Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today

[Fossil Fool]

Was there ever a resolution to this post? I read page after page but didn't find out what the evidence showed.

 

[Runt8]

Was there ever a resolution to this post? I read page after page but didn't find out what the evidence showed.

There’s never been any evidence for anything other than pedal misapplication.

 

[Shock-On-T]

Was there ever a resolution to this post? I read page after page but didn't find out what the evidence showed.

People occasionally hit the accelerator when they think they're hitting the brakes.
Mostly people think "whoops" and don't tell anyone. Sometimes they really can't beleive their foot was on the wrong pedal, and decide that it's more likely that the car sometimes accelerates when the brake pedal is pressed.

 

[Tozz]

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.

Obstacle aware acceleration doesn't prevent you from accelerating. It just limits the output power. You can still run over garbage cans and you can still crash into a concrete wall. Just with a little less force.

Again, as has been proven to death.. There is so much redundancy and error checking in the pedals that unintended acceleration is really really really really unlikely to the point of being impossible. There have to be a lot of systems going belly-up at the same time, all reporting the same incorrect information. There is just no way.

Some have adviced to turn on creep mode, as that would require you to press the brakes during parking.

 

[lolder]

Here's a very good article on the subject: Opinion | Sudden Acceleration Often Caused By Drivers

 

[wk057]

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.

$50 bucks says you pressed the accelerator.

I do find it amusing that these incidents always happen when you're supposed to be basically riding the brake or are going to need to hit the brake to slow down into a parking spot or otherwise slowing down... and it's plainly obvious that the accelerator was pressed instead of the brake when the car does exactly the opposite of what you think you're commanding it to do.

Like in this case, you just finished pulling into a parking space... which means your foot was where? It wasn't on the brake pedal, because a) the car wouldn't have been able to move even if some demons managed to try and make it do so, and b) you said you had to stomp the brake pedal to stop the car... meaning you weren't pressing the brake to begin with. So, yeah......

Dunno, these stories kind of get old after a while.

 

[Jimbydude]

Hi Folks,

Long time TMC lurker, however first time poster. I wish my first post would have been about the excitement of getting my M3. However, I have a much serious topic to post about.

Today while out for shopping my wife met with an accident in the parking lot of a grocery store here in Chandler, AZ. She is badly shaken up. Issue occurred while trying to park the vehicle in a parking lot of a grocery store. The vehicle was in the parking space position when it suddenly accelerated without any input from her. She said she applied the brakes, however they felt inoperative. It felt as though the driver had no control over braking and the vehicle had a mind of its own.

She turned the steering wheel to avoid directly hitting a dumpster while trying to brake. The passenger side of the vehicle then hit a curb and a concrete wall. After the impact, she managed to turn the vehicle while applying the brakes that eventually brought the vehicle to a stop.

My wife called Tesla, however they were of not much help. The service center individual instructed my wife that they could not tow the car to the service center given the car had suffered damage and they can only accept cars after the damage has been fixed. Not in the state to argue, we called our insurance and had our car towed to a Tesla authorized repair shop.

I know there are several cases registered with NHTSA and I even found class action lawsuit against Tesla regarding sudden or unintended acceleration, I feel mine is the first case of a Model 3 with behavior that has been seen with S or X several times. What is surprising that EVERY instance of this case has pointed to driver error. I find it ridiculous to dismiss people reporting a serious security flaw with a vehicle to saying - the logs show 100% accelerator press by the driver as the car will NOT do ANYTHING the driver does not intend for it to do. Then how do you explain an individual's reaction to STOMP on the wrong pedal while they are trying to ease into a parking spot?? - it is illogical and irrational to ever surmise that a driver's who's so familiar with the concept of regen braking will press the (wrong) pedal so hard that the car would suddenly accelerate like crazy.

What she went through today is very disconcerting and unsettling. My confidence in cutting edge technology is shaken that helps Tesla to beat other automakers in making technologically forward vehicles. I have been a software professional my entire career and can understand bugs / glitches in the Software. It is one thing to not be able to control volume of the radio of my car (as it happened last night while driving from our friend's house, the left scroll button kept moving the steering wheel even though the option was not enabled), it scary to even think of the car doing what it did! The consequences could have been catastrophic. I am thankful that she is safe as there was the wall protecting her from cross traffic on the main street.

Please be careful, cognizant, and caring of your loved ones.

