What was so wrong with a normal cable linking the accelerator to the throttle?
That's what I'm saying. Drive by wire sucks cock, and it seems Toyota is in for the ass suing of a lifetime until they come clean.
Lets all look for the silver lining.
A) Toyota will swap to a triple-redundant system once they get reamed.
B) Dealers won't be able to GIVE them away
C) Cable-driven cars may be coming back.
My favorite is a+b. I wouldn't mind driving a now-fixed run-away car for free, since I seem to be one of the few idiots in this nation that knows about taking the car out of gear. They make that painfully clear at the end of that vid - put in neutral, hold the start button for a few seconds. What is sad/crazy is the 911 dispatcher even told the dude in the Lexus to turn it off. All the guy had for a response is PRAY...fuck your god, learn how a fucking 3-ton deathsled works.
They could probably quote 2/3 of their bible, but couldn't remember how to turn a car off. FAIL.AFAIK, DBW does not control the tranny linkage. That would be one hell of a glitch to keep a fully-electronic shift mechanism (if there are any) to keep it in gear too, and about as random as being killed by radiation from an alien anal probe. Anyways, this just re-affirms my hatred for DBW and autotragic cars.
ALL of those lives would have been saved if there was a clutch pedal....