Alan - super unlikely that you saved me or mine from an accident, but i guess the point is I'll never know now. So take heart, you have at least on parent's sincere thanks for posting and notifying Tesla (two if you count my wife).
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PSA: Use PIN-To-Drive or Keycard if you have small children
- Thread starter AlanSubie4Life
- Start date
How about this: in addition to PIN to drive, have "Super Secure Drive Mode."
When in SSDM, if 1) Brake is depressed AND 2) weight on butt switch is depressed, the car pushes a message to the phone app: DO YOU WISH TO DRIVE THE CAR, NOW?
Driver must, at the least, possess the phone and tap "yes" before the shift lever is enabled. If the driver has the phone locked via fingerprint or PIN or pattern or whatever, that's one more layer of security.
It's basically two factor authentication to make the car move.
Having had three children and now approaching grandchildren, I would personally, gladly enable SSDM when the ankle biters are around.
When in SSDM, if 1) Brake is depressed AND 2) weight on butt switch is depressed, the car pushes a message to the phone app: DO YOU WISH TO DRIVE THE CAR, NOW?
Driver must, at the least, possess the phone and tap "yes" before the shift lever is enabled. If the driver has the phone locked via fingerprint or PIN or pattern or whatever, that's one more layer of security.
It's basically two factor authentication to make the car move.
Having had three children and now approaching grandchildren, I would personally, gladly enable SSDM when the ankle biters are around.
You dont have to depress the brake and hit the start button in your highlander? Or press/squeeze the button on the gear selector and pull the selector towards the rear of the car?
Its markedly different. My 2 year old flailing about could accidentally get the tesla moving. It would take a concerted effort in your Highlander. For one, I doubt she has the dexterity to get it into gear. For two, the gear stock in the tesla is an easy thing to grab bump, whereas the push button start in the highlander is flush with the dash.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
This raises a good point. The squeeze and pull into drive mechanism was a 4th safety step.
New BMWs eliminate the squeeze and use a dial for park or drive instead. Not sure I would be a fan of dials either with kids around. Unless they treat it like a child safety cap on medicine - push down and turn perhaps.
Yup. The squeeze and pull is counter intuitive. Anything counter intuitive is enough to prevent a kid from doing something while your back is turned for a second. Not to mention it would take a deliberate effort, versus simply grabbing the gear stock in the tesla while trying to pull themselves up on the seat while pushing off the pedals.
It is slightly different but the same basic chain of events can occur. I'm in the "Tesla wasn't negligent, but we can always improve" camp. I don't know why people are focusing on what a 2 year old can do. This same thing could happen with an older kid, and the setup in a Highlander for example would not prevent that anymore than a Tesla does.
Highlander. Push pedal, hit shiny button that Dad always presses, squeeze gear shift, etc. The Highlander doesn't have the automatic braking etc. so if it had been engaged the car would have applied pressure constantly rather than cutting power to the motor. Pin to drive certainly resolves this.
Your 2 year old might not, but my 4 year old certainly could. Is a 2 year old the only case that we care about? I have zero doubts that my 4 or 6 year old could have started up my Highlander and got it rolling.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I suspect the vast majority of small children would simply pound away at the button and not realize that they have to press the brake. And of course then there is one more step to get it into drive. This also gives the parent much more time to realize what might happen. Also, the key location is much more accurate on the Highlander.
I do agree that all "keyless" systems seem to make it a little bit more likely for a child to drive the car since you can easily leave the key in the car by accident. I've left my phone in my Model 3 quite a few times!
A 2017 Highlander Hybrid can probably be started by a small child. But it would be fairly improbable unless the child was attempting to start the vehicle. Would not happen accidentally in a few seconds.
1) The key would need to be in the car or within 1 foot (won’t start with key on the ground outside the car or under the car...if you hold it in your hand more than a foot out the window it won’t start either).
2) Press brake, press push button start. Wait a moment. Must wait about 1-2 seconds. The car will turn on and be audible. Less so with the Hybrid.
3) After mandatory waiting, hold brake, push gear selector away toward passenger, then pull back.
You can compare to my summary here:
PSA: Use PIN-To-Drive or Keycard if you have small children
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No of course it is not the only case we care about. If you evaluate this as a concern for your specific situation, you should turn on PIN-to-drive in your Tesla. That was my original point. This is an excellent safety feature. It likely makes the Tesla safer than nearly every other vehicle in this regard. As I said above, enabling the feature does not mean you may then leave your children unattended, of course!
