chronopc
Active Member
Pedal confusion is a very apt term. I bet almost all "unexpected acceleration" is caused by pedal confusion.
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Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today
- Thread starter AZM3
- Start date
Six local news stories from various sources reporting on the accident. All had "Tesla" in the title and only the San Jose Mercury News had a title like this: "Tesla Model 3 crash into Danville sushi restaurant 'not the fault of car "
Let's try to avoid calling it an accident. That just puts us right back to "I didn't intend!" This was a crash. Caused by the driver hitting the wrong pedal. We should only care about why this happened (so we can understand and prevent it). Otherwise... if the car had accelerated on its own, that would have been an accident too, right? I'm sure the car didn't mean to.
Based on the pictures from the accident in China, I'd say the brakes might be quite wet.
Maybe they should also complain to Tesla about the tail lights fogging.
LOL so you think the driver meant to do it then and it wasn't an accident? The car definitely did crash though. Fortunately no fire which frequently gets brought up in news stories about Teslas.
At 92, glad he wasn't hurt and certainly not someone who was afraid of all the tech. It's amazing how wide a base of owners Tesla has.
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Absolutely not meant to be funny. And if it sounded like I thought that the driver meant to do it, my point was totally lost.
We can safely assume that none of these incidents are intended, so why do we insist on calling them all "unitendeds" when what we want to know is why it happened? It happened because the wrong pedal was pressed. It didn't happen *because* it was unintended.
Why do I get all worked up about this? Because:
Referring to a crash as an ‘accident’ obscures the preventable nature of collisions
And isn't that the basis of the whole discussion here? The folks involved are claiming that there was nothing they could do! It was unpreventable.
We cannot fix unintendeds and unforseables but we can fix the cause of crashes. Accident offers a pass for negligence.
(And no, I don't need internet definitions pasted here to show support for Accident. The implications of words are more relevant than definitions. And there is not merely a single definition for accident.)
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chronopc
Active Member
Only if you wish to entertain the thought that pedal misapplication isn't a correctable cause of these unintended unforseeables. Car crashes should not be considered inevitable. Imagine if we treated plane crashes with the same sort of indifference to finding a solution.
chronopc
Active Member
Accidents are almost always avoidable, but we still call them accidents.
Most plane crashes are caused by pilot error, so they aren't really much different from car crashes.
I'm aware that we do. And we should stop. Because "Oops, I made a mistake" implies that the negligence was unavoidable. Again, my whole point that you seem to be supporting.
And yet another great point. You know one big way that they're different? When a plane hits something, it is invariably called a crash by the authorities (don't get me started on reporters). We know that the crashes are preventable, and we don't imply otherwise. We call them crashes because we want to find out what caused the crash and how to prevent it next time. Unlike car "accidents" plane crashes are thoroughly investigated. Every time. We never say, "oops, it was just a plane accident."
You're not alone is wishing to defend the use of accident. I don't understand it, but obviously I can't stop you. I understand your logic to a point. But for what purpose do you wish to defend the loaded, subjective term for an objective incident? Because it is in common use? That's the only thing I can think of. This thread especially points out why we need to distinguish between "unintended acceleration" and "wrong pedal was pressed." And if everything is "oops, didn't mean to" we might as well just move on and accept that "accidents happen."
I tried to make my point. There's no advantage to using accident except to take the edge off of a catastrophic incident. There are many advantages to using more objective words. "Accident" is common, and we all know what it means. But it's works against us when we want to know what happened, and how to prevent it.
I'm done at least in this thread! And I'm sure that'll be met with much applause by the other readers. Sorry gang. This is one of my pet things.
chronopc
Active Member
I guess some people have their accidents, others have their bricking and others still have their dealership issues. Those that have been on the forum long enough will understand this. And to others is it tomato - tomato POV. 
Back to point of thread, nice to see at least one publication absolving Tesla and not use as clickbait.
Back to point of thread, nice to see at least one publication absolving Tesla and not use as clickbait.
If you're referring to Tesla, I concur.
The greater issue of "Unintended Acceleration", however, is very much real. I present, for your reading pleasure: http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf
I've had the same thing happen twice now. Both times when pulling into a parking space. There first time I attributed it to driver error but the second time I had just finished pulling into a parking space and suddenly it took off like a shot. Luckily I only hit a couple of garbage cans and the vehicle stopped when I stomped on the brake pedal. I also had obstacle aware acceleration set so none of this should have happened. This time I was able to record the exact time of the incident and sent in a bug report. Will call Tesla tomorrow to see if they can figure anything out from their end.