Sudden acceleration

[Rolfe]

I don't suppose you took a screenshot?

 

[Gomev]

It does. There are a couple of examples near me of OAPs putting their new automatic ICE cars through the back of their garages.

I imagine it's more common than we think, mostly nothing serious happening along with the well advertised dramatic stuff as most drivers are coming from a manual when they switch to an EV, or possibly think as they get older an ICE automatic would be easier.

 

[Kithmo]

No @Scorpion said that if he’s braking and one wheel goes over a slippery manhole cover (thereby activating the ABS) his car actually accelerates.
I’ve had scary moments when braking hard and ABS is activated on one wheel before, the car just all of a sudden not slowing down as quickly as it was.
But I’ve never had a car accelerate…that’s just downright weird and dangerous.

Ah, the illusion of accelerating.
The wheel that went over the slippery surface was probably the one doing the regenerative braking and the other wheel was freewheeling due to the differential.
I've had it once with the 4, a couple of times with the ZS and many times with the Priuses over the years.

 

[tsedge]

This is from the US but has some interesting facts about people hitting the wrong pedal:

NHTSA Safety Advisory: Reducing crashes caused by pedal error | Automotive World

ISSUE: Drivers use the brake almost a million times per year, usually with no problem. But each year, approximately 16,000 preventable crashes occur due

www.automotiveworld.com

 

[Kithmo]

This is from the US but has some interesting facts about people hitting the wrong pedal:

NHTSA Safety Advisory: Reducing crashes caused by pedal error | Automotive World

ISSUE: Drivers use the brake almost a million times per year, usually with no problem. But each year, approximately 16,000 preventable crashes occur due

www.automotiveworld.com

Pedal error may very well occur with the MG EVs as pressing the brake does not kill the power to the accelerator as it does in the Prius.
Pressing both pedals together in the Prius results in no power to the accelerator and the car stops.
Pressing both pedals in an MG EV results in power being applied to both the accelerator and the brake, so it depends which is the strongest as to whether the car slows or accelerates.

 

[Chequers]

I don't suppose you took a screenshot?

No I didn't but the photo showed his front wing, door and A pillar damaged

 

[OJEastwood]

I tried to send a link to the post on the Facebook group but it wasn't working properly for some reason. It does read like a scary story though.

 

[bowfer]

Ah, the illusion of accelerating.
The wheel that went over the slippery surface was probably the one doing the regenerative braking and the other wheel was freewheeling due to the differential.
I've had it once with the 4, a couple of times with the ZS and many times with the Priuses over the years.

No he was adamant it’s not the illusion of acceleration, it’s actual acceleration…
I know, it sounds implausible….

 

[m4rmite]

No he was adamant it’s not the illusion of acceleration, it’s actual acceleration…
I know, it sounds implausible….

I'll try it tonight. There's a stretch of road from work that has multiple manhole covers.
When I've been braking or regen has been slowing me down to the incoming island the car feels like it has released the brakes.
Initial reaction is to push harder which resumes braking, when on regen it seems to cancel any continued deceleration.
There's normally a car in front so i don't take my eyes off the road to look, but if i can leave a larger gap I'll try it and see if the speed increases.

 

[Ian Key]

What setting have you got your regen on?
If it's on auto it will vary its strength depending what the car detects is in front of it.

 

[m4rmite]

No luck too much traffic for me to avert my eyes but it did "speed up" for a second as i braked over the manhole covers.

 

[Collected]

We had a thread about (or mentioning) a Tesla "wild ride" that killed at least one person in its path. Much of it was caught on CCTVs along the road. The owner (who survived) said that he was frantically pressing the brake but the car just went faster and faster. Tesla said that the brake was not engaged at any point on the run. It was said that the car's brake lights weren't on, although I personally couldn't tell from the CCTV shown. Tesla apparently concluded that the driver had been pressing the accelerator in the mistaken belief he was pressing the brake.

There have been several of these incidents, all involving EVs, and the consensus from the manufacturers seems to be "driver error". I am not so sure. I have never heard of a similar incident with an ICE car, although an ICE car with a DSG is driven in an almost identical manner to an EV and is surely subject to the same error. Why has nobody ever made this error when driving a DSG?

I don't claim to know what is really going on, but I have a large dollop of scepticism regarding the "driver error" explanation. I'd be very wary of a car (I mean an individual car, not a make or model) that had done this once.

