Upon hearing that the NTSB is investigating an issue with a Toyota Prius, this was what Lis said:

[xiphias]

My wife heard that the National Transportation Safety Board was investigating a case where the accelerator on a Prius got stuck, and the guy hit 90 MPH before he got the thing under control.

Lis's comment: "Really? Priuses can go 90 MPH? Cool!"

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

http://www.despair.com/toyota.html (tee shirt)

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

tee-hee shirt

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing stories about stuck accelerators and thinking, "why didn't the driver just put the damn thing in neutral?"

Yaay Lis-snark!

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The story I keep hearing is that those cars are transmission-by-wire in addition to being throtttle-by-wire, and that the transmission won't let you put it in "N" at road speeds. Also, on a Prius, there is no direct mechanical connection between the engine and the drive wheels.

There is a "kill switch" on a Prius--you press-and-hold the "Start" button for three seconds and the car is supposed to shut down. But that's not obvious or intuitive. It's not labeled on the dash anyplace, and probably gets one mention somewhere deep in the owner's manual.

Maybe it's time cars had kill switches like motorcycles--an unmistakable Big Red Switch[1] that unequivocally interrupts the drivetrain, bypassing any and all computer controls.

[1]Yes, on motorcycles, it is a literal BRS, located on the right handgrip on all bikes manufactured since about forever.

[daze39.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the first time I saw one of those switches - it was on a Honda 750, new and shiny in a neighbor's driveway, and - noting the engine stop switch, the dual-cable linkage to the throttle twistgrip, and the front disk brake - as in "wait a minute, that's a hydraulic! disk brake! on a motorcycle!" - I was thinking that this must be a very fast motorcycle indeed, since such pains had evidently been taken to be sure that one could make it stop when desired! (I later realized that Honda had introduced these features throughout their range at about that time...)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Well...

When Honda introduced the CB750 in 1969, the large-displacement motorcycle market in the US was ... pretty calcified. The market was pretty much divided up among Harley-Davidson, the lone remaining US bike manufacturer; Triumph, Norton, and BSA, out of Great Britain; and BMW, from Germany. The typical "big bike" of the day was based around technology that was largely unchanged since the 1940s.

The Japanese manufacturers were thought of as companies that made competent smaller bikes for beginning riders. No one took them seriously as competitors in the large-displacement market segment.

The CB750 was a real game-changer. First, *four* cylinders, inline. That hadn't been done since a couple of Indian models in the 1940s. Most bikes of the day had a two-cylinder engine: a parallel twin (Triumph, Norton), a flat-twin (BMW), or a v-twin (Harley). BSA made 500 and 650cc singles. Then Honda put an inline four on the road, with one carb per cylinder. There was the disc front brake in an era when everyone else used a drum. Electric start when lots of bikes still used kickers. Etc., etc.

A couple of years later, Kawasaki rolled out the 900cc Z-1 along the same lines as their competitor Honda's CB750.

All of this was in the face of the failure by British and American motorcycle manufacturers to invest in new products and new technology. (Gee, just like the American car makers in the 1960s and 70s.)

Honda dealt a blow to American and British motorcycle manufacturers from which they didn't recover until the 1990s. Harley recovered with the help of a US government tariff on Japanese motorcycles over 700cc. Harley also managed to capitalize on brand marketing as a revenue stream. Some wags joke that "Harley is a t-shirt company that happens to make motorcycles." Triumph went bankrupt in 1983. A businessman named John Bloor bought the name. Under his leadership the company spent the 1980s coming up with new bike designs and manufacturing methods. They started cranking out bikes again in 1991, and modern Triumphs are pretty darn good. Norton and BSA are still gone as far as I know except maybe as paper concerns.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

My wife's '09 Prius let's you put it in Neutral at any speed I've ever gone. I do it often (because you do get better mileage that way).

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

That's assuming the software lets you. If we have a runaway car, the car has already gone into HAL9000, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave" mode. Thus the gear "lever" may be nonresponsive as well. Ditto for the "kill button" I mentioned above--that's in software, too.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

this is a good idea

[ron_newman]

Won't help much if you're going downhill. Perhaps try to shift to 2nd or 1st?

[richardf8]

Sure it will . . . you no longer have the powertrain fighting the brakes.

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't buy a car that wouldn't go into neutral! Sure, the engine blows up, but that's better than a head-on with a bridge abutment, ala George Jones...

Anyway, I too, use my neutral for "coasting". Living in Western Washington State, we have lots of hills. There's one place here where I can coast nearly a full mile and 1/2 before coming to the stop sign. This is, of course, in a more rural area than downtown Seattle.

Folks that live in Snowy Places such as Montana, North Dakota, etc., where you get ice on the roads, know that when you are applying the brakes at a stop sign and your still sliding into the intersection, that you simply put it in neutral, tap the brakes and steer to the right, a bit. Neutral releases the drive wheel from pushing you into the on-coming traffic or smacking the back end of the car in front of you.