On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 1:17 AM, Paul Hayward <pdh_at_mmcl.co.nz> wrote: > > So Dr Schmidt may well be extrapolating incorrectly into 2010 - I've no > proof either way. If I had to bet, I'd probably put my money on him rather > than on the quality of analysis of our modern hyped-up media... I also > don't > believe in the infallibility of California State Police officers - hell, > even aircraft captains get it wrong from time to time and the selection & > training processes they face are somewhat more careful. > > I have lots of problems with psychology, actually. My experience with psych was mainly when I was an undergrad engineer and I was left less than impressed. I think that Dr. Schmidt (who is "emeritus" by the way) is probably still living in 1980. Most of those incidents happened at start-up and involved vehicles hitting the garage wall or the vehicle in front of them. The 2000 incidents seem to be happening during operation when the driver has already been moving for some period of time. And if the 1980 Audi cars were designed so that a significant number of drivers could not tell whether their foot was on the accelerator or the brake then I submit that there just might have been a design problem. Never having owned an Audi I couldn't say. It doesn't seem to me to be *that* complicated getting a car started and into gear. The Calif. State Patrol officer was actually on the cell phone going through procedures to try to shut the car down and couldn't. I can understand a brief, momentary lapse where someone might confuse stepping on the accelerator pedal for stepping on the brake but I can't see a steady state incident unless the driver were too stupid to understand "turn off the key". Airplane pilots can get overloaded with information and make mistakes or can get distracted and make mistakes but they don't very often make mistakes going through the check list. And, anyway, the California cop was not the only one to have a problem. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple (actually the guy who designed and built the first few versions) had something to say about his Prius and unintended acceleration. In a short interview (or at least the portion I saw was short) he mentioned that it had happened to him more than once and while he couldn't reproduce the problem he had figured out a way to get out of it. Unfortunately he left that part out. Then there has been at least one incident of unintended acceleration in which the driver drove his vehicle into a Toyota dealership and left it sitting in neutral at full engine speed while the floor mats were in the trunk. If I were to speculate I'd guess that the problem will resolve down to a combination of design problems compounded by circumstances not easily recognizable by the average driver. Either that or stray cosmic rays. Don't laugh. Craig Jungers Moses Lake, WA www.nwkayaking.net *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Apr 13 2010 - 07:22:19 PDT
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