In engineering school, we had a class called Intro to Vibrations. In this class, we studied how real life systems will vibrate and how to predict and control them. We had one very interesting group project that went from a 1 month project to an over-nighter in the space of 29 days. It ended up being a 12-hour marathon for three mechanical engineering students and a 20-some page paper, all but 6 of which were calculation appendixes.
The problem went something like this: using a given simplified model of a car, supply spring rates and damping rates in order to make the car bounce (vertical vibration) at a rate between X and Y and pitch at a rate between U and W (two different given rates). The idea is that a car is uncomfortable if the car bounces or pitches too slowly or rapidly when the car goes over a bump. The car will be subjected to bumps modeled by a given sine curve. Assume the weight distribution of the car is unknown.
In short, we select a car's springs and shocks based on comfort. As complex as this was (36 man-hours plus were spent on this), it ignores the VAST, VAST majority of real automotive engineers' design goals (handling, stability, etc.). That being said, this sort of thing is still important to automakers because cars should be comfortable.
Allow me to diverge for a minute to describe something that happened to me more than once. The 2nd car that I drove in life was a 2005 Pontiac G6. I admit, this was not a car I liked very much, its only redeeming factor being that if I drove it like a grandpa I could manage to get the gas mileage up around 36/46 (city/highway). That and people seemed to think it was a nice car.
Anyway, here was a situation. I'm driving down a curvy road through south Raleigh, very fun, often taken at or above the speed limit of 45 mph by most traffic despite the 35 mph suggested speed limit. I was probably doing 48-50, nothing unusually fast. While going over a certain rock or rumble in the road, my front tires gave up traction, my steering wheel went limp and the wheel snapped into the direction I was pushing it. I, after my years and years of video game training, immediately straightened the wheel and braked until I was slow enough to complete the turn. My decision was the correct one, though the unintuitive one, saving me from plowing into a tree (or five).
I got into this situation doing nothing wrong. The suspension in the Pontiac just didn't like that particular series of waves or bumps in the road and the car lost traction. My strong suspicion, having been through some of the basics of auto engineering, is that Pontiac didn't spend the engineering hours on this car to prevent this sort of thing. I believe that many companies cut corners in any way that doesn't effect the bottom line, and they know that the last decision made before a purchase is related to the test drive. The trouble is that test drives do not cover most driving circumstances, and in practice rarely include any driving that reveal the strength of the underlying car. Instead, most test drivers focus on how comfortable and nice and rich a car is. Therefore, the best way to sell a car to someone who is test driving it, is to make the car as smooth and comfortable and generally nice as possible.
This means that the most important thing to a suspension engineering team run by a company that wants to sell lots of cars is the extended version of my college project. I don't mean to say that comfort is not important, but it's not what's most important. What's most important is that the car safely and reliably gets you from A to B (in saying this I'm quoting every person who tells me "I don't need a race car, I just need something to get me from A to B"). Comfort and style are, at best, a close second.
I'm hoping my statement is already becoming clear here, but as I'm likely to ramble, I'll simplify the purpose of this blog entry to one statement (good luck to me). Car companies often cheap out on engineering hours that do not lead to the sale of a vehicle and/or only spend time and money on making a car seem nice.
It's just something for you to think about. The kinds of car companies that I and many other enthusiasts often support are companies that are willing to go the extra mile to make a car a better car. Yeah, often we've got our heads stuck up our own butts about "true sports cars", but often we have a reason. I love and support Mazda because they put a great chassis under their car, and I believe that this is more important than having sat-nav standard.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Unofficial Statistical Research
Alright, back to the blog. Sorry for those who have read this and wished I had kept better care, I'll try again to meet my 1/week goal.
As for my non-statistically accepted research as discussed in a previous post, my purpose is this: to study the number of what I loosely describe as "dip-s**t" errors made, broken down by category. These are usually mild offenses, ones that likely do not cause accidents, but ones that usually aggravate (me) situations, or are at least a general sign that the driver is, in some way, not on his/her game. The rest of this post is defining my study such that it's at least almost kinda-close-ish to resembling a scientific study. More of a guidelines than anything interesting.
Offenses include (but are subject to addition):
I will conduct this study by bringing a tape recorder with me in the car and calling out pertinent information when seen. Yes, this is a horrible way to perform a survey, but I'm not going to take this any farther. I will report back after the end of April.
