Mazda wants no part of the runaway-vehicle fiasco....
 

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/09/m...ll-future-mod/

According to a recent report, Mazda will be installing brake override systems on all of its models in the near future. Whenever that happens, the brake will automatically get priority over the accelerator in a situation where both of them are simultaneously depressed. Nissan already has such a system installed on most of its cars, and Toyota has already pledged to do so. As far as Japan goes that leaves companies like Honda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki in the "Undecided" column.

A Mazda spokesman said the company wasn't aware of any unintended acceleration issues with its vehicles anywhere in the world that would necessitate such a system. This really looks to be a proactive move, since the estimated $50-per-car cost of the brake override will be much less hurtful than having to recall an untold numbers of cars... and you'll be paying for it, anyway. The company doesn't have details yet on the specifics of implementation, but it will eventually apply to every car the company sells.

Interesting, so the automatics can no longer brake boost?

Good point - I'd like to see more details of the system.

Someone in the comments said "this'll be the death of heel & toe" :(

not to mention brake stands....

Yeah, when Toyota's solution of brake override was mentioned, I instantly thought of the impact on the weekend racers and heel-toe.

I 100% agree that it is needed for commuter cars, but hopefully Mazda also gives a way of removing that for the racing community that so heavily use their cars.

I have no doubt in my mind that within the same week that the system is implemented, there will be a DIY on how to remove or disable it. :D:

Most definitely.

:biggthump
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As much as I agree with you, I am wondering how long it would take to have someone disable it and then having the pedal stick on them. Just had a chuckle thinking of what the guy would say to an insurance company after that.

I have a similar chuckle at thinking of all of the idiots that can't shift into neutral or turn off their car (including throwing the keys out of the window for the keyless systems)

I suspect unplugging the brake light switch will disable the system... Of course you would lose the brake lights but on the track is that important?

it will just be a fuse or some sort of relay. easy to override. just unplug it like an airbag sensor

YES! Very, very very important!

I'd love to see the guy wandering down the highway wondering where he was at the exact moment he threw his keys out of the window. Followed by discovery of tiny bits of plastic in the middle of the road.

Many of the reported incidents involved cars without key, only a starter button. Quick! How do you turn the engine off while driving? Most people don't know and the answer varies widely between different manufacturers.

I agree. I just hate catering to the idiots of the world. Everyone should always make every attempt to understand everything they can about their vehicle. Manufacturers just keep giving people an excuse not to.

Each driver is responsible for controlling their car, and all the dynamics associated with that, and saying anything different is an ignorant attitude to have.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the lawsuit crazy world we living in, and the reality that people don't know, or don't care to know, but I can't excuse the driver for that, even if other people do.

x1000

On most, you have to hold down the start button for about 3 seconds, which covers a lot of distance at 70mph. According to Car&Driver (they have a couple of really good features on this) if you have an Infiniti and you panic and stab repeatedly at the button, it switches off after 3 presses.

This talk of throwing the keys out of the window might explain a recent accident in Durham where a woman veered off the road, got out of her car, and walked onto the expressway. She ended up being mistaken for a deer... you figure it out :eek:

So how will we heel-toe then?

Let's hope they leave this off their sports cars (MX-5 and RX-?)... at least the manual versions.

It sickens me the world we live in today.
just because ONE car company has a defect involving their accelerators suddenly every car company has a knee-jerk reaction to address a problem that isn't even an issue on their cars. :banghead:

it'll be a software thing. if the throttle is wide open for x amount of time AND braking is called for for x amount of time then reduce throttle.

just like they did with the idle thing for the RX-8 so you couldn't keep it rev'd while sitting still so long that you overheated it.

I don't disagree in principle. However consider that one of the first occurances and several others involved rental cars. Having experienced 40 minutes of trying to figure out how to open the trunk of a Renault rented after a 10 hour overnite flight into Frankfurt, the recent trend of randomizing simple things on cars for style, basically sucks. If I had had time to read the owner's manual for the car, it wasn't there anyway. Back in the day, Japanese, American, and British motorcycles all had different shift patterns, had controls like the brakes, throttle, and clutch on different sides. Yeah, I "knew" which bike I was on and how things worked, but amazingly often, particularly in a high-stress situation, I ended up doing the wrong thing anyway.

Cars are the most dangerous things most people get their hands on. In the near-complete absence of public transportation in this country, there are going to be 100 grandmas for every car enthusiast on the road. To put them at risk so that 5% of the drivers who heel-toe the 5% of cars that have manual transmissions, doesn't strike me as sensible.

VW has done this for a long time. If brake and accelerator are pressed at the same time, the brake will override.

With that said, it isn't immediate. You need to have the brake on for about 3 seconds before it cuts the throttle.

I don't trust this kind of "fix".
No one has been able to reproduce the problem in testing, which sounds to me - as a programmer - like its an obscure software glitch. If these cars are going out of control because of a bug in the software, there's no guarantee that adding to or changing that software is going to prevent the problem. You have to know what's going wrong becfore you can say you have a fix. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Take this with a pinch of salt, obviously, because I have no clue how their engine control software is written. But a failsafe in hardware would be a better solution, in my opinion.