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Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today
- Thread starter AZM3
- Start date
T34ME
Active Member
Good point, except that the Prius has a chime that keeps dinging while pressing the accelerator when in reverse. Many Prius owners disable the chime because they find it annoying. I didn't for this very reason, (It doesn't chime when in creep). Another time, my wife was driving and overshot the crosswalk at a stoplight. She put the car in reverse to clear the crosswalk and inadvertently left it in reverse!
The reverse chime saved the day when she gently pressed the accelerator at the green light.I don't believe the model 3 has a reverse chime.
Yeah, this is what gets me. Not so much here, but on more juvenile sites such as Inside EVs, there is the AUTOMATIC assumption that the driver (who was smart enough to afford $50-100 grand), confused the brake and accelerator.
Reminds me of the AUDI 5000 from decades ago, which, due to an 'AUTOMATIC' mechanized idle control was documented at LURCHING the car forward unexpectedly at 0.3G !!!! No one has ever said, but I've researched several owner's issues and in a few of them AT MINIMUM it looks to me like the 'automatic' ANTI-Lock Brake pulsing motor also was stuck on - preventing any hindrance of the acceleration, such as when one owner went through the back of his garage and the car got hung up on the inground pool lip for minutes until the tires burst and the CONCRETE WORE DOWN. You would think , even though all cases were LEGALLY adjudicated that the driver confused the brake and accelerator, you would think the supposedly confused driver would try to shut the car off before destroying his pool and tires. The Driver claims the car's control system went nuts and REFUSED to shut off, or stop what it was doing. I certainly believe him in that case.
Your reverse chime will not save you another day, when you put it in 'D' although you were intending to reverse out of a parking spot.Good point, except that the Prius has a chime that keeps dinging while pressing the accelerator when in reverse. Many Prius owners disable the chime because they find it annoying. I didn't for this very reason, (It doesn't chime when in creep). Another time, my wife was driving and overshot the crosswalk at a stoplight. She put the car in reverse to clear the crosswalk and inadvertently left it in reverse!
I don't believe the model 3 has a reverse chime.
Creep will save you from that situation.
What does being able to afford an expensive car have to do with intelligence or accidentally pushing the wrong pedal? As long as there have been expensive cars there have been morons with more money than sense buying them and doing stupid things in them.
It has happened to me too, in multiple cars. Sometimes you have a brain fart. Could happen to anyone. What happens next is less consistent. Some people have the calmness of mind to not freak out and stomp down on whatever pedal. Some people don't. And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Dexterity, coordination, etc come at all different levels. Some people are amazing at basketball. Some people are awesome at video games. And some people are awesome at handling cars. And some ppl aren't so good at those things.
My assessment: It's the driver's fault, but they can likely assign blame to a systemic flaw in human architecture. The manufacturer (of humans) offers zero customer support on these matters, however, so buyer beware.
I have observed that I ride different pedals in my S than in any other car I've owned. This is because of both regen and TACC. With my Model S, in traffic, I ride the accelerator instead of the brake, to nudge the car forward while an overly cautious TACC is engaged. TACC often leaves too much space in front, or is too timid around lane changes. Or if I'm not using TACC, I ride the accelerator because regen braking usually allows me to vary my speed as much as necessary without touching the brake. In a parking lot it's not as cut and dry, but to some extent creep is too slow and brake is still aggressive, so I've got my foot on the accelerator through more of the act of parking, often until the last few feet when creep would crash me into other objects.
With more traditional ICE cars (without traffic awareness), I have to ride the brake to abort cruise while I'm tweaking speeds, which I'll adjust primarily with a cruise-control stalk. When parking, I can more often glide on momentum and engine idle, so again I'm riding the brake. Comparatively, this results in the exact opposite default position for my foot.
So, decades of driving around with a foot on the brake, vs months driving around with a foot on the accelerator... how is that change not going to result in accidents? In fact, habits are going to be so strong they will convince me I'm actually doing the thing I was supposed to be doing when I was actually doing the thing I was previously supposed to be doing in another car, and that turns out to be the wrong thing in the new car. But my memory won't tell me what I was actually doing, no no no, it just tells me "you were doing the exact same thing you've been doing correctly for years", which, under the circumstances translates to "applied pressure to brake". Never mind that your foot was actually on the accelerator because that's where you've relearned that it should be because of regen and TACC.
