Toyotas Are Not Death Traps

By The Lost Motorcyclist, February 2011

Still seems weird to me, a guy who drives a motorcycle having to explain why my Toyota is not a death trap.

With the debate still raging about Toyota's "sudden unintended acceleration", it seems to me that everybody is losing the perspective.

The story that keeps emerging is that Toyota was sitting on its hands doing nothing about sudden unintended acceleration, while all the other carmakers had already built in a brake pedal override, to prevent runaway full throttle acceleration. This is a very narrow point of view.

There is a far more serious problem with front wheel drive cars than SUA. It is losing control in a curve, and possibly sliding sideways and rolling over. I'm not saying this happens to everyone, but it happens much more than sudden unintended acceleration. It kills more people, and it is more difficult for even a fairly good driver to control.

Knowing that skidding in a curve was killing so many people, Toyota had made their goal to put stability control on every Toyota model. The Electronic Stability Control is much more difficult and expensive to make than the "Brake Override". And it would save hundreds of times more lives. This is where Toyota was going, and still is going, despite the billions of dollars lost with the SUA witch hunt in America.

But still, with all the Toyota bashing going on, you might think that Toyota was doing nothing to improve car safety.

Brake overrides are a useless feature for anyone who knows how to turn off a car engine, or put it in neutral, or use the brakes properly. But an Electronic Stability Control would actually save hundreds of lives. While it is easy to learn how to turn off the engine in an emergency (hold the button to a count of three, and you have maybe a minute to remember this and do it) it is actually quite difficult to control the rear end spin out on a front wheel drive car. (Accelerate and turn the steering wheel against the skid, and you have .5 seconds reaction time to do this or you are too late).

The fact is that although it is very cheap to put in a brake override, unfortunately it involved adding lines of code to the acceleration system. Which in turn makes sudden unintended acceleration, or maybe some other fault, more likely. One way Toyota has made its cars reliable over the years by trying to stay a bit back from cutting edge technology. Reliability is not glamorous, but many older customers like it.

When Toyota does innovate, they try to make it worth while, like making the car safer in rollovers or skids. They were on the right track, and I hope all this hysteria does not deter them from being the standard that other car makers must live up to. Because we all benefited from that.

Audi found a way twenty years ago to mostly prevent drivers from using the wrong pedal. They put in a lockout that prevented the driver from selecting any gear unless their foot was on the brake. That put a stop to Audi SUA problems. According to Wikipedia, on Automatic Transmission,

"In many modern cars and trucks, the driver must have the foot brake applied before the transmission can be taken out of park."

Of course that is only a front line defence, and can be defeated by a determined person by putting their foot on the accelerator when the selector is in "Drive", and then forgetting that they moved their foot from the brake to the accelerator, and then the accident is waiting to happen. I don't know if all Toyota have this brake lockout feature, but with many times more cars than Audi, they will still have some problems with extremely forgetful drivers.

How to put a Toyota Highlander in "Drive" from eHow.com

http://www.ehow.com/how_7213720_put-toyota-highlander-drive.html

1. Place the key in the ignition and turn to the "On" position. The Highlander does not need to be turned on, but the key does need to be turned to "On" to shift gears.
2. Press the brake pedal and push the lock release button on the shift lever.
3. Slide the shift lever until it lines up with the "D" for drive.

Picture: Our Matrix heading out of town with the snow cleared off the windshield first.

The Toyota Verdict is In

By The Lost Motorcyclist February 2011

The Toyota electronic engine management system is not guilty for the sudden unintended acceleration. The tests were run for months by the US government, with NHTSA and NASA contributing.

Unfortunately, Toyota is not out of the woods yet. If indeed this was mass hysteria, several other things need to be cleared up. For example, most people seem to think that only Toyotas have experienced SUA (sudden unintended acceleration). If that were actually true, then this verdict is only the start of the investigation. However, it is not true, and if the hysteria is to stop, then that information needs to be publicised.