What do I call pertinent information? The categories of data to be collected. As stated, I'm mostly concerned with make of vehicle, however I also will be calling out (only when it happens) a few particular classes of cars. These include small SUV or SUV-like in stature vehicles that I deem to be ill designed for off-roading (think Hyundai Santa-Fe and Scion XB). Also included are mini-vans and pickup trucks. Admittedly, I only know what I already expect in regards to style of vehicle, also that this is, again, horribly un-scientific. I hope that my point 1 month from now will show itself.
I admit to a bias going in. I will reveal the answers when I complete the study and I plan to be honest as to whether or not my bias was correct then and only then.
Again, all very unscientific and picky. Lets meet back in a month.
As for my non-statistically accepted research as discussed in a previous post, my purpose is this: to study the number of what I loosely describe as "dip-s**t" errors made, broken down by category. These are usually mild offenses, ones that likely do not cause accidents, but ones that usually aggravate (me) situations, or are at least a general sign that the driver is, in some way, not on his/her game. The rest of this post is defining my study such that it's at least almost kinda-close-ish to resembling a scientific study. More of a guidelines than anything interesting.
Offenses include (but are subject to addition):
- Attempting to enter a highway at 5 mph or more lower than the flow of traffic. This offense is particularly grievous to me as it is the cause of the majority of traffic I encounter on the way to work, often doubling my commute. Gotta love the accordion effect.
- Letting off the gas/braking before the highway exit. Going 55 mph on the highway before the exit is going to cause traffic problems. Again, accordion effect.
- Non-use of a turning lane or not fully entering a turning lane before slowing down and turning. Especially common on 2-lane roads with a center turning lane.
- Cutting corners unnecessarily short and end up running the rear tire over the curb, usually found in parking lots.
- Often in fear of committing the above offense, turning WAY too far out into the road/isle and winding up blocking both lanes.
- Parallel parking at an angle (nose in), parking more than a foot away from the raised portion of the curb, or parking outside of the lines by more than an inch or two.
- Parking in normal spaces over lines, at an angle (usually cars who's fronts are centered but forget that the back doesn't line up automatically), or parking with the butt of the car sticking way out into the isle.
- Driving unnecessarily slowly. This comes in many forms including slow parking, overly slow reactions to green lights, stopping at a green protected turn or other right of way/clear yield turn.
- Leaving more than 3/4 car length in front of your car when traffic is thick enough for some cars to be stuck in an intersection. I am picky, yes, but this is a thoughtless action that can result in an intersection being blocked or partially blocked.
- Blocking the box (entering an intersection when there are stopped cars in front of you already at least halfway in to the intersection.
- Pulling up to a drive-through window more than a foot away from the curb, or scraping tires against the curb.
- Not moving/adjusting to allow someone to merge smoothly onto the highway
- Merging into the wrong lane at a double left or double right turn
- Improper use of left/right lanes on the highway
I will conduct this study by bringing a tape recorder with me in the car and calling out pertinent information when seen. Yes, this is a horrible way to perform a survey, but I'm not going to take this any farther. I will report back after the end of April.
What do I call pertinent information? The categories of data to be collected. As stated, I'm mostly concerned with make of vehicle, however I also will be calling out (only when it happens) a few particular classes of cars. These include small SUV or SUV-like in stature vehicles that I deem to be ill designed for off-roading (think Hyundai Santa-Fe and Scion XB). Also included are mini-vans and pickup trucks. Admittedly, I only know what I already expect in regards to style of vehicle, also that this is, again, horribly un-scientific. I hope that my point 1 month from now will show itself.
I admit to a bias going in. I will reveal the answers when I complete the study and I plan to be honest as to whether or not my bias was correct then and only then.
Again, all very unscientific and picky. Lets meet back in a month.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Why Loving a Car Doesn't Make it Good
Any time I state a negative opinion about a popular car near someone who has experience with that car, I always get the same response: "I don't know why you'd say that, I really like/love that car". I'll try to explain this very common divide through a simple case study.
Lets Compare Radio Interfaces in Two Different Cars.
This is the radio interface in my Mother's 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan.
This is the interface in my 2006 RX-8
Now, many people will likely prefer the Dodge stereo over the RX-8, and that's fine. An LCD touch screen has many benefits that hard physical buttons just compete with, including custom arrangement of buttons, future firmware updates, and generally being able to perform more functions.
