So okay, I'm in a Toyota and bad things are happening. Or I'm in my MINI and REALLY bad things are happening, because it's my car and the Toyota's just a rental. At any rate, I shut down the engine while I'm rolling down the freeway about to hit a loaded schoolbus passing a gasoline tanker. (Hey, if I'm imagining a scenario, might as well make it dramatic!)

Anyway, if I kill the engine, I'll kill the power brakes and power steering. But won't I also lock the steering wheel at the same time as soon as it moves a little?

 

Right. That's why you DON'T shut the engine off. Just slide it into neutral. The Toyota will probably blow the engine and you'll lose your power steering and power brakes, but you'll still be able to steer (harder) and brake (harder). The MINI will hit the rev limiter and cutoff fuel, then hit the rev limiter and so on.

I guess the question with a 2nd Gen MINI is: When does the steering lock? When you shut the engine down or when you remove the fob?

 

Good question--I'll have to check it tomorrow.

The reason I brought this question up is because of the various news reporters' advice to Toyota owners experiencing problems. Several say it just as you have--slide into neutral, pull over when speed permits, park the car. Some DON'T, though, and I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt, and take down some others when they do.

 

I believe the steering locks when you remove the fob...might have to go test the theory though...

 

The earlier 2007 R56's had a steering lock but it was removed sometime during the 2007 model year. Steering lock was also discontinued throughout all BMW's.

 

Interesting. Mine has it, but I have a week 3er. Wonder if it's because people were having problems with it. I've occasionally had trouble disengaging it, but then again, I had it with my '94 BMW, too, so it's no big deal.

 

At least one thing seems clear: if your Mini goes Lexus ES350, your fuel pump shuts off with air bag activation so there should not be a catastrophic post crash fire (as there was with the Lexus ES350 in the infamous Santee crash.)

 

God, I hope MINI's aren't going Toyota (in more ways than one).

 

I wonder if this is related to Comfort Access and Start/Stop buttons? It may be more of a challenge to engineer a steering wheel lock that can be activated/deactivated with no mechanical key turn to work the wheel lock mechanism.
In any case, I would think that a steering wheel lock is not really necessary with the ignition interlock.

 

Pretty sure there's no steering lock in my 08. I just figured they assumed there was no reason to have it anymore; steering lock isn't going to stop someone with the equipment to hack the computer in a modern car.

What I've wanted to know is why Toyota isn't broadcasting PSAs telling people what to do if their, well, Toyota goes Toyota?? As in know how to hit neutral without thinking about it!

I got the gas pedal in my mother-in-law's Passat stuck under the mat once and I managed to pop it in neutral and stopped right away without even thinking about it.

Good tip about holding the button to restart if you stall - I'll try that sometime too!

 

Most everyone forgets Toyota drivers are boring people that are far from being a car enthusiast. They just want a car that they never have to worry about and get from A to B with no fun. So any logic of how a car works or how to stop themselves from speeding down the road is pretty much a wash, LOL

 

The BMW TIS mentions the removal of the steering lock (as a side note it also mentioned how the US did not get double-lock door locks [darn]). One thing I really like about BMW is the constancy they have across models and years. My grandma's 1984 3 series had the pedal hinged on the floor and so many little/subtle features are the same on the MINI. To me that proves they keep what works instead of going the route of "make it all new." Like if you get into mid 80s GM vehicle they bear ZERO resemblance to today's GM cars (not that they should since they were pretty junky). To me it represents the quality and safety of BMW.

 

Um, how else are they designed? I haven't owned anything recently (that I can recall) that didn't have it this way. Then again, I've only had BMWs and the MINI for the past couple of decades, and don't pay much attention to rental cars, other than which white Toyota it is in the parking lot...

I did check my car, and yes, it does have the steering interlock. You can move the wheel about 10° or so before it locks.

Did you see the news in the past couple of days where the SIU engineer proved it was an electronic defect, after all Toyota's garbage about "fixing" everything?

 

Deb, a lot of manufacturers have the gas pedal hinged ot the top.

 

No, they did not prove it was an electronic defect - what they proved is that if you short out the approrpiate number of contacts you can force it to do what it wasn't designed to do......

They did the same thing with the Audi, and "engineer" modified a transmission internally and forced it to accelerate on it's own - something that could not happen in the real world......

You can't fail safe engineer against willful stupidity.

If people can't figure out how to stop their car in an emergency, should they be driving?

 

Hmmm. I'll have to check that on the next To-fo-da-vy I rent...

 

My '01 Pontiac Grand Am had a gas pedal hinged at the top, as did the '91 Jeep Wrangler before that and also my wife's Honda CR-V...

