Consumer Reports Makes A Convincing Argument For Brake Override Systems in All Cars

Sounds like something should do. Oh, they are... bet GM isn't as happy with Mr. Nader's protege' Mr. Kane any more.

 

Thanks for posting. Having the brake override should make the cars safer with unintended acceleration whether caused by floor mats, electronics, or software. I'm glad toyota is adding this feature. It should help cut down on the number of crashes and fatalities.

I'm also glad they showed how it doesn't interfere in the reasonable uses of brake and throttle. That has been my experience with bmw. It is good that CR helped demonstrate that this is an excuse, not reality.

I'm not sure if brake override needs to be mandated for all cars, but given the large number of Ford unintended acceleration claims it would be good if the NHTSA pressured them to add the system also.

 

Brake override won't have any effect on wrong pedal crashes because the evidence is that when people in an AT car step on the accelerator instead of the brake they just tromp harder with their right foot to try to stop. They don't use their left foot because they don't normally use their left foot for anything, so there is no instinct to do that. Hence no brake override.

So wrong pedal crashes will continue to happen, and instead of being blamed on stuck accelerators will be attributed to a failure in the brake override due to faulty programming, cosmic rays, or whatever by the usual suspects here.

Interestingly, MT cars don't seem to have these sticking accelerator issues........

 

I agree with you as far as stopping wrong pedal crashes. I think that will eliminate a lot of the complaints (although Audi is again under investigation by NHTSA for SUA complaints).

Someday, we will just let the car take care of the driving. That's the only way to make driving idiot-proof.

 

We do know there are other crashes than wrong pedal crashes. We do know that there are sticky accellerators. I never implyed that it would halt driver error.

Let's take the most public case. 4 people die. Driver definitely hit the brakes but may have pumped them as in the video. Toyota blames floor mats. I have doubts if that blame is correct. But if the car had brake over ride the car would have slowed and stopped instead of crashed and burned. That is regardless of whether the dealer piled floor mats on top of each other, or sent out a car with a report of unintended acceleration out without investigating.

 

"..failure in the brake override.."

Might happen, but statistically remote as a runaway cause. Standard system must fail first in order to discover that the BTO has failed.

You're forgetting/overlooking that the majority of "wrong pedal" crashes have been alleviated by the requirement to apply the brakes in order to put the car in gear.

"..MT cars don't seem.."

For quite a few years now MT cars require FULL clutch pedal depression to even start the engine.

 

They could add a load cell to the accelerator pedal to measure the force applied. If the pedal has an increased force applied, IE: heavy foot smashing it to the firewall, then the car can be programmed to STOP.

Just a thought.

 

Terrible idea. More lawsuits as people are T-boned pulling out into traffic.

 

How can I get this brake override fix on my 2009 Prius? My car is not subject to the recall, but I think I could benefit from the software fix as much as anyone who has a 2010. While I hope to remember to throw the car in neutral if I can't stop accelerating, I (or whoever is driving) may be too freaked out to execute the put-it-in-neutral trick very quickly. My stopping distance in that case would be a lot shorter if the brakes over-rode the accelerator. That shorter stopping distance could mean the difference between crash and no crash, if god forbid, I (or whoever is driving) ever have any issues with my accelerator.

 

You already have it. Gen2 Prius came with the brake override since 2004. I am not sure about gen1.

 

I'm not so sure about that, and I wouldn't call people who get the wrong pedal "idiots". Human bodies apparently occasionally fail and tell the brain that the right foot is several inches to the right of where it actually is, the brain trusts that misinformation, and applies the accelerator instead of the brake. And continues to do so even when the car accelerates.

The focus here has been on the error rate in the electronics of the car, but the human neuromuscular system has an error rate too, and it seems reasonable to expect that this error rate increases as people age. This fits with the data that SUA seems to happen mainly to older folks like me.

