<VV> brakes and RFI

Mon Apr 15 06:42:56 EDT 2013

Frank,

RE: "... brakes not working due to RF energy." 

In January 1975, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (the same NHTSA that had exonerated our early '60s Corvairs of blame in handling problems) began requiring anti-lock braking systems for heavy (over-33,000-pound) trucks with air brakes. It was a disaster. Analog ABS was unreliable and very troublesome. Most fleet managers who had the systems disconnected them; one guy who ran Central Freight Lines, in Texas, saw the problem coming and bought hundreds of Ford tractors prior to the mandate, then parked them and put them into service as he retired older tractors, so avoided the problem altogether (and was hailed as a genius by his colleagues). 

In 1978 Paccar Inc. (owner of Kenworth and Peterbilt) sued in federal court, demanding that the ABS requirement be thrown out, and won. Not 'til the mid '90s did ABS return, but by then the systems were electronic and worked well. 

In '73 I worked for a magazine called Commercial Car Journal, or CCJ, and my first major assignment was to do a feature on the upcoming requirement. The brake suppliers and truck builders all assured me that it would be a wonderful thing. Late that year I left that job and returned to Wisconsin, and by '77 I was in Madison, working at something totally unrelated. 

One evening on a local TV news broadcast came a story about Dane County's newest trucks and how their brakes were frighteningly unreliable. A reporter interviewed two drivers who said they were afraid to operate the trucks because they never knew if the brakes would work when they pressed on the pedals, and sometimes the brakes would apply all by themselves. "Wow," I thought. "If it makes the local evening newscast, it must really be bad."

By '78 I had returned to writing about commercial trucks and trucking (which I still do), and attended a Senate hearing in D.C. on the matter. Joan Claybrook (remember the "dragon lady"?), NHTSA's administrator under Jimmy Carter, was called before a transportation committee chaired by John Danforth, a Republican from Missouri who knew something about heavy trucks.

(Danforth had tried to get Congress to mandate anti-spray mud flaps; Dow Chemical, based in Missouri, produced Astroturf and had come up with mud flaps using the stuff, and had put him up to it). 

This time the trucking industry got him to hold the hearings. On that day in '78, the dragon lady was defending the ABS mandate against increasing protests from the trucking industry, and insisted in her testimony that it had safety benefits. She had commissioned a study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Center, trying to show that ABS had improved the safety record of heavy trucks. 

The U of M researcher who did the study was also called before Danforth's committee to testify on his findings; he had just compiled preliminary figures and had not yet informed Ms. Claybrook of them. You should've seen her face when he testified that ABS had done nothing to improve safety. It hadn't increased the number of accidents since '75, but hadn't reduced them, either.

Using accident data it had compiled, Paccar had argued the same thing, which is why it won the case (and ended the controversy between Claybrook and Congress). That ABS was expensive (it cost about $1,500 per truck in mid '70s money) and trouble prone did not enter into the judge's decision.

As I recall, engineers who tested those systems got them to intermittently malfunction by broadcasting signals (from radios and other means) alongside test trucks. The solution was to harden the controls against radio-frequency interference, which at the time was rather expensive and was done mostly with military equipment (and, I suppose, NASA stuff). 

Today's ABS has hardened electronics, I believe, and work well enough to have helped reduce the accident rates involving heavy trucks. A bigger factor is the expansion of freeway mileage and tighter requirements for drivers, but those are other stories.

--Tom in Ohio 

________________________________
 From: Frank DuVal <corvairduval at cox.net>
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org 
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 10:54 PM
Subject: Re: <VV> unintended acceleration-no Corvair

Oh, I didn't mention the Toyota unintended acceleration, or others, 
because that is a different animal.

The Audi cases were always from a standstill and usually at the 
beginning of a drive, so I do believe these were wrong pedal 
applications. BTDT twice!. When a brake pedal is applied while standing 
still, I have never been able to get the engine to move the car 
(overpower the brakes), even with high horsepower engines.

Your cases are what I do know can happen with today's cars. Sticking 
cruise control can happen even with cable tying the pedal to the 
throttle, as the cruise is also connected by cable to the throttle.

