A failure of car design, and a failure of driver's ed

By Ian Grinde

I passed my driver's education course eight months ago. Most of the course addressed laws and regulations related to driving. Very little of it had to do with handling a 3,000-4,000 pound hunk of metal in emergency situations like those a number of Toyota drivers have found themselves in recently.

In a recent test, Car and Driver, a leading automotive magazine, showed that even with the throttle on full, a Toyota Camry's stock brakes are powerful enough to bring it down to a stop from highway speeds. Why did these deaths happen if the car is able to stop? Because of driver failure -- or, more specifically, because of a failure in how drivers are trained.

That training needs to improve. Toyota is not the only example of declining common sense in the automotive world. Drivers need to be able to compensate not only for road conditions, or even for defective throttle return springs or software problems, but for a dangerous shift in attitudes and choices among the carmakers.

When Toyota began, it developed support and loyalty in its customers because of its high quality and insightful engineering. Toyota then lost that spirit in its quest to gain the highest market share. Toyota has compromised itself with unnecessary complexity, at the cost of its simple original character.

Now that complexity has backfired. The pedals in the new Toyotas do not control the engine mechanically. The pedal position is electronically interpreted by software, which controls the engine. If the software malfunctions, nothing the drivers do to the pedal will affect the throttle, because the pedal is not directly connected to the engine. Such a mechanism exemplifies the auto industry's drive to control various functions of the car by electrical means rather than mechanical.

Should this trend continue it could have disastrous consequences. Clearly, we should value simplicity as a virtue and unnecessary complexity as a vice. This would prevent needless accidents in the future through simple, mechanical, reliable linkages between the car and the driver's right foot.

We should also value driver's education that focuses more on the actual driving of a car.

Though the bureaucratic requirements of laws and regulations are necessary, the de-emphasis on the physical driving of a car has resulted in incompetent drivers. Also, the proliferation of driver assist devices -- such as traction control, active stability management, anti-lock-braking, etc. -- is part of the problem. These features have insulated the driver from the physics of driving, and if they fail, the driver is likely to be unprepared to deal with the crisis that may result.

Toyota needs to revitalize its original spirit, move forward, and reverse the trend of adding complexity for complexity's sake. We need to reform driver's ed to include on-the-edge car control in emergency situations, and to be stricter and more rigorous in its requirements. We need to emphasize driver responsibility, not the car. We need to value simplicity and good engineering. Above all, we need to make sure we educate drivers on how to drive, instead of how to pass the driver's test.

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Ian Grinde, 15, is in 10th grade at Saint Louis Park High School. He enjoys tinkering with nitro RC cars, and reading about all things car related.

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