Also, when people become convinced of a false story, their first reaction when being confronted with evidence to the contrary is to dig in even more. That is why many first reactions are similar to "No surprise, the US government was paid off by Toyota". Those people are not going to be convinced by anything unless it proves Toyota guilty.

It is actually very difficult to prove that nothing can go wrong in a complicated computer system. But a far more complicated system, also involved in the crashes, that was not tested by the NHTSA, was the human brain. The NHTSA was very reluctant to call it driver error, preferring to use the term "pedal misapplication" for the majority of fault reports.

In the now famous case that touched off the hysteria, the throttle was stuck under the carpet, and a presumably competent driver (police officer no less) was unable to shut off the engine, or shift into neutral, or apply the brakes properly to bring the car to a safe stop. According to the US Government, the correction will be to have a brake override on all cars, so that applying the brake will reduce engine power. A second corrective action will be to make the engine easier (or more intuitive) to turn off in cars (ALL cars) with keyless ignition. Both of those, (currently not required by law) in my opinion amount to making cars more "idiot proof", no offence meant to anyone who is not present to defend themselves.

This Toyota SUA scare is a classical mass delusion. The basis for most human delusions is a brain fault (*or feature!) called "selective awareness". This is how it works. When too many things are going on that don't affect you directly, you tend to not notice them, they become part of the background noise. Then for whatever reason, if you should become aware of one particular type of thing, suddenly you will get overwhelmed by how many examples there are of that type of thing going on. Meanwhile you will remain completely unaware of the rest of the "background noise". Let me give you a simple example. You drive to work each day not noticing which types of cars are all around you on the highway. But then one day, you decide to buy a Toyota RAV4, you visit the showroom and look the vehicle over. The next day, I guarantee you will notice every RAV4 that you pass on the road, and you probably never realized how many there were.

The truth is that all carmakers suffer from the same, or quite similar, problems. Most of the time people turn a blind eye to car accidents causing death because this goes on all the time. People do not want to give up their cars so they ignore the accident statistics. In the USA, that amounts to about 40,000 people killed each year. There were 5 Toyota deaths supposedly due to SUA over several years. Then one famous accident gets everyone's attention and suddenly people open their eyes to accidents, but only Toyota accidents. All the other accidents are still going on in the background, but nobody is paying any attention to them.

Toyota got in a very difficult situation where everything they did made the hysteria worse. First of all, they did not report the floor mat jamming the gas pedal right away, and were eventually heavily fined for it. I still don't understand why they needed to report to the US government a "flaw" where a floor mat slides over a gas pedal and holds it down. I don't even consider that a vehicle flaw, to me that is more operator error. If that happened to me, I would not go to the dealer to have it corrected. (but I don't have the official Toyota heavy duty floor mats)

Then, Toyota made things worse:

- apologised for the deaths and took responsibility
- recalled millions of cars (to straighten the floor mats?!?!?)
- did not blame the drivers for being stupid
- did not present statistics proving they were not the only car models with SUA accidents
- did not put the blame on the American throttle pedal manufacturer.
- did not press charges against the driver who deliberately crashed his truck into a Toyota showroom and blamed SUA

This behaviour is typical Toyota corporate culture, unfortunately it did not serve them well with a hysterical American car market out looking for blood.

Picture: This is my car. Yes it is a Toyota, but I do not work for Toyota. I will brush all the snow off before driving away. But if I didn't know how to do that, I would not blame the car for not having a "Blocked Vision Override".  (One day we may have to have those.)

You Can't Handle Demoting Pluto

By: The Lost Motorcyclist, February, 2011

Science is not a natural way of thinking for humans. You would think the human mind would be able to grasp such an apparently simple concept as science. After all, how hard is it, really, to make judgments based on evidence, observation, logic and testing, with no human bias? When you consider the alternatives, it becomes a little bit more obvious why scientific thought remains an alien concept to the average human. Before science came along, decisions were made based on tradition, habit, superstition, conformity, and peer pressure. And most assuredly were influenced by prejudice and bias.

