PhilinYuma
Well-known member
First, Grant, I am not an engineer or even a mechanic (that's one of the reasons why I have sons who are), but I do have some idea about FBW, particularly as it is employed in military aircraft. Son David spent much of his career (seven years) as ground crew in several FA18 squadrons, the first military plane to use FBW extensively. As he has pointed out, the use of stabilators instead of elevators in the tail has made it possible for the Hornet to perform maouvers impossible for planes equipped solely with the latter . The problem with the Airbus FBW, aside from the fact that, like Toyota,, it is "foreign", was that its computers had trouble interpreting (or over interpreting) the "proper flight envelope" and had nothing to do with the capability of the "wires" themselves.Well, I'm pretty surprised by most of the responses.I've only owned 1 Toyota...and it was a used '80 Celica Supra that I owned in the mid-late 90's as my surfer/beater car. I loved that carand it fit a 9'6" longboard just fine. I've respected Toyota for a long time. Read (most of) The Toyota Way and appreciate the general culture of the company. I've owned and worked on several brands of cars...computer controlled and carburated...foreign and domestic.
Anyway, I'm really *alarmed* by one of the problems. Now, I have been skeptical of 'drive-by-wire' throttle systems since I first learned of them...mostly from the fly-by-wire problems experienced by an Airbus jets that have crashed since the late 80's. So when I first heard of the problem with a Lexus killing a California highway patrol officer and his family(this story), I suspected the electronic throttle control system to be at fault. Learning that Toyota claimed the problem was from floor mats was just ridiculous to me. Seeing the proposed fix last week with shims to the pedal system is quite frankly disturbing. That's because the only way to rule out that 'fix' will be when somebody else dies in a car with that shim installed.
Last year, I witnessed an event in a parking lot with a Lexus SUV. It pulled into a parking stall and came to a complete stop. Suddenly, it lurched over the curb in front of it and hit a large date palm. The lady driving it looked confused that this happened. I asked her if she was okay and signalled with her hand that she was. I figured it was just her. And I was walking just on the other side of the tree when this happened.
When I put that incident together with the CHP story and the recall...I became very alarmed. After all the latest news, I can only think that they are still hiding the problem...even though they seem to be doing an excellent job at PR at the moment.
Your use of your own experience of a Lexus gone bad ("I was walking just on the other side of the tree when this happened") is powerfully persuasive, but I am sure that you will agree that it has absolutely no statistical value whatsoever.
Nationsl populaces seem to have their own special fears that often have little relationship to reality. In Europe, there is huge resistance to genetically modified crops (perhaps, in part, because they are seen, wrongly, as American?). Fly by Wire, as you have shown, is one of the bugbears over here. An F18A crashed in November of 2008 in San Diego, a fact that interested me for a number of reasons (my son had served a DET at Miramar, we used to live in SD, etc). At the time , I took Mechanix UIllustrated and cancelled my subscription on the basis of this article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/ai...ce/4295240.html It turned out, of course, that the plane had run out of fuel, but many readers of the article must still believe that it was due to a FBW issue.
As for the Toyota, issue, friend Andie tells me that the issue was caused by a problem with the accelerator linkage, which, on wear, develops so much tolerance (play) that the accelerator pedal will no longer return to its normal position. This, she assures me, is what the Toyota plants are being tooled up to fix.
Well, that was fun!
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