Comments on: Designing Unsafe Cars

By: etbe

etbe — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:43:13 +0000

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toyota-q-and-a28-2010jan28,0,7584950.story

The LA Times has a good article about how to control a car that has a broken accelerator pedal.

By: etbe

etbe — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:46:35 +0000

Matthew: When it comes to not having a clutch pedal and having the computer decide when and how to change gears there is no difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic.

Brendan: Thanks for the link. One thing to note is that turning the engine off is a really risky thing to do, when the engine is turned off you can’t steer the vehicle, and the ignition key can become stuck in the off position – when your car is parked you will hardly notice an occasional delay of 20 seconds to get the ignition key unstuck so many cars are driven with issues in this regard.

If you put a car in neutral and it’s on a flat road then the speed will rapidly drop below 100Km/h from wind resistance. You only need to slow to about 60Km/h before it’s relatively safe to hit an electricity pole or other obstacle.

By: Brendan Scott

Brendan Scott — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:31:14 +0000

Recently something similar in Victoria:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/cruise-control-terror-for-freeway-driver-20091215-ktxn.html

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:02:00 +0000

The clutch pedal is a beautiful piece of human/machine interface, IMHO. Unlike a kill switch, the accessories keep running and you can let it go to restore normal engine power to the wheels. (On the other hand, if you can’t handle your vehicle if the power steering and/or brakes go out, it’s too big. I have had to wrestle and stomp a big station wagon and a bigger truck when that happened.)

Yes, depending on my budget I’ll either stick with used cars or take a trip to Europe to pick up a car. I did talk to a person who did that recently and the European price plus the European driving vacation was comparable to the US price.

By: Matthew W. S. Bell

Matthew W. S. Bell — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:06:34 +0000

F1 cars do not use automatic transmissions. They use semi-automatic transmissions—essentially robotic manual boxes. Big difference.

By: etbe

etbe — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:15:03 +0000

sam: A poorly implemented kill switch doesn’t necessarily prove that a kill switch is always bad. Also motorbike leathers are designed to allow a rider to slide along the ground without serious injury, if a motorbike accelerated without control would it be practical for the rider to jump off? I expect that it’s a lot more practical than expecting a car driver to jump out the window…

Charles: Thanks for the detail. In terms of what the driver can do it seems that the F1 system is very automated and therefore the driver can’t just press the clutch. But F1 is really so very different to road driving that it’s hardly worth comparing in terms of safety. I just mentioned it to show the benefits of automation.

furicle: My experience in driving cars is that I get exactly one good press of the power assisted brake after turning the engine off. The second press has significantly less assistance and the third has almost none. A well trained person might press the brake and hold it down in such a situation with a reasonable result, someone who is not as well trained (and it seems that police advanced driving training is not adequate in this regard) would be likely to press it twice or more and lose.

The article suggests that it would be extremely difficult to stop the car while it was accelerating hard. This is a powerful car with a big engine. Also please cite a reference for that Audi incident.

I agree that you should be able to just whack it in neutral, but it’s hard to think of that quickly in an emergency situation. As I noted in this post I’ve been in a similar emergency situation and I failed to put it in neutral. I believe that I am genetically predisposed to being more rational in an emergency situation than the majority of the population.

Peter: Please explain situations you have witnessed where speeds in excess of 10Km/h reverse or 130Km/h forward were required to avoid a collision.