The Pluto controversy is a perfect example of scientific thought versus traditional thought. A scientist would look at Pluto, in light of all the recent discoveries of asteroids in our solar system, and make the scientific observation that Pluto was actually more like an asteroid than a planet. A scientist would say that, to be fair, either Pluto gets demoted to an asteroid, or we promote every similar object to planet status, and apparently there are a lot of similar objects to Pluto. To a person who can think scientifically, without bias, the answer is obvious. Pluto is not a planet.

But scientists don't think like humans. I asked Mary Ann how many planets there were. She said ten. What? She counted them off for me. "Men Very Early Made Jars Stand Up Nearly Perpendicular." I was floored, I never heard of those planets before. Then I started to recover. "That's only nine." She said "I heard they found another one a few years ago."

Mary Ann is not a scientific person. She does not like Star Trek. She does not like most science fiction. I'm guessing that most people who understand scientific reasoning would like science fiction. Mary Ann does not enjoy speculating as to what might happen in the future based on scientific discoveries that might be made one day. She is already suspicious of scientific discoveries we have right now. Cell phones, Facebook, 52" HD TV's, Surround sound, leaf blowers, and just about anything that can be found at Wal-Mart.

So I informed Mary Ann that there were eight planets, that Perpendicular had been demoted to an asteroid. She seemed resigned, but not terribly worried. Maybe she thought I was talking about a science fiction movie and none of this was real.

But other than Mary Ann, this demotion of Pluto caused considerable controversy, even within the scientific community. I was reading about it in "Unscientific America", a book by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. This is taken from their book:

"even as scientists get up each morning and resume the task of remaking the world, the American public all too rarely follows along. This alienation leads to recurrent flare-ups like the Pluto episode, in which people suddenly catch wind of what scientists have been doing and react with anger, alarm, or worse."

Very few people think in a true scientific way. Most people's thought process is about the same as it has been since the beginning of the human species. We seek the "truth" and then we hang on to that "truth" no matter what. It is uncomfortable, even painful to have to change our "truths", when it turns out the truths do not hold up to further investigation. It is painful for humans to change their truths, and they will do anything to stop that pain. In the old days they used to lock up, stone, or burn scientists at the stake. Now we are apparently in a scientific age, we can't do that any more. But it does not mean people have to listen to the scientists. A modern alternative to burning at the stake is to look for selected scientists who have more comforting truths for us. Or to just not think about it at all, or react with anger when we are told that Pluto is no longer a planet.

How to Stop Chain E-mails

By The Lost Motorcyclist, February 2011

There are probably hundreds of chain emails being circulated on the Internet. Many are harmless but some chain emails posing as helpful are actually malicious, alarming and possibly even damaging.

The best way to screen these emails is to not forward those that are false. How can you do that? There is a website www.snopes.com that has information on most of the chain emails which are circulating the Internet. How do they do that? Well it's easier than you think, because most of the emails have been circulating for many years, sometimes with hardly any changes.

Simply go to Snopes and type words in to the search box, it works like Google except it's to search for hoaxes, scams and chain emails.

For example, if this chain email starts off with

Florida court sets atheist holy day.

In the picture, I have typed these words into the Snopes search box. (if the picture is too small to see, click on it for an enlargement).

Type the significant words from the chain email into Snopes search box, and click GO! Make sure you spell the words right. Snopes does not tolerate bad spelling like Google does.

This will tell you if Snopes has any information, and whether they have found it to be true or not.

Next, if it is false, email the link for this blog

http://lostmotorcycles.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-stop-chain-e-mails.html

to the person who forwarded the email to you. That will help them to do the fact- checking for themselves, and perhaps they will also forward this link back to the person sending them the chain email, and so on and so on. Then hopefully, at some point everyone will be able to fact check the emails before forwarding, and the misleading chain emails will disappear entirely from the Internet.

Click HERE for the live Snopes website when you are ready.

The Opposite of a Beginner's Motorcycle

By The Lost Motorcyclist, February 2011

These are a few traditional requirements of a beginners bike.