In the MS, I have nearly applied pressure to the wrong pedal more than once, and I managed to stop myself each time. But I can see that others might miss, and I can see how they might not even notice they're doing it and vehemently believe they were doing the appropriate thing at the moment. Citing years of experience is really undermining any case that the car was in error, because all that experience was built up by doing a different thing with a different car, and it ingrained you with a deep array of habits which are newly bad.
I have actually made such mistakes with the reverse stalk. With ICE cars, you put the gear stick in a specific physical position to drive in reverse, and it's physically hard to do this if you are moving forward. As a result, there is no ambiguity about whether or not you are in reverse, and you work the car until it lets you put it into that mode. With the MS, putting the car in reverse is almost a button press. I've performed the gesture while the car is moving forward, expecting it to enter reverse, then accelerated... the wrong direction. I hit someone's bumper this way (one of several "getting to know you" scuffles with my car in parking lots). The physical interaction model for gear shifting in more traditional cars has effectively trained me not to ever question whether I successfully changed gears or not; if I do the motion, I've changed the gears: no thought required. That's no longer true with the MS, which will simply refuse to go into reverse under certain conditions. It's not just the motion, I have to either control the conditions (i.e. voluntarily come to full stop), or visually verify that I've switched into reverse after tugging the lever. I have made this mistake roughly 4 times over the course of a year (fortunately only one of them resulting in contact with another car), and I think I've trained myself out of it.
One more: I have yet to train myself to put my Model S in park before I get out and walk away. I still fail do it about once a month. Fortunately the car somehow is detecting that I do this and putting itself in park right as I get out, just as the alarm starts beeping and the panic sets in. Which habits die hard, and which ones happily fly away? I've never, ever driven a car from which it is safe to walk away without putting it in park, nor can I recall ever having done that. Why would I start pretending it is safe to do so now, and do so repeatedly?
Conceivably, Tesla could help with these problems by scrutinizing all the habits and all the possible cues, and taking measures to help break people of their old habits so that they don't pollute or get confused with the new ones. Or (as with the "just-in-time-autopark" feature) they could figure out how to detect misfiring habits and block the user action. But that's definitely a loaded topic... the last thing you want is a car that needs to "suddenly accelerate" in order to avoid a disaster, but refuses to do so because it thinks someone pushed the wrong pedal.
I have observed that I ride different pedals in my S than in any other car I've owned. This is because of both regen and TACC. With my Model S, in traffic, I ride the accelerator instead of the brake, to nudge the car forward while an overly cautious TACC is engaged. TACC often leaves too much space in front, or is too timid around lane changes. Or if I'm not using TACC, I ride the accelerator because regen braking usually allows me to vary my speed as much as necessary without touching the brake. In a parking lot it's not as cut and dry, but to some extent creep is too slow and brake is still aggressive, so I've got my foot on the accelerator through more of the act of parking, often until the last few feet when creep would crash me into other objects.
With more traditional ICE cars (without traffic awareness), I have to ride the brake to abort cruise while I'm tweaking speeds, which I'll adjust primarily with a cruise-control stalk. When parking, I can more often glide on momentum and engine idle, so again I'm riding the brake. Comparatively, this results in the exact opposite default position for my foot.
So, decades of driving around with a foot on the brake, vs months driving around with a foot on the accelerator... how is that change not going to result in accidents? In fact, habits are going to be so strong they will convince me I'm actually doing the thing I was supposed to be doing when I was actually doing the thing I was previously supposed to be doing in another car, and that turns out to be the wrong thing in the new car. But my memory won't tell me what I was actually doing, no no no, it just tells me "you were doing the exact same thing you've been doing correctly for years", which, under the circumstances translates to "applied pressure to brake". Never mind that your foot was actually on the accelerator because that's where you've relearned that it should be because of regen and TACC.
In the MS, I have nearly applied pressure to the wrong pedal more than once, and I managed to stop myself each time. But I can see that others might miss, and I can see how they might not even notice they're doing it and vehemently believe they were doing the appropriate thing at the moment. Citing years of experience is really undermining any case that the car was in error, because all that experience was built up by doing a different thing with a different car, and it ingrained you with a deep array of habits which are newly bad.