In fact, my Mini is the first car I've ever seen with a bottom-hinged pedal...

 

I have a 2010 Mini. If it goes "Toyota" , I have this pedal that I can push. It disconnects the engine from the transmission instantly...I don't even have to shift to neutral.

 

MINI's should be fine. They're made in the UK. Toyotas were fine until they started building them in the US.

 

What?????

You're suggesting English auto assemblers are somehow superior to American?

Gimme a break. It's not the assembly plants, it's the engineering and save a buck anywhere you can attitude that's the problem here. That and an over eager media looking for blood in the streets any where they can find it.

Remember, there are two issues here - floor mats that get caught under the pedal (hardly the fault of the guy who builds the car, is it?) and the throttle assembly with a tiny bit too much stiction - said assembly made in the US - that's causing the problem in what, a couple hundred cars out of 8 million?

Like I said, gimme a break......

From Sniff Petrol, yesterday..

There was bad news for God this week as the well-known deity was forced to recall thousands of examples of His popular Human Being after reports that the model could be prone to unexpected attacks of unbelievable stupidity.
Initial reports of blithering idiocy emerged from the United States last year but these were thought to be isolated incidents caused by people who are so thick that if a floormat was touching their accelerator pedal would prefer to scream ‘Aaaaaaargh’ until they drove into a river rather than simply moving the mat backwards with their foot. However, it now seems the monumental stupidity is more widespread and may cause some Human Beings to decide that the best course of action in the event of being in a car with a throttle that won’t release is to telephone someone rather than to, for example, put the ****ing car into neutral and bring it to a halt using the brakes as normal.
Jesus Christ, a member of the original God family who now runs his Father’s business, is expected to make a full statement shortly. In the meantime, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a senior manager at God’s UK operation, has told reporters that there are almost certainly Human Beings here in Britain that will need to be examined for signs of being so sodding thick that they probably shouldn’t have a driving licence in the first place. “It’s too early to say how this might affect people in the UK,” Mr Canterbury is quoted as saying. “But we have every reason to believe that there are some Human Beings that may being so brain fartingly stupid that if the throttle in their car became stuck, they would never think simply to depress the clutch and coast to a halt”.
However, it is understood that God’s representatives in the UK are keen to manage any recall as quickly and efficiently as possible, thereby minimising the number of mithering suburban ***** who ring in to the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 and witter on about how they’re too scared to drive their Yaris to such a blindingly crass degree that listeners eventually start to get a sense of what it would be like if the editor of the Daily Mail did a stool into a syringe and then used it to inject vile reactionary **** into their ears.
As God seeks to clarify the extent of the stupidity problem and establish how many Human Beings will need to be recalled, theologians have been assessing just what has caused the problem of quite extraordinarily thick behaviour in the first place. “I suspect the problem lies in the rather clever engineering God has given the Human Being,” noted Dr Peter Peter Cockandballs of St Gobain College, Oxford. “The modern Human Being is actually remarkably durable and reliable, capable of lasting well over 80 years, but among its clever systems is something called Cognitive Reasoning. Normally this works very well, but over time Human Beings get used to being spoon fed blindingly obvious information such as those signs on motorways that say ‘fog’, and eventually they can just give up trying to have any discernment or ability to think rationally. Basically, the Human Being becomes a stupid moron. Hence the popularly of ITV’s Loose Women”.

 

Come on....sarcasm here is wrong on so many levels.....those 3 people died in that crash.

If you want to listen to the 911 call, here it is

If you don't use the velcro I find this to be true....every loaner I get I put the mat in the backseat for this reason.

 

Yes, it was pretty insensitive, sorry about that.

I would add that many, many cases of unintended acceleration are linked to operator error, and there's evidence that many drivers who had stuck accelerators did not try to shift into neutral or apply the foot/hand emergency brake.

I've seen demonstrations on TV recently reminding drivers that they have a shift lever and an emergency brake. I just don't buy the "cars out of control and there's nothing I can do" situation. Drivers die every day by failing to act properly in emergency situations. It's unfortunate, but a basic lack of understanding how a car works is behind a lot of those deaths.

 

Worse--4 died.

If only the 911 operator had thought to tell them to put it in neutral, but I guess it wasn't well publicized at that point. I'm curious though, the article says the mats were sold "as an accessory item," but it doesn't state by whom. Also a Toyota product?

I still think it'll turn out to be an electronic problem. Our cars are just rolling computers these days. I get in our '64 Porsche, and it's primitive in comparison, but you can fix it on the side of the road. We changed to Petronix ignition, but still carry points in the tool kit, just in case. You younger drivers probably don't even know what points are!

 

Interesting take on the Toyota hearings at TTAC:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/sha...-rhonda-smith/