Why can't automatic cars have an inbuilt cutout?

[balzamico]

After the awful second death from the Wimbledon school and a car ploughing into local shops too I'm wondering if there's a reason that automatic cars can't have some kind of auto cutout built in to prevent these accidents?

Nobody needs to hard accelerate in the way that vehicle clearly did

So what you are saying is that - If you want to accelerate and so press the pedal down fully, the car instead gomes to a halt because one time in fifty million the accelerator was pressed in error?

My 19 reg automatic car does exactly that and can't be overridden.

That is a bit of an issue occasionally, in fact. I have to oversteer a bit to avoid it at t junctions.

Mine deployed on the motorway for a stray dog. The more I think about it, the more worrying the crash management feature actually is TBH.

Lots of newer cars have a collision avoidance system but they generally only kick in at low speeds which is when a large proportion of collisions happen. That wouldn't have helped in the school case, because the car was likely going quite fast to get straight through the fence.

A cut out to stop an accelerating vehicle would be dangerous. How does the car know that the driver isn't just accelerating to get out of trouble and avoid a collision, or to pull out on a busy junction, or to overtake cyclists?

"Mine deployed on the motorway for a stray dog. The more I think about it, the more worrying the crash management feature actually is TBH."

That sounds really dangerous.

😮that sounds terrifying, as the force of the breaking at low speed is shocking, hope you are the stray dog are ok!

Yes the first time it happened (at about 40) I nearly took the thing back.

The dog on the motorway it treated like an errant car. So at least you know pedestrians would trigger it and that it would do a lot to mitigate a pile up. But I would say it definitely needs refining.

My car automatically slows down if it is too close to the car in front or if it senses a hazard. Ds school had bollards all around the perimeter of the school to stop anyone driving into the building.

😮that sounds terrifying, as the force of the breaking at low speed is shocking, hope you are the stray dog are ok!

The dog was fine. I shook for an hour.

But anyway, all cars will have what OP wants in time. It's already available. (Is it just automatics though? I don't have a manual license. Not sure.) I just hope it gets a little bit more sophisticated.

Maybe the driver, only young 40's should have realised she had a brake pedal too. Some distance at high speed was travelled.

There was and old man in our town who did demolition derby in a car park getting confused with the acceleration.

Anybody have to do any emergency stop on their test? The fence ploughed through would surely be indicator of now is the time

I do have an epileptic friend who had his first seizure driving. Legs shot out and on to the accelerator. He drove in to a canal. The only person who nearly died was him. He doesn't drive now due to his now diagnosed epilepsy.
This is the only reason I can think of for a person not managing their vehicle. She wasn't charged with drunk driving as far as I know (or maybe that comes under death by dangerous - I don't know).

It's tragic and heartbreaking.

You can't have an accelerating vehicle just cut out though.

very few car or plane features are helpful when drivers have medical emergencies (seizures/strokes/heart attack etc).
maybe medical fitness to drive or fly would be beneficial.

How would you have pedal confusion on an automatic any more than a manual? We drive both regularly in my home country and there's no difference really other than an extra clutch pedal.

I wonder if the UK should make it mandatory to pass a test in an automatic as well if you want to drive one, the way they do for foreign drivers to drive manual if their license doesn't differentiate.

I don’t know why it’s more associative with automatics but that’s what I’ve seen more than once. Maybe it happens the same but more likely to have devastation effects in an automatic as it won’t stall? Or maybe with a manual you realise what you’re doing as the engine is screaming in the wrong gear so you take your foot off? 🤷‍♀️. Maybe it is to do with people taking their feet off the pedals completely more in an automatic? (I never do)

Pedal error – i.e. pressing the wrong pedal – is a phenomenon that occurs more regularly than many people would expect. It is typically associated with automatic cars, though it can happen in any vehicle if the driver removes their feet from the pedals. As we cannot see into the footwell, we can lose orientation of our foot and become reliant on touch and learned behaviour of where we expect the correct pedal to be

https://expertwitness.trl.co.uk/sudden-acceleration-syndrome-hypothesis-pedal-error/

I think there are some cars being made that are single pedal like a bumper car - press to go faster, lift to slow - I'm not sure if that will help or cause different issues.

They’re still not accelerating. Accelerating means to increase in speed.

Not all of them. My OHs auto doesnt creep, mine does.

Do you drive OP? I would assume not, if you can’t see how dangerous this could be.

Mine has this feature and tbh it's an accident waiting to happen. If I'm driving along and a car pulls in in front of me and slows down my car does a bloody emergency stop. I am waiting for the day someone goes in the back of me in this event.

As an automatic driver, if I floor the pedal I want the car to respond. It's done for a reason.

Also, how do you know so much about the incident OP?

The reason pedal confusion is such an issue in automatics is that when I'm braking in my manual car, I put the clutch down. So if I hit the accelerator by mistake, I don't speed up because the car isn't in gear, i.e. the engine isn't connected to the wheels. But in an automatic pedal confusion leads to much more serious consequences.

But this would stop people accelerating to overtake too, or cut them out halfway through the manoeuvre…

Plenty of cars (maybe all new?) have collision detection systems now. Mine is a tad overzealous though. If I’m driving around a corner for example and it senses a car coming the other way, or even a wall on the side of the road then it will beep at me… so I can see why people would opt to turn it off!