Well, rats! It isn't just Model 3s. Or Teslas. Had to drive the wife's Lexus today. I was in park and as soon as I changed to reverse, the left turn signal came on. Car wouldn't move. Went back to park and reverse two more times and it still only turned on the left turn signal.
Yesterday I pedaled forwards on my bike but it went backwards.
Oh, but seriously, yesterday my Tesla went backwards when I pressed the “gas” after I had finished reversing out of a spot and wanted to move forwards ... but that was because I hadn’t switched it into drive yet. This is what happens when your brain gets used to a pattern... I‘ve been parking by reversing in to a spot for 4 months now, at least twice a day, at home and at work. The one time I didn’t and pulled in, and I messed up momentarily on the way out.
Another brain-training issue is creep.
I blame the historical existence of creep — and training automatic transmission drivers’ brains to use it over many years — for a large number of “pedal confusion” cases. If we went back in time and uninvented automatic transmission with creep, people would get confused way less often today because your brain wouldn’t be use to controlling the start and stop of motion with the same pedal. Well, with the brake pedal anyways. One pedal with regen on accelerator is safer.
1. One pedal driving with regenerative braking: Press to go, release to slow down. Move foot to other pedal to stop quickly. You never slam the same pedal to stop.
2. One pedal driving with DEgenerative braking (aka creep): Release to go, press to slow down, press harder to stop.
(2) trains your brain that sometimes when you are controlling forwards motion (if you are in one-pedal degenerative driving mode) you just press the same pedal harder to stop, and sometimes you have to move your foot to another pedal to stop (if you are in normal accelerator pedal use). This confuses our monkey brains sometimes. We get used to patterns and then sometimes apply the wrong logic and miss a step. Like forgetting to move your foot to a different pedal. Or forgetting to shift gears into out or of reverse like I did. If (2) had
never ever existed, we’d only be used to a mode of driving where to slow down while you are controlling acceleration you
have to lift your foot to slow down AND move it to another pedal to quickly slow down. Using creep trains your monkey brain for a future pedal confusion incident because sometimes you slow down one way, sometimes another.
Back to this reverse/forwards thing ... a video of a real non-user-error issue would be great. You’d think someone would want to capture it to prove they aren’t going crazy.