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Transportation AI Government

127 Tesla Owners Complain The Cars Accelerate On Their Own (go.com) 179

Posted by EditorDavid from the fast-and-the-furious dept.
UPDATE (1/21/2021): "This petition is completely false and was brought by a Tesla short-seller," says a blog post on Tesla's web site, adding they've investigated every complaint and where data is available it always shows that, as CNN puts it, "Teslas only accelerate when you want them to."

An anonymous reader quoted the Associated Press's report Sunday: The U.S. government's auto safety agency is looking into allegations that all three of Tesla's electric vehicle models can suddenly accelerate on their own. Brian Sparks of Berkeley, California, petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking for an investigation. An agency document shows 127 owner complaints to the government that include 110 crashes and 52 injuries.

The agency said it will look into allegations that cover about 500,000 Tesla vehicles including Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles from the 2013 through 2019 model years. The agency's investigations office will evaluate the petition and decide if it should open a formal probe...

Frank Borris, a former head of safety defect investigations for NHTSA, said the number of complaints cited in the petition is unusual and warrants further investigation. "The sheer number of complaints would certainly catch my eye," said Borris, who now runs an auto safety consulting business. Tesla owners communicate with other owners on Internet forums and social media, and that could influence the number of complaints, he said. He said the timing of the petition is good, because the agency needs to do a "deeper dive" into Tesla safety.

Some of the unintended acceleration complaints, which have yet to be verified by NHTSA, allege that the cars' electronics malfunctioned.
CNBC points out that Brian Sparks, the man asking for the investigation, "is currently shorting Tesla stock, but has hedged his bets and been long shares of Tesla in the past."
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127 Tesla Owners Complain The Cars Accelerate On Their Own More

127 Tesla Owners Complain The Cars Accelerate On Their Own

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  • TSLA Shorts Getting Desperate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gwills ( 3593013 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @06:38PM (#59635786)
    Big money shorts are feeling pressure, time to gin-up some negative sentiment!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      I don't know if this is a real problem with Tesla's or not, but I would imagine that you're right. A LOT of people bet a LOT of money against Tesla, and Tesla is really starting to make some serious progress selling the volume they need to survive.

      • I don't know if this is a real problem with Tesla's or not

        You'd think people would have noticed this by now if it's a common as the article implies.

        More likely it's just people having crashes then blaming the car for it, "It wasn't me, it was the car!"

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by pezpunk ( 205653 )

        it's not.

        https://www.tesla.com/blog/no-... [tesla.com]

        Here's Tesla's statement. Remarkably strong and direct refutation of this ridiculous accusation:

        There is no “unintended acceleration” in Tesla vehicles

        The Tesla Team January 20, 2020
        This petition is completely false and was brought by a Tesla short-seller. We investigate every single incident where the driver alleges to us that their vehicle accelerated contrary to their input, and in every case where we had the vehicle's data, we confirmed that the car

    • Good example of FUD (Score:5, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @07:27PM (#59635866) Homepage Journal

      Here's [ccn.com] a good example of Tesla FUD.

      The title of the article is "Tesla Death Count Hits Record High in 2019, So Why Is TSLA Stock Still Climbing?", and the first three summary lines read:

      .) Tesla vehicles were involved in 50 fatal crashes in 2019.

      .) The NHTSA has investigated 14 Tesla crashes involving Autopilot.

      .) Figures suggest Tesla cars are still among the safest on the road.

      Note the 3rd line above: "Tesla cars are still among the safest on the road." The article fairly heaps scare and warning onto the reader, but Tesla is still among the safest on the road.

      This proportion is disproportionately high from Tesla’s perspective. Combined with the aforementioned data from tesladeaths.com it looks doubly bad. The data reveal a 138% increase in fatal accidents compared to 2018, when ‘only’ 21 road deaths involved Tesla cars.

      But what does this really mean? Are Tesla cars inherently unsafe? Is Autopilot a death trap in waiting?

      (Note: In 2018 Tesla increased production by 123% over previous year. Deaths in the subsequent year jumped by 138%... oh noes!)

      The amount of FUD published about Tesla is nothing short of astounding. I'm glad shorts are losing billions of dollars, they've done nothing but try to mislead investors into making bad decisions.

      Also: There's a website dedicated to highlighting Tesla deaths? (Tesladeaths.com, from the article.)

      • Re:Good example of FUD (Score:4, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @04:02AM (#59636670) Homepage

        Slashdot certainly helps. The very title of this article is FUD. The NHTSA complaint wasn't made by "127 Tesla owners", it was - as noted at the end - made by a Tesla short seller who doesn't own a Tesla, who just Googled "unintended acceleration Tesla". The funny thing is, you can do this for literally any brand or model. Go on and try [google.is]. People have, and always will, hit the wrong pedal, particularly when parking, and blame it on the car.