View attachment 298881 View attachment 298882 View attachment 298883

You'll get no sympathy here. Dare to speak ill of the 'Tesla' and you'll suffer the wrath. This is my own post, based on similar happening to a friend.

Yes, it could absolutely have been driver error, but not necessarily.
Friend crashed model 3 and they think due to foot obstruction (maybe)

Here's the thing I love the Tesla, I have two Model 3s and I know it's Beta, blah, blah. which means it absolutely CAN do something unexpected.

 

[camalaio]

You'll get no sympathy here. Dare to speak ill of the 'Tesla' and you'll suffer the wrath. This is my own post, based on similar happening to a friend.

Yes, it could absolutely have been driver error, but not necessarily.
Friend crashed model 3 and they think due to foot obstruction (maybe)

Here's the thing I love the Tesla, I have two Model 3s and I know it's Beta, blah, blah. which means it absolutely CAN do something unexpected.

This goes for all vehicles: Please do not discount the vast entity of learned knowledge that is vehicle control systems.

As stated in the first few pages of this thread, it's not like there is one standard personal computer controlling the vehicle, nor any other vehicle. There is a lot of redundancy, physical and electronic and firmware, that goes into these systems. Tesla didn't throw all that away to make an electric car. They have checks upon checks upon checks, redundancy upon redundancy, to make sure your car does exactly what you're telling it to do. Heck, the car can operate while you're restarting both the center display and the autopilot computer.

Something can go wrong, but it requires multiple miraculous events happening at the same time, or the car is simply obeying as commanded. Even something like Autopilot has restrictions on what it can command the car to do, and engaging it still requires driver input.

 

[Dan203]

I could actually see driver error like this being worse with a Tesla, or EVs in general, due to regen and "one pedal driving". With aggressive regen people are less likely to need to press the brake when coming to a slow stop. This creates a bit of complacence when it comes to positioning your foot over the brake. Which means if you come in a bit hot and actually need the brake suddenly you're more likely to have your foot positioned over the accelerator creating the runaway panic condition that results in these accidents.

My question is why doesn't Tesla's automatic collision avoidance prevent this? It should know when you're actually about to hit something and simply stop you from doing so. I know this could create some weird issues with unusually tight parking spots, but make it a default option that people who run into those weird issues can disable if needed.

 

[pdxgibby]

This case of Sudden Unintended Acceleration didn't make the news. Probably since it wasn't a Tesla on Autopilot.

 

[nvx1977]

You'll get no sympathy here. Dare to speak ill of the 'Tesla' and you'll suffer the wrath. This is my own post, based on similar happening to a friend.

Yes, it could absolutely have been driver error, but not necessarily.
Friend crashed model 3 and they think due to foot obstruction (maybe)

Here's the thing I love the Tesla, I have two Model 3s and I know it's Beta, blah, blah. which means it absolutely CAN do something unexpected.

Has nothing to do with Tesla and rabid fanboys. It has to do with verifiable facts, not speculation and unverifiable claims. See this previous post:

Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today

 

[Octo]

Something can go wrong, but it requires multiple miraculous events happening at the same time, or the car is simply obeying as commanded.

I have no idea how Tesla engineered their E-drive but hope they have a really good fail-safe design (as I don’t want to sit in my P3 if a computer glitch causes it to go full throttle).

My employer sells a medium complex electronics product in the hundreds of millions of units a year.

At sufficiently high volumes, really anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.

Sometimes I’m absolutely amazed at the bizarre chain of the most unlikely events that lead to a particular failure as reported by our customers.

 

[JulienW]

...My question is why doesn't Tesla's automatic collision avoidance prevent this? It should know when you're actually about to hit something and simply stop you from doing so. I know this could create some weird issues with unusually tight parking spots, but make it a default option that people who run into those weird issues can disable if needed.

Read Page 87 of Manual. It will try but is overridden by certain circumstances and this makes sense. What if you are acceleration on purpose towards a wall but about to turn the steering wheel to follow the path. You don't want the car to panic and slam on the brakes as you are turning and accelerating. So this is the problem since people who are experiencing this are pressing the accelerator AND usually tuning the wheel. It is very hard for the car to know that you are out of control when you are actively controlling the vehicle.

 

[WilliamG]

Barring any evidence (that we will likely never see), this was of course another episode of hitting the accelerator when the brake pedal was the intended target. That panic moment can spiral quickly, because most humans have a low threshold when things go wrong - and panic begets more panic.