Now with drive by wire, where just electrons go between the pedal and 
the throttle... It' s a whole new ball game. They test vehicles, mostly 
DOD types, at work for their reaction to RF signals being applied to 
them. They do react! But, I have not heard of brakes not working due to 
RF energy. The ABS might apply, but the brakes still work. This is 
different than those mid 70s Buicks with ABS that did suffer brake 
issues from high power transmitters in their trunks (police duty, etc). 
That does seem to have been fixed back then.

Frank DuVal

On 4/14/2013 9:53 PM, Tom Berg wrote:
> Frank,
>  
> For what it's worth, twice I experienced unintended acceleration in rental cars. The first time was a with a late '90s Ford Taurus on an wide-open highway in Mississippi. For maybe 10 miles I had the cruise control set at 60 mph with my right foot idle, resting on its side the floor, no where near the pedals. The car began climbing a slight upgrade; then it began accelerating moderately.
>  
> "What's this?" I thought, but there was no other traffic and I didn't rush to correct it. We went maybe a third of a mile ("we" being the Taurus with its own mind and me) and speed had climbed to 65. I touched the brake pedal and it disconnected. That was it, and it never happened again with that car before I turned it in.
>  
> The second time was a year or so later in a mid-size Pontiac in California. I waited in a left-turn lane at the head of a line of cars, and when I got the green arrow I began moving; about a quarter-way into my turn the car began accelerating a little more briskly on its own. "Hmm," I said, and touched the brake pedal. End of event, and I finished my turn and went on my way. Again, no recurrences with that car.
>  
> To me they were minor things and I didn't report them to anyone, but I was certainly aware of that infamous Audi event in the garage and the woman driver whom everyone dismissed as a panic case. And they demonstrated to me that unintended acceleration is definitely possible. It's probably electronically induced, maybe by spurious signals from outside or inside the car, and is almost impossible for mechanics and investigators to duplicate.  It happened to me twice, and no, I wasn't jamming the wrong pedal.
>  
> --Tom in Ohio
>  
>
> ________________________________
>   From: Frank DuVal <corvairduval at cox.net>
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 12:40 PM
> Subject: Re: <VV> Expert witness info - Corvair included
>    
>
> I have a different view, as I skipped to many pages deep before reading
> anything. I can not say I would agree with any other ramblings he wrote,
> as I only read this one so far.
>
> I found his report on the Audi 5000. I agree with everything he says on
> this particular subject.
>
> I'll skip to the chase:
>
> All the unintended acceleration reports of the Audi 5000 were just
> people stepping on the wrong pedal.
>
> The only fault on Audi's part was a slightly offset pedal placement from
> what was "normal" back then.
>
> Now for the good part, I have personal experience of steeping on the
> wrong pedal, TWICE! Let me tell you it is hard to convince yourself your
> foot is on the wrong pedal, even when the "brake" pedal is on the floor
> and a solid object is getting bigger in your sight. Both time by the
> time I reacted and moved my foot to the correct brake pedal, I had
> stopped by the force of the unmoveable object. No, not a Corvair, but
> cars I wasn't used to driving, just moving around the shop. One was
> right hand drive. BTW, it was the clutch pedal I found with my right
> foot, not the accelerator pedal. One wasn't even running, just going
> down a slope. Enough for now, maybe the statue of limitations hasn't
> gone away yet.
>
> Frank DuVal
>
> On 4/14/2013 10:13 AM, Ken Klingaman wrote:
>> I read his first case late last night, and contrary to other previous readings, I will not/can not reread this self promotional drivel.
>>
>> As much as we, as a society, want to blame someone for what happens, sometimes S**t happens. I can't comment on the accident recreation, I was not there nor did we see all of his data.
>>
>> Ken Klingaman
>>
>> For some reason, probably the outcome of a Google search, I ended up at the
>> Blog of a crash scene investigator. He was a GM employee, worked on
>> Corvair  lawsuit response, and left GM. He eventually ended up on the "other
>> side",  so to speak. His name is Carl F. Thelin. A link to his musings is below.
>> He does  talk about many "events", as he calls them, as well as discussing
>> the court  rituals he has experienced, etc. I am not endorsing his
>> suggestions, his  conclusions or even his observations, but I found it interesting
>> reading.  Plenty of Corvair discussion is included. Some of it will, indeed
>> piss you off.  But that is what discussion is for, isn't it? - Seth Emerson
>>
>> http://cxsi.blogspot.com/
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