[cfg83]

Me -

Originally Posted by cfg83

Neil -

Wow. So it's the electronics, but it's also garbage-in, garbage out. I consider the artificial-short to be a "sensor gone bad". The software in the car computer is gets bad sensor input and CHOOSES to ignore the driver's input. I am guessing that Toyota will state that the test is not fair, but it does replicate the symptoms quite well. Even if they need a hardware fix for the short, I think a software upgrade would be cheaper to do (rock = ???, paper = accelerator, scissors = brake).

The Titanic Syndrome lives (a set of ifs leading to disaster [for Toyota])!

CarloSW2

As one would expect :

Toyota aims to refute critic who blames electronics, not gas pedals, for sudden acceleration | Washington Examiner

Toyota gave detailed evidence Monday that it says disproves claims that electronics may cause the unwanted acceleration that led to the recall of more than 8 million cars and trucks.
Toyota was attempting to counter tests by an Illinois engineering professor who said Toyota engines could rev without a driver pressing on the gas. The automaker says mechanical problems, not electronics, are to blame.
...
The professor's work "could result in misguided policy and unwarranted fear," Gerdes said.
The work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, has been the basis of many doubts that Toyota's mechanical fixes for unwanted acceleration will truly solve the problem.
Gilbert told a congressional hearing Feb. 23 that he recreated sudden acceleration in a Toyota Tundra by short-circuiting the electronics behind the gas pedal — without triggering any trouble codes in the truck's computer.
"We do not believe that electronics are at the root of this issue," Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman, said during a demonstration at the automaker's North American headquarters in Torrance, Calif.
Toyota says faulty gas pedals and floor mats, not electronics, are the cause. It is fixing millions of vehicles to correct those problems. But some drivers have reported continued problems in vehicles that have already been supposedly fixed.
...
According to Exponent, Gilbert connected sensor wires from the pedal of a 2010 Toyota Avalon to an engineered circuit, revving the engine without using the pedal. Gilbert demonstrated the method in an ABC News story last month.
Exponent said it reproduced the test on the same model year Avalon and a 2007 Camry and was able to rev the engine. But it concluded the electronic throttle system would have to be tampered with significantly to create the right conditions.
"Dr. Gilbert's scenario amounts to connecting the accelerator pedal sensors to an engineered circuit that would be highly unlikely to occur naturally, and that can only be contrived in a laboratory," an Exponent report said.
...

This is a fair beef on Toyota's part. I would make the same complaint. From what I have read, it's hard to tell if Gilbert qualified his statement. He recreated a "sensor failure" that led to the sudden acceleration behavior, but I want to know the likelihood of this same sensor failure outside lab conditions.

CarloSW2