There's one thing that LCD panels will never have, and that's tactile response. It's very important that a car's sound system be as eyes-off as possible, because, well, you're driving. The more you can comfortably do without looking, the better. Now some would argue that after knowing the car well enough you'll be able to do anything you need without looking because you just know where things are, but what if you hit a bump while trying to switch back to 70's on 7 (cause you're old enough to like that sort of thing), and you accidentally switch menus? You're not going to know you switched menus because you can't see it. You won't be able to navigate back to the menu shown because you don't know where the buttons on the new menu are (because you don't even know which secondary menu you're on). You won't be able to obsessively adjust the equalizer (if you're me) because you'd have to flip through 3-4 menus to do so. And see that Direct Tune button? That goes into a menu where you type in the radio station by frequency, as in [1]-[0]-[6]-[.]-[5]-[enter], which takes a lot of time and looking.
Of course, none of that matters if you're stopped; no, being stopped at a light doesn't count. For the most part, though, you'll need to access most of the radio's functions without paying much attention to the radio, and I consider that fairly self-explanatory (you did go through drivers' ed, didn't you?).
But even beyond just the basic format, I think Mazda did some excellent stuff with the layout. If you notice, each button is different (at least on one side). Of course, there's the main volume knob (also the power button) in the middle, and 3 radio preset buttons on each side of that. There's a reason for this, and that is that it's difficult to differentiate more than 3 or so identical buttons in a row. In other words, if you have 12 radio preset buttons in a row, it's very difficult to quickly feel out the 5th button. So by splitting the buttons in rows of 3, two of which have bumps on them, you can very easily hit any one of the three without looking.
The seek/scan rockers are easily to feel out because they're curved differently than the rest of the surface, the tuning knob sticks out clearly on the left, as does the EQ/options knob on the right, and the menus are simple enough to work without looking at all. Even the mode buttons at the top are two-button rockers so that the user can (again) easily differentiate all the buttons.
So back to the LCD touch panel capabilities, what does that LCD screen system do above and beyond the RX-8's simple hard button system? You can watch DVD's on it, at least when you're parked, which really isn't all that useful for most. Also, all the extra light from the LCD screen can really hurt your night time vision.
So What's My Point?
I hate the Dodge Grand Caravan. More importantly, I want to show that there are many small things in cars that often may seem better or cooler and otherwise innocuous, but could instead be harmful.
I also believe, and this is one of my blog's founding principles, that many car companies are willing to make bad decisions (like using an touchscreen based radio system) in order to sell cars. Yeah, those options are cool. Yeah, they seem advantageous. Yeah, you can brag about them. So it sells. Same with colored gauges...
Car Gauge Colors Comparison
Dodge Grand Caravan Gauges
2007 VW Eos Gauge Cluster
RX-8 Gauges Day Mode
So what's the difference. They all show about the same information (I do like having an oil pressure gauge, but it's very unlikely to ever be needed. The different cars have different priorities; I'd argue that the RX-8 has the sportiest gauge since the tachometer is large and centered, the Eos is neutral, and the Dodge is the least sporty since it doesn't seem to think the tach is as important. But here are two more bits of detail.
1. The RX-8 is the only one of the three that has the gauges setup for racing. By that I mean that the gauges will all point straight up at running conditions (running temperature and oil pressure). This way, the driver doesn't need to look at his/her gauges in order to see that the car is running properly and not hot or losing oiling. The fuel gauge is positioned differently than the others in order to keep the driver from confusing that gauge as being another "up is running conditions" gauge. Also, when racing, the engine will run 6-9k rpms, making that needle near straight up. Finally, the speed is digital, so once again, won't be confused for a dial gauge (numerical speed is not important when racing).
Who cares? Not many people and that's fair. Then again, why orient the gauges like the Dodge's? No reason at all. So might as well go with the one way that makes sense. Again, does it matter? Not for most drivers, but it's nice to know that even small aspects of a car are so well worked through.
2. Gauge color. Gauge color matters as gauges need to be seen. During the day, it should be bright, during the night, it shouldn't interfere with your night time vision. The Dodge has a white-faced gauge cluster, which is great in the day, but at night, the light blue-white backlighting can be VERY bothersome. At dim settings, numbers can't be seen clearly, and at brighter settings, it always seems to get in the way, and I can never seem to be able to find a happy medium.
An old discovery shows that the human eye sees less red out of the sides of the eyes than any other color, so night vision is less effected by a red light than other colors. Cockpits in airplanes are often strict red because of this. Violets pretty good too. It's very difficult to get a light blue/white gauge to not be too bright or too dim because of our anatomy. The violet/red gauge cluster in the Eos is really great and never gets in your way, even at brightest settings, and is very clear even fairly dim. The RX-8 would normally be too bright, except...
