VOSA Takes The P

  
It's not just Toyotas in America driving off by themselves killing people.

I was in a frog quadricycle Microcar that shot off at full revs backwards in a car park - from stationary.

I could have killed someone or myself.

It's not the first accident.  In one case a woman was thrown onto the seat, foot nowhere near the throttle, after the car lurched from stationary driving itself  into several other cars in the car park. 

A number of warranty claims have been made following Microcars shooting off by themselves.

The fault was traced to contaminants/corrosion in the ECU plug pins.

Other areas where fly by wire faults could occur are in the software or cheap chips (or even dear chips), particularly in the hostile environment for delicate electrics inside the engine bay..

In today's crazy world the throttle pedal doesn't actually operate anything attached to the engine. It operates a variable resistor that sends an electric current to a chip which then has to guess where the throttle pedal is.

Sometimes it guesses wrong.


So, what does VOSA do about people being driven to their deaths by Hal type computer chips or other causes brought about by crazed loony fly by wire installations?

"Fill up a safety defect form, old boy, and leave the rest to us" they told me.  Well, some action I thought.  After all, the main dealer couldn't fix various throttle problems from new.  VOSA then came back to me.

"Well, we've contacted the salesmen and they said there's nothing wrong with the cars they sell, so we're closing the file".  Huh?

"Um", I said "Haven't you had any other reports about kamikaze throttles?"

"Well, yes" they said "Other makes too, but the salemen all said there was nothing wrong with the cars."

"Er, so you inspected the cars?"  "Oh no" came the offended voice from VOSA "We're not garage mechanics".

The managing director of the UK distributor for Microcars whom VOSA spoke to refused to discuss safety issues with me after I was nearly killed and claimed the car should be scrapped and the case closed - after accident repair was made!!  The main dealer refused to examine the car after the Sale of Goods Act was mentioned.

So why doesn't VOSA at least contact the manufacturer when they get a report?

"Oh no, we don't do that sort of thing".

Wouldn't we be safer without VOSA and similar so called safety organisations that happily allow cars to be driven by a computer!!?