• - light and easy to handle
• - cheap, affordable, not too expensive to maintain or insure
• - safe speed (i.e. keeps up with traffic, but is not too fast)
• - easy and simple to operate (i.e. no suicide clutch, right foot gear lever, leg breaking kick-starter etc.)

So obviously, the opposite of a beginners bike might be

• - so heavy that only a tall, strong, and experienced rider can push it and keep it from falling over.
• - So expensive that you would need to be an older, experience rider to be able to (a) afford it (b) appreciate why it costs so much more than a beginners bike (c) get a decent insurance rate on it.
• - A bike that can go so fast that it's ridiculous. That would be, let's say 300 plus kph? No beginners should be doing 300 kph. No experienced rider would do that on a public road either, those speeds are for the Bonneville Salt Flats.
• - Finally, the opposite of a beginners' bike can be as complicated and difficult to operate as a skilled person can handle.

Let me give you an example of a bike that was both a beginners bike, and the opposite of a beginner's bike.

A man named Burt Munro bought a 1920 600cc Indian Scout with a top speed of 55 mph (89 kph). In the twenties, this might be considered a beginners' bike. Although I'm sure there were slower and smaller bikes available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Munro

Burt must have felt the bike needed something extra, and in 1926 started making modifications. His modifications went on for many years, and in the final stages, he had turned it into a 950cc, terrifying motorcycle capable of 200 mph (320 kph). It was difficult, complicated and awkward to drive. It could only be properly tested at Bonneville or a similar track. If you count all the work done on it, in the end it would be worth well over $100,000. And would easily fetch more at a classic and historic bike auction.

So there you have it. Exactly the same bike is both a beginners bike and the opposite of a beginner's bike, just with a few modifications. OK a lot of modifications.

There was also the movie about Burt Munro, who travelled from New Zealand to try his hand at an official record at Bonneville. The movie has the title "World's Fastest Indian".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/

While I'm on the subject of Bonneville here is a blog entry with some pictures. I was quite surprised reading it, that some Bonneville motorcycle racers are getting records with speeds in the 50 mph range. What? I'm pretty sure I don't need to travel to Bonneville to nail 50 mph with my Honda CD175. On the other hand, I guess if I want a world record I need all the documentation and race verification that goes along with a timed Bonneville run.

http://redlegsrides.blogspot.com/2010/09/bonneville-salt-flats-motorcycle-racing.html

Now getting back to beginner bikes, the Cycle Canada issue for March 2011 seems to be promoting smaller bikes. The new Honda CBR250R is on the cover. One article is about the KTM 125, which is not available in Canada yet, but maybe a 250 version in a year or two? And one of the new contributors, Michael Uhlarik heaps a lot of high praise on the CBR250R.

"the CBR25R is not just a perfect machine, it is a perfect motorcycle."

These are not just empty words. Michael says he sold off his Yamaha FZ1 with 145 hp last year, keeping a 50 hp Laverda. And he takes time to explain his attitude towards the hyper power bikes.

"We are still out of control on the top end where $18,000 can buy a 180 hp missile."
"in mass produced bikes aimed at the general consumer, maximum power is irrelevant if it intimidates the user and contributes to their injury."

Kind of reminds me of Mike Duff, many years back writing in Cycyle Canada, criticizing street bikes with way more power than GP racing bikes of just a few years earlier. And as I recall he got a lot of flack for taking that position. But I agreed with Mike Duff then and I think Michael Uhlarik is an the right track now. The market, however, has gone the other way, catering even more to the maximum performance bikes, at the expense of the "beginner bikes." This has resulted in a collapse of the motorcycle market from the bottom up. What I mean is that there are few young riders, plenty of old riders, getting older all the time.

One answer to the collapsing market is small bikes that don't cost too much to insure. Insurance cost a big obstacle to people entering the bike market. Bikes around 250 cc are more reasonable to insure than 1000cc bikes. And this new Honda proves they can also be appealing. But we have to improve our appreciation of bikes of 150-450 cc, and we need to start buying them and riding them more.