RX-8 Night Time Gauge Cluster
These are the night time settings for the RX-8. A little bit of soft white keeps the LCD numbers clear, but the red keeps out of your vision, and the blue glow is a purple-y blue The blue isn't my choice, but it doesn't really hurt much either.
And Back to the Point
So car companies may offer cool looking gauges to sell cars, and people love them. Most of the best selling cars (Toyota/Lexus, GM, Kia/Hyundai, Honda...) have very overly-bright and colorful gauge clusters because most people love stuff like that. I believe that Ford now even has color-changing gauges available on the stock vehicle.
Companies will always do things like this because it's the easiest and cheapest way to increase sales. They often will cave under pressure to sell cars and knowingly hurt their products. Unfortunately, knowledge of many of those things can be hard to come by for those that aren't really seeking it, and often sound like silly elitism. It's often small things like this that causes divides between truly quality cars from those that sell very well. People often love cars for things like cool touch panel radios and colorful gauges, and I'd agree with them if they weren't a bad thing from an objective view.
Many people would further argue things like "my Civic has super bright blue gauges and I've never felt like it was a problem for me" and that gets pretty tough to argue. Hopefully, this will always be true, but little things like this make little differences, from allowing people the vision and attention to miss potholes instead of getting flat tires. Mostly I hope to make people aware of marketing decisions that override the decisions of engineers and designers and ergonomists. I have a difficult time respecting companies who hurt their vehicles primary purpose in order to sell more.
Lets Compare Radio Interfaces in Two Different Cars.
This is the radio interface in my Mother's 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan.
Now, many people will likely prefer the Dodge stereo over the RX-8, and that's fine. An LCD touch screen has many benefits that hard physical buttons just compete with, including custom arrangement of buttons, future firmware updates, and generally being able to perform more functions.
There's one thing that LCD panels will never have, and that's tactile response. It's very important that a car's sound system be as eyes-off as possible, because, well, you're driving. The more you can comfortably do without looking, the better. Now some would argue that after knowing the car well enough you'll be able to do anything you need without looking because you just know where things are, but what if you hit a bump while trying to switch back to 70's on 7 (cause you're old enough to like that sort of thing), and you accidentally switch menus? You're not going to know you switched menus because you can't see it. You won't be able to navigate back to the menu shown because you don't know where the buttons on the new menu are (because you don't even know which secondary menu you're on). You won't be able to obsessively adjust the equalizer (if you're me) because you'd have to flip through 3-4 menus to do so. And see that Direct Tune button? That goes into a menu where you type in the radio station by frequency, as in [1]-[0]-[6]-[.]-[5]-[enter], which takes a lot of time and looking.
Of course, none of that matters if you're stopped; no, being stopped at a light doesn't count. For the most part, though, you'll need to access most of the radio's functions without paying much attention to the radio, and I consider that fairly self-explanatory (you did go through drivers' ed, didn't you?).
But even beyond just the basic format, I think Mazda did some excellent stuff with the layout. If you notice, each button is different (at least on one side). Of course, there's the main volume knob (also the power button) in the middle, and 3 radio preset buttons on each side of that. There's a reason for this, and that is that it's difficult to differentiate more than 3 or so identical buttons in a row. In other words, if you have 12 radio preset buttons in a row, it's very difficult to quickly feel out the 5th button. So by splitting the buttons in rows of 3, two of which have bumps on them, you can very easily hit any one of the three without looking.
The seek/scan rockers are easily to feel out because they're curved differently than the rest of the surface, the tuning knob sticks out clearly on the left, as does the EQ/options knob on the right, and the menus are simple enough to work without looking at all. Even the mode buttons at the top are two-button rockers so that the user can (again) easily differentiate all the buttons.
So back to the LCD touch panel capabilities, what does that LCD screen system do above and beyond the RX-8's simple hard button system? You can watch DVD's on it, at least when you're parked, which really isn't all that useful for most. Also, all the extra light from the LCD screen can really hurt your night time vision.
So What's My Point?
I hate the Dodge Grand Caravan. More importantly, I want to show that there are many small things in cars that often may seem better or cooler and otherwise innocuous, but could instead be harmful.
I also believe, and this is one of my blog's founding principles, that many car companies are willing to make bad decisions (like using an touchscreen based radio system) in order to sell cars. Yeah, those options are cool. Yeah, they seem advantageous. Yeah, you can brag about them. So it sells. Same with colored gauges...