The Audi 5000 SUA's were all shown to be caused by wrong pedal application. The brake/shifter interlock that Audi developed in response to the controversy did greatly reduce the incidence of wrong-pedal-at-startup but has no effect on wrong-pedal-while-under-way. So these incidents continue, and may be the bulk of the SUA incidents reported today. Brake override will do nothing for wrong-pedal incidents (for example the Prius case in Harrison NY: that vehicle had brake override but the brake was never applied), so those SUA incidents will continue unabated with brake override. For wrong-pedal cases, brake override is like putting a bandaid on your knee when you have a cut on your arm.

What would help wrong-pedal cases? EDR will tell us if it WAS wrong-pedal, but that won't help the folks in the car when SUA happens. Maybe improved ergonomics so that the right hip would line up with the brake pedal? Though it's not a given that this would reduce the incidence of misperception of where the right foot really is in older folks. A dummy clutch pedal for the left foot (with a neutral switch when it is depressed?) might help spatial awareness of where the right foot is??

Brake override could help in stuck-accelerator cases (mat entrapment, electronic glitches, mechanical issues, whatever). But there are already two other systems already in place which would stop the car (shutdown and shift to neutral) and the brakes (a third system) would work, they just would not stop the car as quickly without brake override (a fourth system). So how many backup systems do we need? And (given all the discussion here about electronic failure and bad programming) how wise is it to simply slap on additional systems which might themselves cause problems? The fussing with the relationship between friction brakes/regen/antilock/VSC in the Prius is a good illustration of how difficult it can be to get multiple systems to coexist happily.

So the CR proposal isn't "convincing" to me.

 

Poster wasn't talking about actual failure of the override. They were talking about people saying the override failed when they actually were just pressing the gas. And this will certainly happen. Hell, it already has with Sikes, and certain people continue to insist that his car had an actual failure.

 

I'm talking about the kind of computer control where you just program your destination and sit back and watch TV. No pedals, no steering wheels.

I've already admitted to putting my foot on the wrong pedal in other posts. Maybe we should just say that not all people who get the wrong pedal are idiots. As you say, it's not putting your foot on the pedal that makes you an idiot.

 

"Idiot-proofing" is a commonly used term in the engineering world and shouldn't be taken personally. To an engineer, all humans are idiots from time to time. They do crazy things for unpredictable reasons. One of the common bits of engineering wisdom says: "You can't idiot proof things because idiots are too clever." There is a lot of truth to that.

Tom

 

But that is not an excuse to stop "idiot proofing"! The only reason is related to cost saving.

 

I certainly don't take it personally. It's just that wrong-pedal is a perfectly normal human error that happens at a certain frequency that increases with age. So it's part of the engineering and driver training landscape that needs to be dealt with just as potholes are, not pigeonholed as something only idiots do.

The gist of what I was trying to say is that CR's proposal of embracing brake override as a universal "fix" does nothing to address what may be the larger number of SUA's: those due to wrong-pedal. And so if adopted may be detrimental to taking other measures which actually reduce or eliminate SUA.

 

Who said anything about not idiot-proofing? We must be reading different threads, or maybe the voices in my head have confused me again.

My comment was entirely directed to a previous poster expressing concern for the disparaging nature of the term "idiot-proofing".

Tom

 

Understood. You also expressed concern about calling people idiots, which is what I addressed in my post.

Tom

 

Perhaps the brake override should incorporate a screem or shriek detector too ... that way the accident prone nut jobs that can't manage to stop their cars (... even though 99 and 979/1,000's % of folks can) will still be able to get the car to stop. And if the drivers/passengers are just screeming at each other for another reason ... best to get them off the road anyway. Because they sure aint paying attention to the road.


Another way to 'fix' / idiot proof the UA would be to use the 'one pedal' design' ... where as soon as you decrease the pressure on the pedal ... regen/braking starts. Let off all the way, and you get even MORE braking. A 2nd pedal is then only needed for 'emergencies'. There are vehicles that use that tecnology already.
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