Picture: A 1920 Indian Scout, 600cc from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_Scout_600_cc_1920.jpg

Darwin Did Not Inspire Hitler

One idea proposed by the Born Again Christians is that without Charles Darwin, Hitler would not have started World War 2, and would not have tried to exterminate the Jews.

Of course, the reason they want to show this connection is that Hitler is considered so evil, that if you can somehow connect Hitler to your enemy, your enemy becomes as evil as Hitler. And therefore your enemy's logic will be disproved.

Well I intend to prove the exact opposite. Charles Darwin could not possibly have inspired Hitler to exterminate the Jews. On the contrary, Hitler drew much of his inspiration from the very Christian southern USA slave holding states, including the tell-tale use of the word Aryan.

But to get back to Charles Darwin. It is true that Darwin preceded Hitler, thereby making it possible for Hitler to have read the Origin of Species, and natural selection. But the idea that "only the strongest survive" was not invented by Charles Darwin. The idea of "the strongest survive" has been with us ever since humans have been able to think. It is the idea that has fuelled wars since the beginning. I'm pretty sure Genghis Khan operated on the theory of "the strongest survive". There has never been a battle in history where the defeated leader ever said "well, by golly who would have guessed that the weakest would lose the battle. Next time we will make sure we are the strongest."

I think the confusion exists between the inputs and the outputs of Darwin's thought process. One input to Darwin's theory was the well known law of "survival of the strongest". The output (and here was Darwin's original thought) was that evolutionary changes result from survival of the fittest. What Darwin was saying was that by eliminating the unfit, that a species would begin to morph into a different form.

Born Agains argue that Hitler wanted to "evolve" the German race by purifying it of its bad elements (Killing the mentally handicapped, the genetic mutants, the Jews, etc.). And the way to purify it was to kill the non-pure members. Again, this was not an idea that Darwin thought up. Long before Darwin, humans had learned to modify a species by killing or breeding it selectively to achieve the traits they wanted. Dogs, horses, pigeons, seeds. This is called "Selective breeding", and has been known almost as long as "survival of the strongest".

So Darwin did not invent either "survival of the fittest" or "selective breeding". And those are the two ideas that Born Again Christians accuse Darwin of inventing that lead directly to Hitler. But because both those ideas had existed long before Darwin, that logically refutes the connection between Darwin and the Nazi holocaust.

But there is more. Hitler also needed a something else to be able to go ahead with the holocaust. He needed a moral justification, which he would never get from Darwin. And he needed an example of some other country that had benefited from genocide and racism. He needed to look no further than the Christian USA, which used the Bible to effectively argue for the moral goodness of slavery and racial superiority during the time of the conquest of the Indians and the enslavement of the Africans. And, it seemed to Hitler that the USA had achieved remarkable success following this path of religiously sanctioned genocide and racism.

I forgot to mention one other thing Hitler needed and that was maybe just a touch of insanity.

In any case, I wish the Born Again Christians would let up on their endless attacks on Darwin. It is far more likely that, without the USA, Hitler could never have thought up these ideas of genocide leading to wealth and power. Charles Darwin had absolutely nothing to do with it.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/markwmann/kirk-camerons-darwinhitler-connection-e5y
http://www.darwinistdictators.com/articles/hitler.html

Scraping Pegs or Scraping Blogs

The term "scraping" has one meaning for motorcyclists, and another for bloggers. To the bloggers, it means copying material from another blog to fill out your own. This is also called plagiarism. Actually I think it is really dumb for someone to copy any blog into their own. But especially my blog, considering my controversial style that is bound to offend many more readers than it attracts.

Anyway, this motorcycling blog seems to have randomly copied my conversation with God:

http://motorcyclestyling.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-speak-directly-to-god.html

And they also blindly copied many more of my blogs, without regard to the subject matter.

If you want to use any of the material in my blogs, please give me credit for the stuff I wrote and/or put a link back to me like this:

http://lostmotorcycles.blogspot.com/

Thanks

And anyone is welcome to leave a comment below, you don't need to have a Google account: