Payson Roundup

fred_franz (frederick franz) says…

Toyota is trying to cover it's rear end and apparently fumbling the job!
-Fred

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

How dumb can people get?

They take the car that ran out of control in California. They put it in a test situation and try to duplicate what happened.

Can't do it.

Why not?

When I took my foreign made piece of junk in, the one that tried to run away with me at regular intervals I got exactly the same answer. “Gee. We tried. We really did. But we just couldn't duplicate the problem.”

Why not? I had told them that it would only happen on a very cold morning. They took it to the valley and let the car warm up before testing it.

I told them that it was obviously a programming error in the module program and that it would therefore be intermittent.

They tried it just once.

If you don't want to find the truth you won't find it. The place to look is NOT on the %$#@! car. It's in the written lines of program that have been installed in the chip in the module. That's where the problem is, not in some %$#@! car.

Take the chip and the program to Microsoft and ask them to do an independent study of the program. THEN we'll find out what's wrong.

Who do they think they're kidding.
First it's, “Oh, it's the carpeting.”
Then it's, “Oh, it must be the linkage. ”
Now it's “Gee! We can't duplicate it.”

I once wrote a program where a trap door opened and hanged a guy (It was a Hangman Program. Don't get shook up.)

Trouble is, when the trapdoor opened it suddenly grew twice as thick as it should be. It took me a long time to find the bug in the program. It was over two hundred lines before the problem and had nothing to do with the trap door. I had used a simple allowable short cut authorized by the programming instructions.

What they are hiding is the fact that the programming for all those modules is essentially the same. They are dead scared that someone wil find the bug before they do.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Tom,
Here we go again.
I don't doubt that the cars have problems, but I don't think that particular car did. The driver seemed as tho he was lying from the beginning and he has hired an attorney and started changing his story. His 15 minutes of fame, maybe?
He admitted right to begin with he really stepped on it as he always did.
We probably will never know.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Pat, I'll look into it, but the officers who took over and slowed him down to a safe stop with their vehicles were thoroughly convinced that the problem was real.

My point is that you cannot “duplicate” random program errors.

You know the troubles you sometimes have with your computer? They don't happen every time do they? In other words, they can't be “duplicated.” The module in your car is doing many things. It has many “conditional statements” in it. Conditional statements are things like this:

(IF) the brake pedal is depressed then enter a zero in register 102
(AND IF) the gas pedal is depressed then enter a zero in register 104
(AND IF) sum(R102 + R104) is less than 2, then GOTO line 123

Now, in another part of the program there may be something which has—say—a statement like this:

(ELSE IF) sum(R102 + R104) is less than 3, then GOTO line 1264

See what can happen? Each statement has a different purpose and taken alone is perfectly all right. But if the program looks at both of them at the same time the result can be unpredictable and disastrous.

Most of the time when something goes wrong with your computer it's because some programmer wrote a program which uses some part of memory as a “scratch pad,” a place to store some small piece of information (like what font you are using). So far, so good. But now comes another program written by another programmer that uses the same exact part of memory as a “scratch pad” for his program. Suddenly the program you are running goes to the scratch pad memory and runs into something that causes it to crash or to do something very nasty.

And since you may have upwards of 100 small programs running on your machine at any given time….

And since you, yourself go in and make “preference” settings….

Things get just a mite complex. It become impossible to “duplicate” a problem. Ever notice that when you get your machine “fixed” the most common solution is to erase and reinstall much of the basic information? You may not know it, but just having a font which has gotten corrupted can cause your machine to go crazy.

Now, think not of your harmless little machine at home, but of a vehicle running under the control of a computer program as it zips down the road at 65 miles and hour.

The correct, the safe, the honest, the ONLY solution is to go through the lines of the program installed in that machine. Not to try to “duplicate” a problem.

Savvy?

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Tom,
If I can't run my computer how would I know how to test a car computer?
My computer duplicates it's own problems doesn't need help from me.

SantaBerry (Bernice Winandy) says…

Tom, are you talking about the guy in the Prius. If you are, I tend to agree with Pat. I think the car owner was faking it just as the woman who several years ago found a finger in her fast food hamburger.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

“If I can't run my computer how would I know how to test a car computer?”

You can't, and no one is suggesting you should. But if your car gives trouble, like mine actually did, then someone should be looking at the program in the module, not at the carpet.

Bernice,

Finding a finger in fast food is not at all rare.

Want me to cite the statistics?

Oh, well. Why make you ask.

It happens, on the average, about 176,000,000 times a day. And that's just in this country alone.

If you add in countries like England, Holland, and Germany, the number is even higher.
––––
I'm listening to two bongo brains on Channel 12 talking about the price of houses. One of their words of wisdom, “If you want to qualify for federal assistance you have to stop paying your mortgage to clearly demonstrate that you need help.”

Oh, dear. Now they're saying that the proposed new bill on illegal immigrants will harass the poor illegals.

I have to stop. I need a moment to dry my eyes.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

“I don't doubt that the cars have problems, but I don't think that particular car did.”

Pat,

I promised you I would look into it, and I did. Sorry it had to wait until today, but the police officer didn't release his written report until totday. Here are the results:

The police report on the Prius fully supports the statement of the driver, and it includes clear cut evidence that the Prius went out of control.

For one thing, the officer's report states that James Sikes appeared to be stomping heavily on the brake pedal while speeding at 85 to 90 miles per hour on a freeway near San Diego.

“I could see the driver sat up off his seat indicating that he was applying the brake pedal with his body weight,” CHP Officer Todd Neibert wrote in his investigative report.

In addition, Neibert said in his account that he discovered a large amount of brake dust and brake pad material in and around the wheels.