        NHTSA has investigated individual "unintended acceleration" claims for Tesla before. All of which found it to be pedal misapplication by the driver, not actual SUA caused by the car itself. [cleantechnica.com]

        On TMC, there's a user who runs a garage who has an open $10k bet for anyone who thinks they've had "unintended acceleration":

        Seriously, this thread is still a thing? Every claim here should just be met with an auto-response: "No, you're wrong. You, your wife, your husband, or whoever was in the driver seat at the time hit the wrong pedal. Accept responsibility. Get over it." *Closed*

        Here's what I'll do. If you want to prove SUA, bring your car to my shop along with $10,000 cash. I'll have $10,000 cash as well. I'll pull the logs, verify they weren't tampered with, and decode them right in front of you. If you're technically minded, I'll even go over how exactly the speed and pedal position data is deciphered in Tesla logs.

        If they show what I know they'll show (driver pressing the accelerator), I keep your $10,000 cash and mine and also make a public post detailing the findings.

        If it shows that the brake was pressed instead, yet the car still accelerated, you take my $10,000 cash and yours. I'll additionally make an affidavit testimony of what I've uncovered and offer my services as an expert witness in any related litigation, free of charge. At your discretion, I'll post my findings publicly.

        Still want to say you're right? Put your money where your mouth is and prove it.

        If not, just get over it and move on.

        Edit: Disclaimer - You can't win this bet. I'm 17 for 17 so far on log pulls related to Tesla SUA claims (most for insurance company contacts).

        The annoying thing about this is: some short-seller does Google-Fu and files a petition with the NHTSA, which causes it to list an investigation as "open" even though their site explicitly states that it's only open with respect to considering the petition ("...ODI will evaluate the petitioner's allegations to determine if the petition should be granted or denied. If the petition is granted, ODI will open a defect investigation; if the petition is denied, ODI will publish a notice in the Federal Register."), news sites around the world run with the story, and then when the NHTSA closes the petition, the closure will get 1/100th the news coverage that the opening of the petition got. It's a ridiculous but effective way to profit off of a short position. :P

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Thankfully, it's much easier to debunk this "unintended acceleration" FUD than it used to be; modern cars have "black boxes". The accelerator has two separate potentiometers, on opposite sides of the mechanism, wired in reverse, each with their own separate line, each logged down to the millisecond level. The two potentiometers must move in precisely the opposite manner, or the action is nulled out. Hence it's unambiguous in the logs when the driver steps on the wrong pedal.

          16 thousand people per year rep

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      I agree. Probably no one remembers how this type of news absolutely killed Audi 5000 sales due to a 60 minutes article. The NTSA fully exonerated Audi. The market is much smarter these days.

      https://www.thetruthaboutcars.... [thetruthaboutcars.com]

      The result was you could buy a 5000 for absolutely nothing and have a great car you could easily run over 200k miles.

    • Is that really all you idiots can ever do to respond to this, and it's 'insightful'? Really? Autopilot in particular is a clusterfuck of a system that should never be put on a vehicle of any kind.

  • Never had it accelerate unintentionally... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @06:42PM (#59635792)

    ... but idiots drifting into my lane or over the line have caused a lot of panic braking. I'm blaming cell phone use rather than Tesla though.

    I can imagine it would accelerate "unexpectedly" if you trigger the adaptive cruise control by accident. That may not be hard to do, versus other cruise control implementations which mostly expect you are already at or near the target speed. I can trigger it basically from a stop and if it thinks the road is 65, it will start accelerating.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by psergiu ( 67614 )

      Happened to me.

      Got a M3 recently. All my previous cars had the windshield wiper control on the right steering wheel control stick.
      Tesla has that stick as the gear shifter and cruise control.
      The wipers are by default set to Auto - which works perfectly when it's raining normally. But when it's just drizzling rain, the sensor does not triggers the wiper automatically - so my reflex is to push down on the right steering wheel control stick to start the wipers - which engages the cruise control on the Tesla. To

    • Yes, the Model 3 right stalk pressed down once moves the car from Park to Drive, while moving doing the same thing engages cruise control.

      You have to be careless to do it, but its not idiot proof.

  • Mine too (Score:3)

    by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @06:47PM (#59635804)

    My car accelerates on its own too, if I turn on the cruise control, but I haven't really felt like getting my hands oily to fix it, so instead I'm getting foot cramps from having to use the pedal.