The brakes are physically connected to the pedal, so even if the electronics want haywire there’s no way the car wouldn’t stop if the brake pedal were pressed.

Anyway, carry on.

 

[camalaio]

...

My question is why doesn't Tesla's automatic collision avoidance prevent this? It should know when you're actually about to hit something and simply stop you from doing so. I know this could create some weird issues with unusually tight parking spots, but make it a default option that people who run into those weird issues can disable if needed.

In addition to the above poster, think of all the phantom braking events people report. I don't want the car doing too many things on its own. They do have a setting for forward obstacle avoidance (or something like that) which reduces acceleration when something is ahead of you. Not completely prevent since it's still listening to you applying throttle, but it intends to reduce damage if on.

I have no idea how Tesla engineered their E-drive but hope they have a really good fail-safe design (as I don’t want to sit in my P3 if a computer glitch causes it to go full throttle).

My employer sells a medium complex electronics product in the hundreds of millions of units a year.

At sufficiently high volumes, really anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong.

Sometimes I’m absolutely amazed at the bizarre chain of the most unlikely events that lead to a particular failure as reported by our customers.

At previous employers we dealt with hardware as well so I understand bewildering chains of events leading to strange issues

But you hit the nail on the head -- it's about failure modes and fail-safe designs. The reports of Toyota vehicles with unintended acceleration were, to my understanding, traced back to a common failure mode where when a system failed, it treated it as full throttle. This is obviously an incorrect and unsafe failure mode. They messed up, everyone learned. But we know from the first few pages of this thread that such a failure mode is more than extremely unlikely to be present on Tesla vehicles, at least in regards to acceleration.

 

[diamond.g]

You'll get no sympathy here. Dare to speak ill of the 'Tesla' and you'll suffer the wrath. This is my own post, based on similar happening to a friend.

Yes, it could absolutely have been driver error, but not necessarily.
Friend crashed model 3 and they think due to foot obstruction (maybe)

Here's the thing I love the Tesla, I have two Model 3s and I know it's Beta, blah, blah. which means it absolutely CAN do something unexpected.

Uh @wk057 has offered a cash bounty to the first person to actually have unintended acceleration while the brake is pressed. He is able to pull the logs from the car, and as far as I know he hasn’t lost the bet yet. So yeah we in the community are pretty sure end users are pressing the accelerator instead of the brake in these scenarios.

 

[Daniel in SD]

In addition to the above poster, think of all the phantom braking events people report. I don't want the car doing too many things on its own. They do have a setting for forward obstacle avoidance (or something like that) which reduces acceleration when something is ahead of you. Not completely prevent since it's still listening to you applying throttle, but it intends to reduce damage if on.



At previous employers we dealt with hardware as well so I understand bewildering chains of events leading to strange issues

But you hit the nail on the head -- it's about failure modes and fail-safe designs. The reports of Toyota vehicles with unintended acceleration were, to my understanding, traced back to a common failure mode where when a system failed, it treated it as full throttle. This is obviously an incorrect and unsafe failure mode. They messed up, everyone learned. But we know from the first few pages of this thread that such a failure mode is more than extremely unlikely to be present on Tesla vehicles, at least in regards to acceleration.

I thought in the Toyotas the floor mat failed and pressed the accelerator to the floor? Then people would ride the brakes until they melted. They fixed it by disabling the accelerator when the brake is applied (as Tesla and probably every other manufacturer now does).

 

[camalaio]

I thought in the Toyotas the floor mat failed and pressed the accelerator to the floor? Then people would ride the brakes until they melted. They fixed it by disabling the accelerator when the brake is applied (as Tesla and probably every other manufacturer now does).

Oh, perhaps. I was half-listening to a Radiolab episode called "Bit Flip" I think, I might even have the manufacturer wrong.

 

[Dan203]

The brakes are physically connected to the pedal, so even if the electronics want haywire there’s no way the car wouldn’t stop if the brake pedal were pressed.

I wonder what the actual odds are of both the brakes completely failing and the car computer glitching to cause unintended acceleration at the exact same time? I'm betting it's nearly zero.

 

[WilliamG]

I wonder what the actual odds are of both the brakes completely failing and the car computer glitching to cause unintended acceleration at the exact same time? I'm betting it's nearly zero.

There's a first for everything, but yep - nearly zero chance.