For very small children, who may not even have intent to start the vehicle, it is also an excellent safety feature.
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I think we agree. Honestly this accident is what prompted me to finally add pin to drive myself. The highlander case is improbable, but so is the what actually happened with the Model X.
I suppose Tesla could consider having it be required to press the button on the end of the shifter stalk and simultaneously push up/down when shifting out of park. That would certainly make things less probable (though obviously still possible).
However, there's possible user confusion that could result (though I think it would be learned with muscle memory soon enough, and the pushing of button to both enter and exit park would be second nature eventually). And at this point making such a change is probably not possible due to user confusion. And it is not the type of thing to make a user option.
In any case, I think it's likely that Tesla has thought about all of these issues, and may even intend the commanded accelerator input to override the Rollaway Protection for various design & philosophical reasons. In any case, they are aware of the actual behavior at this point (and they likely already were). And hopefully, so is everyone else...
I had never thought of doing that, but that seems more a bug than anything else. There is no scenario where I could imagine anyone would want to do that except for a driverless autonomous driving situation, but that's impossible and illegal today.
If a kid was able to accidentally stumble into the combination of events necessary to get the car moving with no weight on the driver's seat, I believe from the video that it requires the accelerator continue to be pushed. As soon as the accelerator pedal is no longer depressed the car goes into park.
The number of kids who would stumble into that combination are few, and the few who did, a fair number would probably realize something was wrong when the car started moving and would probably take pressure off the accelerator. Even by 3 I would have known I was in trouble and would have wanted to stop doing whatever I was doing.
If there was, you could reach the absurd conclusion that it was illegal to have a kid who wasn't buckled into a car seat at any time.
I would tend to agree with that, but there are also philosophical reasons why Tesla might still want the accelerator to function if the driver really commands it. Only Tesla knows whether it is intentional or not.
Not quite. The car has to come to a stop first (or close to it, I did not test this exact case in the video). In the video I just gave it a quick stab and then moved over to the brake (didn't really push the brake hard, as you can see I don't come to an abrupt halt). Before this video was taken I was able to coast quite a distance down my street at home using the same method (no pedal input).
As you have a Tesla Model S 90D, I am sure you are familiar with the acceleration of a Tesla and how fast it is going after a fraction of a second. For the P3D, at the 1-foot rollout point, which takes ~0.3s, the car is moving nearly 5mph (and can possibly kill someone). Human reaction time is about 0.25s.
So I don't think we can rely on either the car going back into park after accelerator release, or the accelerator being released particularly quickly.
This reminds me how poor people are at measuring and comparing risk. There is risk in EVERYTHING. Hot dogs still haven't been redesigned even though at the last count (and it's old) they claim 13 kids' lives each year, and that's just in the US.
Agree people are poor at comparing risk. The risk of children asphyxiating on food is well-known, and the problem isn’t the hotdog itself, it is cutting it into small pieces that become a choking hazard. No reasonable person claims product liability on the hotdog manufacturer in this case, as is the case with farmers who sell grapes.
In the OP’s post here, there is no claim or suggestion of product liability. It is simply a suggestion of continuous improvement - and a thoughtful analysis of a reproducible event and a simple mitigating step for parents to follow - use a PIN.
Yes, highly recommended with small children around, as this lady discovered when her 2-year old got into the footwell and pretty badly crushed her:
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...ed-pregnant-mother-in-garage-broke-her-bones/
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...ed-pregnant-mother-in-garage-broke-her-bones/
One other topic to bring up is that auto accidents contribute the most significant number of accidental deaths in children and youth (ages 1-14). Car seats, booster seats, and seatbelts are crucial in terms of lowering this number.
I recently also noted that I have one child who meets the age requirements for sitting up front, but is right on the border-line in terms of weight and when the airbags will deploy. We found that the passenger airbag OFF notice would sometimes illuminate - so for now, anyone who weighs under 120 pounds we try to seat in the rear of the vehicle.
I recently also noted that I have one child who meets the age requirements for sitting up front, but is right on the border-line in terms of weight and when the airbags will deploy. We found that the passenger airbag OFF notice would sometimes illuminate - so for now, anyone who weighs under 120 pounds we try to seat in the rear of the vehicle.
The whole thing with kids should be in the back started when passenger airbags came along. The airbags when deploying can kill people under a certain size and weight. Many early airbag cars had switches somewhere to turn off the passenger airbag for this reason.
