Re: Unintended Acceleration

[dmiller@iea.com (Doug Miller)]

Whooeey!  You're gonna get a lot of posts on this one.  My personal
favorite story about the whole incident was the Florida dealer disgusted
with Audi's timid reaction who put full page ads in all area papers.  They
offered either $10,000 or $100,000 to anyone who could move an audi more
than a foot on his showroom floor while he had his foot on the brake.
That's the kind of staunch support for the product that Audi should have
done.  Instead, they let their lawyers bamboozle them while the matter was
analyzed, investigated, and triple checked.  By then it was too late.

As an aside, in 1986 I was a Product Planner at GM world HQ in Detroit.
Working on a proposal to add AWD to several C car platforms (98, Park Ave,
etc) I showed up at the Milford Proving grounds for another round of track
evaluations of the current AWD vehicles and was told the Audi 5000 had been
driven through the garage door while being checked over for my arrival.
Speaking with the man who did it, I learned he had been a professional test
driver for over 20 years, and he told me to my face that he'd simply put
his foot on the wrong pedal.  The 60 minutes crap was in full swing at the
time and he knew it full well.  He was an honest man and demonstrated that
even with someone with more training and experience driving innumerable
vehicles from around the world than anyone but a handful of people in the
WORLD, the same mistake could be made.


Doug Miller
dmiller@iea.com
97A6Q Wagon, 93 LandCruiser w/diff locks (and well used skidplates), 71
LeMans Sport V8 Convertible. 23 foot 1997 Rinker with 330hp 454 V8.
Cannondale Super V 900 Comp.