Car Gauge Colors Comparison
So what's the difference. They all show about the same information (I do like having an oil pressure gauge, but it's very unlikely to ever be needed. The different cars have different priorities; I'd argue that the RX-8 has the sportiest gauge since the tachometer is large and centered, the Eos is neutral, and the Dodge is the least sporty since it doesn't seem to think the tach is as important. But here are two more bits of detail.
1. The RX-8 is the only one of the three that has the gauges setup for racing. By that I mean that the gauges will all point straight up at running conditions (running temperature and oil pressure). This way, the driver doesn't need to look at his/her gauges in order to see that the car is running properly and not hot or losing oiling. The fuel gauge is positioned differently than the others in order to keep the driver from confusing that gauge as being another "up is running conditions" gauge. Also, when racing, the engine will run 6-9k rpms, making that needle near straight up. Finally, the speed is digital, so once again, won't be confused for a dial gauge (numerical speed is not important when racing).
Who cares? Not many people and that's fair. Then again, why orient the gauges like the Dodge's? No reason at all. So might as well go with the one way that makes sense. Again, does it matter? Not for most drivers, but it's nice to know that even small aspects of a car are so well worked through.
2. Gauge color. Gauge color matters as gauges need to be seen. During the day, it should be bright, during the night, it shouldn't interfere with your night time vision. The Dodge has a white-faced gauge cluster, which is great in the day, but at night, the light blue-white backlighting can be VERY bothersome. At dim settings, numbers can't be seen clearly, and at brighter settings, it always seems to get in the way, and I can never seem to be able to find a happy medium.
An old discovery shows that the human eye sees less red out of the sides of the eyes than any other color, so night vision is less effected by a red light than other colors. Cockpits in airplanes are often strict red because of this. Violets pretty good too. It's very difficult to get a light blue/white gauge to not be too bright or too dim because of our anatomy. The violet/red gauge cluster in the Eos is really great and never gets in your way, even at brightest settings, and is very clear even fairly dim. The RX-8 would normally be too bright, except...
These are the night time settings for the RX-8. A little bit of soft white keeps the LCD numbers clear, but the red keeps out of your vision, and the blue glow is a purple-y blue The blue isn't my choice, but it doesn't really hurt much either.
And Back to the Point
So car companies may offer cool looking gauges to sell cars, and people love them. Most of the best selling cars (Toyota/Lexus, GM, Kia/Hyundai, Honda...) have very overly-bright and colorful gauge clusters because most people love stuff like that. I believe that Ford now even has color-changing gauges available on the stock vehicle.
Companies will always do things like this because it's the easiest and cheapest way to increase sales. They often will cave under pressure to sell cars and knowingly hurt their products. Unfortunately, knowledge of many of those things can be hard to come by for those that aren't really seeking it, and often sound like silly elitism. It's often small things like this that causes divides between truly quality cars from those that sell very well. People often love cars for things like cool touch panel radios and colorful gauges, and I'd agree with them if they weren't a bad thing from an objective view.
Many people would further argue things like "my Civic has super bright blue gauges and I've never felt like it was a problem for me" and that gets pretty tough to argue. Hopefully, this will always be true, but little things like this make little differences, from allowing people the vision and attention to miss potholes instead of getting flat tires. Mostly I hope to make people aware of marketing decisions that override the decisions of engineers and designers and ergonomists. I have a difficult time respecting companies who hurt their vehicles primary purpose in order to sell more.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Unofficial Statistical Research
Try this out. Whenever you see someone driving like an idiot, call out the manufacturer. Do this any time you see someone turning turning from the driving lane when there's a turning lane, not paying any attention in general, anyone parked with the front of the car dead center while the tail of the car is in another spot, making a left hand turn from the inner turning lane and exiting the turn into the outside lane when there's a car there, or any number of other dumb and careless offenses.
My findings: about 85% of the offenders are in: minivans, Toyota products (including Lexus, but interestingly enough NOT Scions), Kias/Hyundais, Buicks, and small SUVs (Honda Pilot small). Yes, I know this is horribly unscientific for many reasons, but I find it incredible that 85% of the bad drivers drive maybe 30% of the cars on the road. This is especially funny to me because these are the cars that I generally consider the worst built and/or engineered on the market.
There's no science here, nothing conclusive. Maybe this only works in my area.
My findings: about 85% of the offenders are in: minivans, Toyota products (including Lexus, but interestingly enough NOT Scions), Kias/Hyundais, Buicks, and small SUVs (Honda Pilot small). Yes, I know this is horribly unscientific for many reasons, but I find it incredible that 85% of the bad drivers drive maybe 30% of the cars on the road. This is especially funny to me because these are the cars that I generally consider the worst built and/or engineered on the market.
There's no science here, nothing conclusive. Maybe this only works in my area.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
A Short Post on the Lexus LF-A
Lexus now has a (completely sold-out) "supercar" called the LF-A. I'm not going to say much about it, only about the commercial featuring it called 'Pitch'.
Yeah, it's a really great looking car. Sounds great. The dashboard is really really bright and visually involved (I'll write more about my argument concerning dashboard colors at some other time). Oh right, the ad.
So, the premise of this ad is that this car is so precise that it can break a champagne flute with the amplified exhaust note. The argument seems to be that 'in the pursuit of perfection', they studied F1 car exhaust sounds and have designed a multi-stage exhaust that accentuates the secondary and tertiary combustion sounds for the perfect sound. Ok, I'm a perfectionist too, so this is great. But to demonstrate this, the 'pursuit of perfection' lead them to a demonstration that is not at all demonstrative of what they claim. Braking a glass is possible with an unamplified human voice [1] (thanks MythBusters). Sure, it's a different glass that reverberates at a much higher pitch, probably harder to do, but certainly any frequency generator and loud speaker could do that. This commercial is not demonstrative of precision, volume, power, only that the car revs fast.
I'm filing this under 'low-quality marketing' (until I can find a better name for it).
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMg_nd-O688
Yeah, it's a really great looking car. Sounds great. The dashboard is really really bright and visually involved (I'll write more about my argument concerning dashboard colors at some other time). Oh right, the ad.
So, the premise of this ad is that this car is so precise that it can break a champagne flute with the amplified exhaust note. The argument seems to be that 'in the pursuit of perfection', they studied F1 car exhaust sounds and have designed a multi-stage exhaust that accentuates the secondary and tertiary combustion sounds for the perfect sound. Ok, I'm a perfectionist too, so this is great. But to demonstrate this, the 'pursuit of perfection' lead them to a demonstration that is not at all demonstrative of what they claim. Braking a glass is possible with an unamplified human voice [1] (thanks MythBusters). Sure, it's a different glass that reverberates at a much higher pitch, probably harder to do, but certainly any frequency generator and loud speaker could do that. This commercial is not demonstrative of precision, volume, power, only that the car revs fast.
I'm filing this under 'low-quality marketing' (until I can find a better name for it).
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMg_nd-O688
Thursday, June 3, 2010
27 Year Loop; The Beginning of a New Cycle
This post starts on a rather belated subject, but an interesting subject.
In late 1986, 60 Minutes ran a special on Audi's supposed "unintended acceleration" problem. The idea was that these Audis, especially the 5000 S model, was accelerating uncontrollably, killing one six year old boy. 6 people were killed in 700 accidents and 60 Minutes ran an article featuring a doctored up demonstration of this acceleration, cutting Audi's U.S. sales in 6 [4].
The car's problem turned out to be that Audi sized and placed its pedals as if the cars all had manual transmissions since most European cars are stick shift cars [2], so the brake pedal is smaller and placed closer to the gas pedal than automatic driving Americans are used to. When a driver attempted to shift their Audi 5000 into drive, their foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas. In a video press release, Audi claimed partial fault for the incidents, despite not having any fault, but also showing (with the help of Bobby Unser) that claims that the Audis were defective in any way were false[3]. They were especially careful to point out the fact that no matter how powerful the car, brakes are always more powerful and can be used to stop a car even if the throttle is jammed open. This is a well known fact among car people.
So what's the point. Well, first, that 60 Minutes is far from perfect. They had been caught rigging an Audi to accelerate on its own [4], I guess in order to make the story.
But my bigger point, and one that will likely reoccur in almost every KarMudgeony post, is a belief that I hold dearly as a truth. Greg's Axiom of Consumers and Products: most consumers are idiots. Ok, maybe I don't mean that, but that most consumers don't know what's good or bad about 95% of products, or at least enough to make an educated purchasing decision or educated use of those products.
As it applies here, drivers of 700 cars [4] managed to operate their vehicles so irresponsibly that 6 were killed (including a 6 year old boy). Then, they denied their own fault and gained so much sympathy and support that they got 60 Minutes to destroy its own reputation (well, I guess not, but it was a big thing back then). Finally, through all of this, the American consumer, completely misunderstanding the problem, steered clear of one of the greatest car manufacturers in the world [5]. So, people can't use a product, can't accept that products have their own intracacies that must be understood to use them, and can't discern between good and bad products.
One example, I know. I have tons; you'll see.
Of course, anyone not living under a rock is wondering if this applies to Toyota's recent "stuck accelerator" issue. Not really. Toyota really did screw up, and quite badly. I cannot find a conclusion on the whole "internal memo" story going around, but I'd put money on the fact that Toyota engineers either warned their higher-ups about the control hardware or were not allowed to test it sufficiently. Then, and this is only a suspicion, Toyota seems to have blamed the problem on both the driver's floor mat and a physically sticky gas pedal and sent out fixes for them, in sequence, before finally admitting to a computer malfunction (what appears to have been the problem all along). Not to say the pedal and mat wouldn't be a problem, but it appears to be a company stalling while trying to show that they're still a good company.
Yet, as I said, Toyota is the largest car company in the world [6], despite being seemingly unable to construct two very basic parts of a car properly. And despite these problems (not my only issues with Toyota), people are still buying them, especially previous Toyota owners [7].
That all being said, I do feel bad for Toyota in one way; there's no reason what-so-ever, why the problem created by Toyota's over-ambitions and under-engineering should have been so large. There's no excuse for anyone with a license to operate a vehicle on public roads to drive 6 miles at top speed, praying to God for intervention, without stopping the car by any other method [8]. To be honest, I have a hard time believing that the brakes, gear selector, and ignition all failed since other accelerator failure tests didn't find that, but I'll let that one go on a fluke. It is possible, and I'm sure that woman has been through enough doubt already.
So what about other similar claims that were all over the news? Car and Driver did a test with a Toyota, an Infinity, and a Ford to see how much full throttle effected braking distance [9], showing something very similar to Audi's old press release demonstration [3].
Side note, despite the Infinity being heavier (400 lbs) and having just short of twice the horsepower of the Camry V-6, the Infinity out-brakes the Camry and is less effected by full throttle braking situations. One (me) might consider this demonstrative of car quality, although Nissan sells approximately 1/3 of the cars that Toyota does [6]. Again, most consumers wouldn't know a bad car if the car drove them off a cliff [10] [7]. By the way, I don't mean to malign an already hurt family, I only intend to say that when a product has been proven to be insuficiently engineered to the point of danger, owners stand behind that product like never before. Why are Toyota owners so dedicated to their cars?
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission
[3] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otyax6onMWw
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi
[5] - Ok, fine, I don't have any proof of this. Just a claim.
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry
[7] - http://www.gallup.com/poll/126236/americans-toyota-owners-confident-toyota- vehicles.aspx
[8] - nydailynews.com article
[9] - http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
[10] - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7012913.ece
In late 1986, 60 Minutes ran a special on Audi's supposed "unintended acceleration" problem. The idea was that these Audis, especially the 5000 S model, was accelerating uncontrollably, killing one six year old boy. 6 people were killed in 700 accidents and 60 Minutes ran an article featuring a doctored up demonstration of this acceleration, cutting Audi's U.S. sales in 6 [4].
The car's problem turned out to be that Audi sized and placed its pedals as if the cars all had manual transmissions since most European cars are stick shift cars [2], so the brake pedal is smaller and placed closer to the gas pedal than automatic driving Americans are used to. When a driver attempted to shift their Audi 5000 into drive, their foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas. In a video press release, Audi claimed partial fault for the incidents, despite not having any fault, but also showing (with the help of Bobby Unser) that claims that the Audis were defective in any way were false[3]. They were especially careful to point out the fact that no matter how powerful the car, brakes are always more powerful and can be used to stop a car even if the throttle is jammed open. This is a well known fact among car people.
So what's the point. Well, first, that 60 Minutes is far from perfect. They had been caught rigging an Audi to accelerate on its own [4], I guess in order to make the story.
But my bigger point, and one that will likely reoccur in almost every KarMudgeony post, is a belief that I hold dearly as a truth. Greg's Axiom of Consumers and Products: most consumers are idiots. Ok, maybe I don't mean that, but that most consumers don't know what's good or bad about 95% of products, or at least enough to make an educated purchasing decision or educated use of those products.
As it applies here, drivers of 700 cars [4] managed to operate their vehicles so irresponsibly that 6 were killed (including a 6 year old boy). Then, they denied their own fault and gained so much sympathy and support that they got 60 Minutes to destroy its own reputation (well, I guess not, but it was a big thing back then). Finally, through all of this, the American consumer, completely misunderstanding the problem, steered clear of one of the greatest car manufacturers in the world [5]. So, people can't use a product, can't accept that products have their own intracacies that must be understood to use them, and can't discern between good and bad products.
One example, I know. I have tons; you'll see.
Of course, anyone not living under a rock is wondering if this applies to Toyota's recent "stuck accelerator" issue. Not really. Toyota really did screw up, and quite badly. I cannot find a conclusion on the whole "internal memo" story going around, but I'd put money on the fact that Toyota engineers either warned their higher-ups about the control hardware or were not allowed to test it sufficiently. Then, and this is only a suspicion, Toyota seems to have blamed the problem on both the driver's floor mat and a physically sticky gas pedal and sent out fixes for them, in sequence, before finally admitting to a computer malfunction (what appears to have been the problem all along). Not to say the pedal and mat wouldn't be a problem, but it appears to be a company stalling while trying to show that they're still a good company.
Yet, as I said, Toyota is the largest car company in the world [6], despite being seemingly unable to construct two very basic parts of a car properly. And despite these problems (not my only issues with Toyota), people are still buying them, especially previous Toyota owners [7].
That all being said, I do feel bad for Toyota in one way; there's no reason what-so-ever, why the problem created by Toyota's over-ambitions and under-engineering should have been so large. There's no excuse for anyone with a license to operate a vehicle on public roads to drive 6 miles at top speed, praying to God for intervention, without stopping the car by any other method [8]. To be honest, I have a hard time believing that the brakes, gear selector, and ignition all failed since other accelerator failure tests didn't find that, but I'll let that one go on a fluke. It is possible, and I'm sure that woman has been through enough doubt already.
So what about other similar claims that were all over the news? Car and Driver did a test with a Toyota, an Infinity, and a Ford to see how much full throttle effected braking distance [9], showing something very similar to Audi's old press release demonstration [3].
Side note, despite the Infinity being heavier (400 lbs) and having just short of twice the horsepower of the Camry V-6, the Infinity out-brakes the Camry and is less effected by full throttle braking situations. One (me) might consider this demonstrative of car quality, although Nissan sells approximately 1/3 of the cars that Toyota does [6]. Again, most consumers wouldn't know a bad car if the car drove them off a cliff [10] [7]. By the way, I don't mean to malign an already hurt family, I only intend to say that when a product has been proven to be insuficiently engineered to the point of danger, owners stand behind that product like never before. Why are Toyota owners so dedicated to their cars?
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission
[3] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otyax6onMWw
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi
[5] - Ok, fine, I don't have any proof of this. Just a claim.
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry
[7] - http://www.gallup.com/poll/126236/americans-toyota-owners-confident-toyota- vehicles.aspx
[8] - nydailynews.com article
[9] - http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
[10] - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7012913.ece
The Start of the Long Awaited (for some) KarMudgeon Auto Blog
First post. I'd just like to say thank you to my family for pushing me to start this blog. Thank you, Mom and Matt, for the (slightly invective) title for this blog. I've earned the title.
My purpose in creating this blog (since I believe blogs should have purpose, diaries do not) is multi-fold. First, of course, is to help me not explode. Second, is to identify and discuss car-related issues I'd like to talk about with a wider audience than the usual group of family and friends who are now sick of hearing about cars. I hope to till up interesting subjects, offer evidence for unpopular truths, and keep an intellectual rigor and integrity about it all.
I hope to update this blog regularly in an article-style fashion (as opposed to a more journal-type fashion) fairly regularly, but I offer no promises. Stay tuned, and hopefully I will have been mad about something by the time you've gotten back to this site.
My purpose in creating this blog (since I believe blogs should have purpose, diaries do not) is multi-fold. First, of course, is to help me not explode. Second, is to identify and discuss car-related issues I'd like to talk about with a wider audience than the usual group of family and friends who are now sick of hearing about cars. I hope to till up interesting subjects, offer evidence for unpopular truths, and keep an intellectual rigor and integrity about it all.
I hope to update this blog regularly in an article-style fashion (as opposed to a more journal-type fashion) fairly regularly, but I offer no promises. Stay tuned, and hopefully I will have been mad about something by the time you've gotten back to this site.
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