There are literally hundreds of videos of ICE car drivers hitting the accelerator instead of the break, usually going through shop windows in the process. car driver wrong pedal - Google Search

 

[Rolfe]

Yeah, someone already said. Makes sense in that case.

Just thinking. We use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake because of the way manual transmission works. You need your left foot for the clutch. When they invented automatics, they simply made the left foot redundant and continued to give both pedals to the right foot.

If manual transmission had never been invented, and we just had two pedals and two feet, would we have given a pedal to each foot? Would there be a downside to that? If we were hard-wired that right foot was stop and left foot was go (or vice versa), would this mistake continue to happen?

 

[m4rmite]

Yeah, someone already said. Makes sense in that case.

Just thinking. We use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake because of the way manual transmission works. You need your left foot for the clutch. When they invented automatics, they simply made the left foot redundant and continued to give both pedals to the right foot.

If manual transmission had never been invented, and we just had two pedals and two feet, would we have given a pedal to each foot? Would there be a downside to that? If we were hard-wired that right foot was stop and left foot was go (or vice versa), would this mistake continue to happen?

I guess riding the brakes while driving, causing overheating of the brakes.

If people ride the clutch then they would have no problem with a brake pedal.

 

[Tight Git]

If manual transmission had never been invented, and we just had two pedals and two feet, would we have given a pedal to each foot? Would there be a downside to that? If we were hard-wired that right foot was stop and left foot was go (or vice versa), would this mistake continue to happen?

A few years ago Honest John (Daily Telegraph and website) was always claiming that left foot braking should be used on automatic cars for exactly this reason. It does seem to be more commonly reported among older drivers, but that may be due to more older drivers driving automatic cars.

 

[Rolfe]

A few years ago Honest John (Daily Telegraph and website) was always claiming that left foot braking should be used on automatic cars for exactly this reason. It does seem to be more commonly reported among older drivers, but that may be due to more older drivers driving automatic cars.

I think it would be very difficult for those of us who learned to drive on manual transmission cars and drove them for years to switch to driving this way.

I wonder though if it might be a better way to learn for young people starting off on automatics with no intention of ever driving a manual. I have no idea, I'm just musing.

 

[Tight Git]

Agreed - first time I drove my father's Mercedes automatic about 30 years ago approaching a roundabout I went for the clutch with my left foot and hit the brake - stopped the car pretty quickly and fortunately nothing was behind me!

I can see the benefits of using both feet with an auto but it would need a good bit of 'brain' recalibration!

 

[Rolfe]

I drove a friend's automatic in America and liked it. I don't remember having a problem then - it was just such a relief not to have to worry about gear changes in a left hand drive car.

But when I went for my test drive in the Golf the dealer only had a DSG model and I was all over the place. It was downright embarrassing. I hadn't intended to buy the automatic but I started remembering the car I had driven in America, and a week later I ordered the DSG version of the Golf!

 

[PeteC]

Agreed - first time I drove my father's Mercedes automatic about 30 years ago approaching a roundabout I went for the clutch with my left foot and hit the brake - stopped the car pretty quickly and fortunately nothing was behind me!

I can see the benefits of using both feet with an auto but it would need a good bit of 'brain' recalibration!

I did that too years ago in somebody else's automatic. I guess I just pushed the brake straight down fairly quickly with my left foot as that's what I was used to doing with the clutch so sort of muscle memory. The thing that I find odd about that is that the few times that I've driven go karts, where you have no choice but to use your left foot on the brake, I've had absolutely no problems. I can only assume that it's because you don't really do delicate braking on a kart, you tend to be either hard on the throttle or hard on the brake (well, you do if you're trying to either keep ahead of your child or catch them up!).

 

[richlove]

Yeah, someone already said. Makes sense in that case.

Just thinking. We use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake because of the way manual transmission works. You need your left foot for the clutch. When they invented automatics, they simply made the left foot redundant and continued to give both pedals to the right foot.

If manual transmission had never been invented, and we just had two pedals and two feet, would we have given a pedal to each foot? Would there be a downside to that? If we were hard-wired that right foot was stop and left foot was go (or vice versa), would this mistake continue to happen?

I adopt this style at times, it comes fairly naturally after years of karting, more often when I'm enjoying a more 'spirited drive'. Around town I can't be bothered to move my left foot off the rest, so go back to right-foot only.

Most people surprise themselves when left-foot braking the first couple of times, having become accustomed to the required force of a clutch pedal. It can take a while to find the required modulation with the left foot!