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Is the Tesla Model S Pedal Placement A Safety Hazard?
cartechboy (2660665) writes "When things go wrong with the Tesla Model S electric car, its very loyal--and opinionated--owners usually speak up. And that's just what David Noland has done. An incident in which his Model S didn't stop when he pressed the brake pedal scared him--and got him investigating. He measured pedal spacing on 22 different new cars at dealers--and his analysis suggests that the Tesla pedal setup may be causing what aviation analysts call a 'design-induced pilot error'. And pedal design, as Toyota just learned to the tune of $1.2 billion, is very important indeed in preventing accidents."
Size 13 winter boots. Brake pedal and gas aren't "as far" apart as other cars.
User Error != Manufacturer Defect
Hey look, some idiot hit the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal and it's "news" because it was a Tesla.
And yet only one idiot has this problem.
In the toyota case lots of people were having problems. Not just one with a tape measure and an axe to grind because he made a foolish mistake.
It needs a big red shiny button on the dash! It'll simultaneously apply the brakes, eject the battery pack, contact your insurance agent to file a claim, call your lawyer to sue Tesla and deploy the fire extinguishers. Not necessarily in that order.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
No.
Guy cannot drive and trashes expensive car, blames manufacturer.
News at 11.
PS: Apparently, "The Model S accelerator pedal is disabled if you press the accelerator pedal and brake pedal simultaneously."
The brake pedal is elevated with regard to the gas pedal meaning that in essentially any situation you hit the break first. If you double pedal the car will break and not only that, it WILL tell you that you are pressing both pedals and make an audible noise.
So I'd have to conclude that the problem lies between the pedals and the seat in this case.
And I know cause I drive one daily and I have managed to double pedal a total of two-three times when being lazy and it's never been a situation where it'd lead to the car not stopping. Also, with regard to hill hold the firmware 5.9 comes with hill hold where after breaking the car remains holding the current position no matter what angle 1s after you release the brake to allow for easy hill hold. At least that's what the first owners of 5.9 report.
Toyota's fine was not just about sticking pedals (and initially making deceptive statements about the safety of those pedals). Toyota's fine was in part for claiming that sticking pedals were the sole cause of unintended acceleration when in fact multiple defects in Toyota’s engine software directly caused at least one (decided by a jury) other crash.
An Update on Toyota and Unintended Acceleration Barr Code
U.S. Fines Toyota $1.2 Billion but Defers Criminal Prosecution Over Vehicle Safety Deceit - IEEE Spectrum
This is an important safety (and technology) issue that has flown mostly under the radar. I believe that is in part because journalists and the public believe they got their answer years ago, when in fact new evidence, expert testimony, and court verdicts have come to light. I think the issue is important enough that this misconception should be corrected whenever it's reported.
My opinion, not my employer's.
The guy did not actually recommend what you just said. He suggested a software fix where if brake and gas are both pressed, the brake would over-ride the gas pedal. So brake would always stop the car independent of whether the gas pedal was pressed.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
no automatic ever required heel-toe. The only reason to use both pedals in an auto (one on each pedal, no need to use one foot on both) is to spool up the turbo. But there's never a gain in using both in an electric automatic with yaw-control and traction control.
Learn to love Alaska
Given that it is all drive by wire, I don't see why it couldn't be adjustable to foot size...
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
I'm not sure you're helping your case. In fact, IMO you're supporting his. He has only double-pedaled a small number of times too, and his previous times were when he didn't have issues stopping either. And in years and years of driving my normal sedan, I think I have never double pedaled.
It really does sound like a design problem.
If you double pedal the car will break
I don't think a car which breaks if you hit both pedals is a car I'd want to buy...I'd like to be able to continue my journey.
No sig today...
So there was a problem with the driver in your case as well then?
In my 20 years of driving many different cars, this has never happened to me. Not once. And I have size 15 feet, and regularly wear combat boots. The fact that you are saying you had the exact same experience on the exact same car - how can that NOT be a design flaw?
Your anecdote exactly proves his point! Unless you are calling yourself the problem. Do you really love tesla so much you would rather blame yourself?
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Is this the same bullshit that almost made Audi pull out of the US? It looks like it.
The bullshit was Audi blaming the customers for confusing the pedals. The fault was elsewhere. I know - I owned an Audi 5000T that did this.
I was driving on an interstate highway on cruise control - my feet were not touching the pedals. The car suddenly went to full throttle. I could move the throttle pedal up and down with my foot. The brake pedal would not budge. I shut off the cruise control via a dashboard switch, and regained control. After the turbo boost dropped below atmospheric pressure, I regained brakes. I later discovered the check valve on the vacuum assist was worn, causing the loss of brakes when the turbo was on boost. The throttle issue was clearly the cruise control malfunction. It never did it again. I could not duplicate the fault, so I suspect poor RF shielding (trucker using a hopped up CB radio?).
I contacted Audi, and they blew me off.
To their credit, they stopped using the check valve method, so someone at Audi understood the fault condition. I'm less sure about the other issue. I solved the problem by deciding never to buy another Audi.
