using the brakes, put it in neutral and shut it off quickly. No damage done, but it was scary. I couldn't imagine having to deal with that situation with a high horsepower car. It would overcome your brain very quickly.

When this happened to me, I was surprisingly calm about it. I guess that I can thank driving around in New England winters for that, which are always pretty hairy.

The first thing I tried was to feather the gas pedal in order to try to get it unstuck. No go. Then I tried slamming on the breaks, which slowed down the car a bit but not nearly enough in order to make a turn that was coming up. I threw it into neutral as a last resort, half expecting the engine or transmission to break when I did it. The rev limiter did it's job, though, and the engine made one hell of a noise before I finally got the car pulled over and shut off.

 

[Number1]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
I missed the loaner part, all the easier for me to find a nice long wall to scrape against. Besides, everything should be covered by insurance, why did he care?

What make you think he cared?

What make you think scraping the car on a wall would make it stop when the accelerator is stuck wide open considering the brake were unable to overcome the torque of the engine?


Anyway, it's pretty well confirmed that the floor mat ended up jamming the accelerator wide opened. The driver panicked and was unable to stop the car. All he had to do was put the car into neutral. The rev limiter would have prevented the engine from exploding and he would have been able to stop the car safely.

No damage needed.

 

[mwmorph]

I'm pretty sure, the ES350 doesn't have brake by wire so you have a direct, physical connection to the master cylinder and thus the brakes.

The brakes on a car, are always at least 3x as powerful as the engine, average of about 4x and on some performance cars, 5x. Even if the car was WOT in drive, you could push the brakes down and stop.

As for any car with Drive by wire, even then, there is no car that will not allow brakes to be used when the accelerator is being pressed. There are failsafes, backups and backups of failsafes backups for those cars because the brakes are by far the mot important part of your vehicle.

Standard procedure is to drop the car into neutral or a lower gear and apply the brakes or e-brakes.

For a situation like this to occur, you would need 2 brake lines to be physically cut (1 is not enough to lose all brakes on a modern car), the accelerator stuck in WOT and the transmission malfunctioning to shift even into neutral.

The most likely explanation is the floormats depressed the accelerator and prevented the brakes from being pressed down. More likely, unfortunately is that problem exists between Steering Wheel and chair. Something like floor mat shifting caused it, panic set in and all the wrong decisions were made (or morel likely, panic induced inhibition). That or he did it for some unknown reason like a few years ago when a BMW 318i driver a few years ago in Great Britain.

 

[amdhunter]

Darwin did his deed. What an idiot.

 

[fleabag]

I'm totally not surprised this happen. My dad owns an ES350 and I was driving it one day when I pushed hard on the accelerator for what ever reason, but when I let go of the accelerator the car kept going. I was scared that the Throttle By Wire had gotten messed up so I tried the best I could to hold down the brake but to no avail. I don't remember if I had considered putting the car in neutral but if I did it would've blown the engine and I really didn't want that to happen. So while I was doing my best to keep the car in control while I tried to figure out the problem, I looked under to see if there was anything doing something to the accelerator and found that the floor mat was firmly pushing on the bottom of the accelerator. So I pull the floor mat back and the car finally stopped accelerating and I continued on with my day from there.

It was a very scary moment and the cause of this was because the floor mat not being on the hooks like it was suppose to be. There are a large number of service bulletins and notifications that should be stressed at the dealerships but apparently are missing one step and that is to make it to the customer. This EASILY could've happened to my Dad and I don't think he would've been able to correctly handle the situation which worries me. I think the worst part about all of this was that how lightly he took news of what I had told him so I'm definitely going to forward this article to him.