A number of Volkswagen owners say they have experienced car troubles similar to those believed to have occurred before a crash that claimed the life of a 32-year-old woman in Melbourne in 2011.





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The car owners spoke out after media coverage of a coronial investigation this week into the death of Melissa Ryan, 32, who was killed when a prime mover crashed into her manual Golf from behind on the Monash Freeway, The Age reports.

Ms Ryan's family believe her car inexplicable lost speed before the accident, a theory that appears to be supported by the driver of the prime mover, Ivan Mumford, who insisted he did not see her brake lights come on before the crash but had seen them working earlier.

Volkswagen's expert witness Warren Chilvers denied the suggestions, telling the coronial investigation the vehicle information showed no evidence the car was at fault.

Since the incident received attention, 15 Volkswagen owners have contacted The Age reporting similar experiences in their cars, including Golf, Eos, Polo and Passat models. Complaints of sudden speed loss were also made by the owners of a Ford Mondeo and Mercedes ML350.

Jean Lim said she owned a 2007 Golf automatic that suddenly decelerated and the problem returned after Volkswagen replaced the gearbox.

Another owner of a 2008 model Golf who did not wish to be named said she drove "in constant terror".

"The light comes up, the car just dies and you just pray you're not smashed into," she said.

The coroner is due to hand down their findings in late July.

The federal Department of Infrastructure and Transport is also investigating Ms Ryan's death and said it is "liaising closely" with Volkswagon.

Earlier this year Volkswagon was forced to recall 400,000 cars in China and 91,000 in Japan after problems with the high-tech automatic direct shift gearbox (DSG) that have been connected to sudden deceleration.

Volkswagon has resisted calls for a recall in Australia, with executive vice-president Ulrich Hackenberg saying this month the China recall was prompted by problems in Chinese-built DSGs and Australian cars had DSGs built in Europe.

The company declined to answer specific questions about deceleration and spokesman Kurt McGuiness said there were no plans for any recalls in Australia, The Age reports.

Why they need to spell Volkswagen two different ways is beyond me. Weird that DSG owners are complaining about the same thing that a manual car did... anyone from here experience it in their later model cars?

Do those vw's have that mod-con 'crash detection' gizmos that slow the car down for ya?

if so, one could speculate that possibly being a cause.

many cars with DSG are having major problems not only in Australia
I also read where some imported fords used the same DSG as VW.. and they are having problems too,,

seems that cars are getting too complicated.. plus makers are trying to cut costs..

I read where many cars have problems with exhaust oxygen sensors.. a very common problem..

it may only be a small percentage of cars built when You are building so many cars..
but the number of cars having failures gets higher..

If DSG can cause those problems [although more likely to be an electical/computer problem]

just think what the new "applying the brakes when the car sensors something too close to it" will cause if it has an intermittant problem...??
YIKES
and I thought that was a good idea... lol

I presume the brake lights would go on when that system is activated????

LEE

Crazy isnt it! Maybe time to go back to basics and bring back some simple aircooled machines

or early 90s cars, they had the best of both worlds.

Just maybe, without knowing the circunstances of each case, it may have been the cruise controll at fault, my "07 caddy (over 200,00 klicks up) had an intermittent problem with the cruise, if I was in cruise mode and signalled to change lanes then occasionaly the cruise would turn off, othertimes it would just turn off for no apparent reason, obviously this would not activate the brake lights but the vehicle would certainly slow down rapidly. Turned out to be an easy fix, simply replaced the entire turn indicator stalk which has the cruise controll swith on it, not too costly and hasn't happened since.

For every 1 car that has some fault like this there is probably 10,000+ that don't.

You gotta wonder sometimes how often faults that get blamed on the car were really down to just operator error.

Oh but I thought I could drive it underwater while talking on my mobile phone and applying the brakes and accelerator at the same time the previous week......

I find many people who have bought a new car are NOT shown how everything works.. or why it works etc..

simple things like air conditioning..

I have found most people don't know if You move the dial up into the red, the air conditioner doesn't stop.
If You move it further the heater will come on..
but at around half way, heat can be sent to Your feet and cold air to the windscreen which defrosts the windscreen very fast..

I have found most people use the air con fan to adjust the air con, which naturally it doesn't..
just the volume of cold air...

People should be shown that the air con dial is a thermostat
especially in the COLD setting..
and will still work when in the red zone..

Now I'm finding people with climate control set the Temperature either too cold or hot..

LEE