Place nail here >+
Audi got partial blame for their unintended acceleration problems because the brake and throttle were close enough that when it was fully depressed, the driver would have trouble telling from position which pedal was depressed.
That was Audi's excuse - but not the actual reason.
I was driving on an interstate highway on cruise control in an Audi 5000 Turbo, when the car suddenly went to full throttle. I could easily move the gas pedal up and down, so it wasn't stuck. I shut off the cruise control via a dashboard switch, and regained control. The throttle issue was clearly the cruise control malfunction. It never did it again. I could not duplicate the fault, so I suspect poor RF shielding (trucker using a hopped up CB radio?).
Yeah - I contacted Audi with the "good news" and they had zero interest. They would rather blame the customer than recall the cars.
Place nail here >+
What country are you from? I'm an American. I guess I'm just not educated enough to know, but what is a "Honey Booboo?" And why do you believe I have one? Survivor, I think is some cable TV show. I guess it is popular in your country? Or do you just consume a lot of media that talks about it?
Hill starts are quite easy when you get the hang of them: keep one hand on the handbrake (parking brake), and bring the clutch up to the biting point until you feel the car struggle a little against the brake then slowly release the handbrake while you give it a little more throttle.
It's almost exactly the same as pulling away normally except you let the clutch bite a little more before you release the brake. Failing that, you find the owner of the other car and tell them what an inconsiderate tool they've been; either they move or you find yourself unconscious only to wake with the offending vehicle having mysteriously vanished.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
No, we would have one pedal. pull back for gas, push foreward for brake, 100% safer as it is impossible to hit both at the same time.
That is a poor design because it requires you to pull your leg back sometimes.
It is also a poor design because strong acceleration will tend to be self-reinforcing. During a surge of acceleration, the pedal (effectively) moves away from you.
It is also a poor design because if you take your foot off the pedal, you will accelerate. You could include a dead man's switch on the pedal to detect that condition, but switches fail all the time. Brake light switches fail all the time, even though they are one of the most important senders on the vehicle. P/N switches also fail regularly.
Congratulations, you have just advocated a "solution" which will make the problem even worse. Do you even car, bro?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The "one foot" style of driving is simply a poor carryover from manual transmissions. If automatic-transmission cars were designed from scratch today with no backstory, we'd have the brake over on the left, the gas on the right. Simple, obvious.
What about people that drive both auto and stick?
Have gnu, will travel.
As you may know, if you spin an electric motor by putting a prop on it and letting the wind spin it, you've just made a generator. You may also know that doesn't mean that the spin a motor powers itself, forming a perpetual motion machine. That's because the generated voltage is in the reverse direction from the direction required to make it spin (among other things).
So what happens is that when you apply 12 volts to make a motor turn, that "generator effect" is producing 6 volts the other direction. If you put a multimeter on the motor terminals, it'll read 12V - 6V = 6V. So the spinning motor has 6V at its terminals. If it's not spinning, it doesn't work as a generator, so it has 12V on terminals. Guess which one has more torque, the stalled motor with 12V or the spinning motor with 6V? The motor with the full 12V (because it's not generating -6V) has more torque. Max torque, therefore, is at 0 RPM. Faster spinning means more negative voltage generated and lower torque.
A manufacturer of the control circuit can of course ARTIFICIALLY limit the power to the motor at low RPM. If they set the control circuit to not ALLOW the motor to full torque, the car would see consistent torque. That's not because of the motor, though, that would be an artificial limit configured into the controller.
I thoroughly disagree. As a UX designer, I consider my design "in need of improvement" if it's designed such that it's easy to make specific, known errors. A few hours ago I was on the phone with a customer who uses my Strongbox software. He was making the same error that many other people make. That many people make the error proves to me that the software doesn't make it sufficiently obvious what the correct action is.
about when you've been in sometime else's car at night. Often you have to hunt for the door lever and especially on older cars you have to figure out if the handle should be rotated upward, pulled out and back, out and forward, etc. Doors on buildings often have instructions posted on them - Push or Pull. Other buildings don't need instructions - the door has a flat metal plate that can only be pushed. It can't be pulled or turned, it's a flat plate. Emergency exits get it right - a wide, flat bar is obviously for pushing. Some doors, like one I sawlast week, get it ENTIRELY wrong - that one had a round knob - which needed to be SLID to the side. Round knobs are for turning! Vertical slits or projections are for sliding to the side. Not surprisingly, I saw two different people struggle with that door until someone helped them.
We talked about the handles inside of cars. Contrast that with the handles on the outside of a car door. That's a good design. Noone will ever need help figuring out how to operate an exterior car door handle because the design is such that the user can only do one thing - insert fingers and pull.
I seek to make my designs be like exterior car handles - intuitively obvious. With the right design, not only do users not make errors, they aren't even distracted by looking at the UX, figuring it out. They just do it automatically, intuitively, like opening the door to get into a car.
Credit to The Design of Everyday Things for the door handle example.