An inspection of the brakes showed that they were worn all the way down to the metal.

As for the “15 minutes of fame” thing, the officer's report says that Sikes definitely did not want to talk to the press. He preferred to stay in the emergency vehicle where he was being treated for a high heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and other symptoms of stress.

I guess that pretty much put the doubts to rest, doesn't it?

The question is: Where did the doubts originate? I went out and dug that one up for you took a while. I'll put it in a separate post because this post might get too long.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

This took me a while, Pat, but I think it's conclusive.

First of all, where did the doubts originate?

No surprise, I guess. They came from a news conference given by Toyota in California. Their comment was that they had inspected the car and could “find no evidence” that the driver had pressed hard on the brake pedal.

That's a silly statement. What kind of evidence would there be of that?

When questioned about it, however, the Toyota spokesman admitted that the brakes on the car were worn all the way down to the metal.

On top of that, at a hastily called press conference late Friday in Tokyo, Toyota President Akio Toyoda apologized for the recent spate of recalls and acknowledged that the Prius had brake problems.

So much for that.

The NHTSA has received 124 complaints about the Prius's anti-lock braking system, which has been blamed in four crashes.

The Associated Press in Japan, quoted Toyota spokeswoman Ririko Takeuch, “We will make an announcement soon on the action we plan to take.”

The Associated Press also reported that Toyota has informed its dealer network in the U.S. that it is readying plans for repair of Prius braking systems, according to an email sent by a Toyota executive. It remains unclear whether a formal recall will be issued.

As of Sunday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hadn't received word from Toyota about a recall or possible fix for the problem for Priuses currently on the road.

However, Toyota rewrote the software used by the braking system late last month; all models manufactured since then utilize the updated program.

That leaves us with three obvious questions:

a. How the do brakes get worn down to the metal if no one is pushing hard on the pedal?

b. If the problem lies in software bugs, which like bugs in the software on your computer almost invariably cannot be duplicated, how can anyone expect to reproduce the event on the car itself?

c. If there's nothing wrong with the braking system, why did Toyota suddenly rewrite the software for it?

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Hey! Nobody told me what they think now that I went out and got all that information.

How about it?

Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…

Why is Toyota rewriting the whoa part?
I thought they had a giddy up problem!

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Mike, you obviously see right through the baloney. What they rewrote, of course, is the program for the module, so who is to say what problem they were actually trying to fix?

Yeah, Fred. When are people going to learn that bad things happen when you try to cover up something? They do it over and over and over again. It makes you wonder how often someone slips one through that we don't catch.

Look at the car I owned for a short time. It was obvious that the program in the module had bugs in it. It was obvious because it was the module which made the engine run fast until it warmed up to operating temperature. It was this function which was malfunctioning. It stayed on forever. And it was the module which let the engine free wheel when you were going downhill to save gas. But that malfunctioned too; the engine slowed down so much it almost died every time I went downhill, and there was a noticeable jerk when I hit the gas pedal again.

Nevertheless you should have heard the double talk I got when i called corporate headquarters. And when double talk didn't work I got stonewalled like you wouldn't believe. The proof that they were fully aware of the problem was the fact that the dealer was told to give me back ever nickel I had in the car without argument or discussion.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Have you ever gone thru and automobile assembly plant? If not and you get the chance do it.
We went thru one near Freemont California in about 1970 and I was amazed.
The parts were on a conveyor overhead. They started with a bare chassis and as the conveyor went by an employee put on thier part. When they got to the end they put a bucket in upside down after putting in a couple of gallons of gas and drove it out of the building. They could put a car or pickup together as fast as you could walk the length of the building. After watching it I was almost afraid to get in my car and drive home.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

“After watching it I was almost afraid to get in my car and drive home.”

I could believe that. You forgot to mention QC (Quality Control). Was there one?

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Tom,
I don't know about the QC.
One of the really interesting things were these vehicles were already painted and not the same color or style.
Once in a while you would see doors, fenders or whatever sitting in someone's bay, guess they didn't have time to fasten it on.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

“…guess they didn't have time to fasten it on.”

Uh-uh, Pat. I have it on good authority that those were the ones that fell off. :-)

Hm-m-m-m! I just noticed on TV that there's a new program called “Chuck.”

I wonder if NBC knows that “chuck” is the black equivalent of the n-word, only applied to whites?

I haven't seen the program, and the answer to that question is almost—but not quite—interesting enough to make me go watch an episode to see if someone is pulling something which is—to him—funny.

By the way, just went up to the View Menu and increased the size of the text on the forum. Makes the %$#@! Helvetica style font a lot easier to read and edit. Try it. It's worth making the change.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Pat,

I just made a mistake which might explain a problem you've been having for a while. I wrote the post above this one, saw something that needed correction, went to the editing area (the part in boldface type), and made the change.

Now here's the important part: I then clicked on the Preview comment button instead of the Post comment button. The effect was to make the post “go away” because I immediately clicked on the forum title in my bookmarks line, thinking I was done with the post.

There is a way to fix it though. If that's what has been happening, you can fix it by going up to the back button and clicking on it until you get back to the page where your post is. Then click on the Post comment button this time.

Hope this helps.

Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…

Chuck is a funny show!

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Surprise again….

I see that “eight years ago” Toyota sent a letter out to their dealers that there was an electronic problem with the module in one of their models which could cause the engine to run out of control.

People never learn, do they?

The coverup is always worse than the original problem.

Plan on seeing a bodacious class action suit against Toyota now that this fact has emerged.

Too bad. Somehow or other the whole thing will swing around so that the people who get hurt are ones who least deserve it.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

On the other hand, what if most of those coverups worked?

Maybe that's one reason we are so close to going down the tube.