I have actually made such mistakes with the reverse stalk. With ICE cars, you put the gear stick in a specific physical position to drive in reverse, and it's physically hard to do this if you are moving forward. As a result, there is no ambiguity about whether or not you are in reverse, and you work the car until it lets you put it into that mode. With the MS, putting the car in reverse is almost a button press. I've performed the gesture while the car is moving forward, expecting it to enter reverse, then accelerated... the wrong direction. I hit someone's bumper this way (one of several "getting to know you" scuffles with my car in parking lots). The physical interaction model for gear shifting in more traditional cars has effectively trained me not to ever question whether I successfully changed gears or not; if I do the motion, I've changed the gears: no thought required. That's no longer true with the MS, which will simply refuse to go into reverse under certain conditions. It's not just the motion, I have to either control the conditions (i.e. voluntarily come to full stop), or visually verify that I've switched into reverse after tugging the lever. I have made this mistake roughly 4 times over the course of a year (fortunately only one of them resulting in contact with another car), and I think I've trained myself out of it.
One more: I have yet to train myself to put my Model S in park before I get out and walk away. I still fail do it about once a month. Fortunately the car somehow is detecting that I do this and putting itself in park right as I get out, just as the alarm starts beeping and the panic sets in. Which habits die hard, and which ones happily fly away? I've never, ever driven a car from which it is safe to walk away without putting it in park, nor can I recall ever having done that. Why would I start pretending it is safe to do so now, and do so repeatedly?
Conceivably, Tesla could help with these problems by scrutinizing all the habits and all the possible cues, and taking measures to help break people of their old habits so that they don't pollute or get confused with the new ones. Or (as with the "just-in-time-autopark" feature) they could figure out how to detect misfiring habits and block the user action. But that's definitely a loaded topic... the last thing you want is a car that needs to "suddenly accelerate" in order to avoid a disaster, but refuses to do so because it thinks someone pushed the wrong pedal.
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COMPLETELY off topic, I apologize, but here's an antidote: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Range-Raise-Self-Reliant-Children-Without/dp/0470574755
Zaphod
Galaxy President (former)
The seat has a sensor in it so it knows when pressure is relieved, i.e. someone getting out, and automatically put the car in park. It is smart enough to save you from yourself.
T34ME
Active Member
I am reconsidering my position. I think I will leave creep on for several months until we are both 100% comfortable with our first 100% BEV. Then I may consider turning chill-off, regen-high, and creep-off gradually to see if those options are preferable for us.
Despite the repetitiveness of this thread, it has been very helpful to me.
Agree, the setting the poster mentioned above are becoming a default for both our profiles once we get the car back.
Jeff Hudson
Lovin the Tesla Life
I know Tesla Owners fall into two camps concerning Creep mode. When I initially setup my Model S I tried it with Creep Off and immediately learned that when pulling into my 2 car garage which has plenty of space I did not feel comfortable using the throttle to ease it into position. After stopping the vehicle I activated Creep On mode and have never looked back. At first I thought with Creep Off there might be a stronger regenerative braking force but when that did not turn out to be true I could see zero advantage to having Creep Off.
Swampgator
Active Member
The OP is getting there. He has approached this the only way he could for a happy wife, thus life:
Yeah, I definitely fall into the second camp. Since the car is set to auto-hold, it won't start moving until I press the accelerator anyway. My garage is a tight fit and I park with my motorcycle in front of the Model X. I've found that the accelerator provides such fine control over movement that I can control within an inch where I want to stop. I'm sure creep offers just as much fine control using the brake.
Personally, I don't think there's any merit at all to creep on or creep off being safer. I think it's just a matter of personal preference. I prefer a manual transmission and creep off is a more familiar experience. I think personal preference and paying attention is more important than any generic serve-all setting. When I'm parking, 6 inches of travel determines if the foot peg on my motorcycle ends up through my bumper, so all I'm paying attention to at that point is parking.
Jeff Hudson
Lovin the Tesla Life
I get it. I'm an older guy and my coordination is not as good as it once was. Also I just don't trust myself as much to not uck up the simplest thing such as parking in my own garage. I have learned that an abundance of caution never hurts. I still find myself doing some boneheaded driving things even after 40 years of driving.
Jeff Hudson
Lovin the Tesla Life
I would agree with that with the caveat that something unexpected happening as a result of vehicle creep is almost always due to inattention rather than inaccurate pedal application.
I think the problem is that people who are smart enough, are, perhaps unfortunately, still human. We ALL do oopses here and there, sometimes even more "stupid" than confusing a brake and fun pedal.
I would say true, although the brake/fun pedal confusion can happen even if someone is NOT a moron -- I don't think your statement applies in this case.
This, I have to agree with.