Might be old news but I stumbled on this

http://gawker.com/5486666/how-abc-ne...ota-death-ride

 

Modern journalism at its best. This **** is to be expected now...

 

So, because the original footage of the tach-in-motion was unusable, an editor made an artistic decision to splice in a different piece of footage.

And this affected the validity of the story in what way?

The actual news is that the test scenario which David Gilbert created is essentially an unrealistic fault condition- inserting a 200 ohm resistor between a pair of wires on the pedal sensor. In the real world, wires may very well short together (~ 0 ohms) or be cut / broken (~ ∞ ohms), or even immersed in a corrosove / conductive liquid (several kiloohms), and the ECU's fault-detection characteristics would have identified any of these failure modes and trapped them. But I can think of no plausible failure mode which would result in a 200 ohm bridge between two wires due to mechanical abrasion / assembly damage / whatever.

Essentially, Mr. Gilbert essentially went in and figured out precisely the correct conditions to inject a signal that was within normal operating parameters. Hell, I could do that with practically any system on any car if I had enough time on my hands. From an engineering perspective, this would be like removing the spring which closes the throttle plate (which would result in full acceleration) and then claiming that failure of the spring which closes the throttle body can result in uncommanded acceleration, and that the use of springs to manage the throttle plate is dangerous.

This isn't bad journalism- it's bad science.

Detailed analysis of the test:

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/08/t...-demonstratio/

 

**** hits v-tak hard.

 

It doesnt matter, theyre journalist, that means no opinions, no show, all truth. If they didnt like they shot they got then though ****, you dont fake a shot of the car ripping to redline like a sport bike.
That was blantantly trying to make it scarier than it is. Everybody know that *** mobile is slow as ****. A real shot of the tach would show the needle creeping towards redline like hustlers homeosexual urges creep on him after a few beers, theres nothing scary about that.

 

Wirelessly posted

oh em gee... big shock.

 

This is just like "Were here in front of the whitehouse..." No youre ******* not youre in front a green screen.

 

In for $16,000,000.00 refund from NTSB to Toyota for the "unintended acceleration" fine.

 

Sorry, it's already been added to the General Motors R&D budget.

 

I thought I posted that test a looong time ago, along with my commentary about how Toyota's rebuttal didn't make news, only weeks after all the sensationalism.


Pretty easy for the corporate owned media and NHTSA to throw mud on a company's name...incredibly hard to wipe it off.

 

no, it's beer money for the union workers:

http://jalopnik.com/5645880/auto-wor...h-during-lunch

 

Eh, who was I kidding? We all know GM doesn't need an R&D budget anymore.

 

yeah, it's called taxes. now we can all buy a 41K electric car, create black-outs in the neighborhood, and get a 7K tax write-off all at teh same time.

 

I wonder if the pot and beer was negotiated in their union contract.

 

ftfy

 

For realz.

 

Wrong, it went to the execs' bonuses. LOL