Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today

[AltLogic]

OS496, thank you for the perfect description of what happens when your foot is partially on both the brake pedal and throttle then slips off the brake pedal and only touches the throttle.

To answer chronopc, there are three fail safes that keep UI from happening.
1. If the brake sensor indicates braking, the motor(s) will not appply power
2. The throttle has two sensors that tell the computer the position of the throttle. The two sensors send the info differently to avoid any cross info so both would have to fail perfectly and in unison
3. I can’t remember

Also, there appears to be someone that will spend the time downloading your UI data for free as long as he can benefit from it. This person claims that all UI events are human error so far.

 

[AltLogic]

I found the third fail safe. Two independent systems that have to agree to apply power.

See post #68 in this thread.

I simplified my explanation so I could understand it so feel free to correct me after reading the thread.

 

[Krazaak]

No idea. All I know is that the latest software version is supposed to prevent you from driving through your garage door from a standing stop.

Obstacle aware acceleration is not going to stop you from driving through your garage door. What it will do, is keep you from driving through your garage door extremely quickly. If you step on the accelerator and the car detects an obstacle in your path, it feels like a bad case of turbo lag. I disabled it, since I expect my car to move with the full vigor it's capable of when I tell it to. I found it was cutting power when I was pulling out into traffic and I have other means of not driving through buildings.

 

[zhu-]

Why do people find it so easy to blame Tesla vehicles when things go horribly wrong?

Same way many people blame others when anything goes wrong and because most other cars aren't smart enough of an entity for a human to reasonably shift the blame to.

 

[DougInCT]

Every car has the same flaw. The brake and the accelerator pedal are right next to each other. Very rarely someone presses the accelerator when they think they’re pressing the brake.
I suppose you could learn to brake with your left foot.

I have seen this happen in ICE cars quite a few times. My wife had a habit of it in our Audi, but I've also seen it in cars without 'drive by wire'. People make mistakes when they get flustered... it happens.

 

[lolder]

Read this "Braking Bad": Opinion | Sudden Acceleration Often Caused By Drivers

 

[JeffK]

I wonder if anyone has tested that feature.

Just tried this today... not with a garage door, but with another vehicle. It was making a right turn at a stop sign and from a stop myself, I hit the accelerator. The car let out a beep (not the typical collision warning) and limited my acceleration ability as I accelerated towards what probably looked like a stopped object. It worked great and probably exactly as intended.

 

[EVnut]

not sure about o.p.'s issue and why the brake did not work at all?????

The brake pedal almost never works if it is not pressed.

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

Read this "Braking Bad": Opinion | Sudden Acceleration Often Caused By Drivers

“Often”

 

[Krazaak]

“Often”

Everybody wants to believe that their particular instance of unexpected acceleration was a flaw in the design, because they're absolutely positive they had their foot on the brake. Of course they think they had their foot on the brake or they wouldn't have stomped down on the accelerator trying to stop. In the instances where there's any doubt in their mind that they were on the wrong pedal, they're more likely to move their foot to confirm they're on the brake and stop themselves before they hit something. The fact that it happens with so many different vehicles, yet nobody has been able to recreate and document the conditions makes it pretty clear that the common component failing is the human.

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the driver being distracted. Pulling into a parking space, mentally collecting their phone, wallet/purse, etc and their mind moving on the next task, forgetting to put the car into park, creeping forward and hitting the wrong pedal. I know I've forgotten to actually hit park a few times when I'm thinking about what I need to do after I get out of the car.

 

[EVnut]

".... then there will be nothing and no one left to blame but the driver."

And here we are. Though it is always favorable to blame somebody else, sometimes there's nobody else to blame.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why the subject line of that article uses the word "often"... because the piece goes on to say that there simply aren't any cases of "sometimes it isn't operator error."

Even with every nanny safeguard in place, the car will still move when the accelerator is pressed. And it turns out that the car will slow and stop when the brake is pressed (alone or in concert with the accelerator). It is about that simple. And it is super easy to test. Every care I've owned over the past two decades I have tested by accelerating and pressing the brake at the same time.

Surprise. It *always* works. Not just often.

 

[Twiglett]

lordy is this thread still going. I thought it had been done to death many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times over.
TLDR - if lots of failsafes actually fail then its possible for an idiot to do stupid things.

 

[lolder]

It has been my observational experience in my 9th decade that accelerating into storefronts, etc. is one of the first symptoms of oncoming dementia in older drivers. Drivers from societies that have only recently industrialized are next as evolution hasn't had time to weed out those with poor machinery operating skills. It's not a fault, it's just the way things are. It's the reason behind poor commercial piloting skills in many developing counties. Societies with "deterministic" social/religious cultures ( "it is written" e.g. ) also have problems. The horrible traffic toll worldwide should compel us to adopt even imperfect assistance tools if they reduce accidents on the average. Don't let the lawyers bankrupt these developing technologies.

 

[Runt8]

It has been my observational experience in my 9th decade that accelerating into storefronts, etc. is one of the first symptoms of oncoming dementia in older drivers. Drivers from societies that have only recently industrialized are next as evolution hasn't had time to weed out those with poor machinery operating skills. It's not a fault, it's just the way things are. It's the reason behind poor commercial piloting skills in many developing counties. Societies with "deterministic" social/religious cultures ( "it is written" e.g. ) also have problems. The horrible traffic toll worldwide should compel us to adopt even imperfect assistance tools if they reduce accidents on the average. Don't let the lawyers bankrupt these developing technologies.

You might want to take a refresher course and learn how evolution actually works...

 

[EVnut]

The horrible traffic toll worldwide should compel us to adopt even imperfect assistance tools if they reduce accidents on the average. Don't let the lawyers bankrupt these developing technologies.

You had me all the way until here. Call me pedantic if you must... but words do matter. And accident is not the correct generic word for anything that goes bump on the road. *Especially* if the purpose is to reduce or prevent them.

We aren't going to reduce *accidents* - our goal is to reduce crashes, collisions, wrecks, injuries, deaths. Let's call them what they are instead of couching them in the euphemism of "I didn't mean to, and nobody saw it coming."

Cheers,

 

[Twiglett]

You had me all the way until here. Call me pedantic if you must... but words do matter. And accident is not the correct generic word for anything that goes bump on the road. *Especially* if the purpose is to reduce or prevent them.

We aren't going to reduce *accidents* - our goal is to reduce crashes, collisions, wrecks, injuries, deaths. Let's call them what they are instead of couching them in the euphemism of "I didn't mean to, and nobody saw it coming."

Cheers,

either that or stop calling it an accident when it someone decides to be an a$$.
Personally I don't care if someone feels the need to prove their manhood by cutting someone off or stopping someone from merging in front of them. But when a collision occurs please don't call it an "accident", there was nothing accidental about it. Its just a convenient euphemism.

 

[jpaz]

This thread has been going for a while, and i apologize if I am beating a dead horse, but I'd like to add a recent observation that adds credence to the concept of "they pushed to wrong pedal." Was out with Mrs. JPAZ in her i3. We were parallel parking when she suddenly accelerated unintentionally towards the car in front. She reacted in time and hit the brake and all was well.

When we were trying to figure it out, it became clear that she did push the accelerator instead of the brake while "1 pedal driving" during the parking maneuvers. A typical ICE vehicle with an automatic transmission requires constant use of the brake while parking but our vehicles
(unless they are set up to "drift") require manipulation of the accelerator.

 

[JeffK]

This thread has been going for a while, and i apologize if I am beating a dead horse, but I'd like to add a recent observation that adds credence to the concept of "they pushed to wrong pedal." Was out with Mrs. JPAZ in her i3. We were parallel parking when she suddenly accelerated unintentionally towards the car in front. She reacted in time and hit the brake and all was well.

When we were trying to figure it out, it became clear that she did push the accelerator instead of the brake while "1 pedal driving" during the parking maneuvers. A typical ICE vehicle with an automatic transmission requires constant use of the brake while parking but our vehicles
(unless they are set up to "drift") require manipulation of the accelerator.

I'd argue she was trained to slam the pedal from her time in automatic ICEs. When one pedal driving with no creep, the proper response is to let off the accelerator.

This is a prime case of driver error due to prior conditioning. The new way of doing things takes some getting used to and unlearning bad habits.

 

[skatingtoolman]

I have read the replies to the original post. Unless this has happened to you, it is easy to put the blame on the driver.
My wife and I have owned our Model 3 for 6 months. She drives it as much as I do. She has NEVER had an accident in her 30 years of driving. As with many, she was slowly pulling into a parking spot. She was utilizing the creep function, not putting her foot on anything as you do with these cars. She was about to put her foot on the brake to fully stop the car when it suddenly accelerated, drove over the parking curb, through a chain link fence, and into 2 parked cars. Thank God nobody was hurt. It happened so fast. She wasn't distracted, had nothing to drink and knows how to drive a Tesla.

I know that this will elicit "this is total BS, it is driver error, there is no way these cars do this, etc, etc." Hey, I love this car but all I can think is what if my kids had been standing in front of the car? On autopilot, it has done some screwy things, but I love autopilot for the most part. At this point, I'm selling it. Ok, now everyone tell me how stupid I am to post this, etc. I'm glad this doesn't happen very often, but for us, once is enough.

 

[commasign]

I know that this will elicit "this is total BS, it is driver error, there is no way these cars do this, etc, etc."

Lol. Thanks for saving me the trouble!