    • painful foot cramps (Score:2, Informative)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

      and other first world problems.

      • No. This is not a first world problem. It is just a choice; do maintenance, or not.

        People anywhere who, for whatever reason, do their own vehicle maintenance face these choices.

        A first world problem is like, I'm mad that they renamed a street up to the border with a suburb that refused to rename their side.

    • I though I had a serious problem with my cruise until I realised that it just behaved differently to my old one. With my old cruise if I held the increase button on it would increase the cruise setting at the same rate the car accelerated. With my new one it would increase slowly for the first 3 seconds (slower than the car could accelerate) and then increase at 10km/h until I released it, not sure I agree with the new philosophy but now that I have actually read the manual I don't have the problem.

  • I'm about to ban slashdot... (Score:5, Informative)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @06:51PM (#59635808) Homepage Journal

    ...from my browser... and my life.

    The amount of bullsh*t click-bait article that lack even the tiniest amount of research have reached my tipping point. Slashdot officially sucks. Too bad. I used to love this site.

    Bottom line. This has been tested, Tesla has pulled logs. The drivers were mashing the gas pedal in a panic situation when they thought they were pressing the break. Same thing happened with Toyota. Do 5 seconds of research!!!

    Stop this nonsense. Stop posting FUD. Stop posting click-bait!

    • Go ahead and throw your toys out of the cot.

      Actually they state that the accelerator was depressed in one case, but one case is not the whole bunch. Also could be a faulty sensor on the pedal. Other cases (claims the article) Tesla did not share the data even though they have it, I don't say this is a fact but just what it said. Small suggestion is cool down, and get rid of slashdot for a while or whatever else is winding you up, no need to be so intense about a minor thing.

      • You know that there are 2 sensors and if they don't agree, the car doesn't accelerate, right?

        • Not only there are two independent sensors, two independent power supplies, two independent signals, neither of them include full on or full off (to prevent shorts, opens and cuts anywhere to give a wrong but valid signal) in the valid range.

        • Re:I'm about to ban slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nonBORG ( 5254161 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @08:19PM (#59635994)
          There is an old saying never go to sea with two clocks, take either 1 or 3. Anyway I think you miss the point, which is there may be a problem, they will figure it out, the evidence is not conclusive but at sometime we will probably know. More importantly it is a minor issue with a few cars keep it in perspective.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by clive27 ( 889511 )
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] When the damage of the false-positive greatly outweighs the false-negative, you need 2 sensors. If 2 don't agree, you fall back to a negative state. You need 3 sensors when you just can't default to one or the other.

      • It's pedal misapplication (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @08:46PM (#59636048)

        Actually they state that the accelerator was depressed in one case, but one case is not the whole bunch. Also could be a faulty sensor on the pedal.

        It's pedal misapplication. The problem pre-dates Tesla, electronic logs, and sensors. In the early 2000s it was Toyota (though a few of the cases turned out to be the floor mat coming loose and trapping the accelerator pedal down).

        In the 1980s it was Audi. That's why there's a shift lock connected to the brake pedal now. Some lawyers spun the story of Audis uncontrollably accelerating on their own when taken out of Park, crashing the car, and it caught on in the press (I think it was 60 Minutes which began the hysteria). The drivers claimed their foot was mashed down on the brake at the time, which is mechanically impossible since the brakes are a lot more powerful than the engine. The car wouldn't have moved if what they were claiming were true. Audi researched the problem and concluded it was pedal misapplication. But the press wouldn't let the story die. So Audi came up with the current shift lock system which all other car manufacturers have now adopted.

        Back in the 1980s, you could shift out of Park any time you wanted. To shift out of Park now, you have to press the brake first. If you accidentally press on the accelerator before shifting, the car won't let you shift out of park. When Audi did this, all the stories of "unintended acceleration" disappeared (at least while on the driveway). Pretty much proving it was pedal misapplication all along.

        I've actually experienced pedal misapplication twice.

        • First time was in the 1980s before shift-locks. What saved me was I was wondering why the engine was revving so high when all I'd done was turn it on and pressed on the brake pedal, so I didn't shift out of park. Turned out my then-GF in the passenger seat didn't like the sun shade in her footwell, so she had kicked it over to my side. It had wedged between the brake and accelerator pedal, so when I pressed slightly on the brake, it acted as a lever and pushed down a lot on the accelerator.
        • Second time was while I was driving. I was coming up to a red light so I began to press on the brake, and... the car didn't slow down. I pressed down harder on the brake and it slowed down a little, but again what saved me was I heard the engine rev up higher. I looked down and my right foot was misplaced, not centered on the brake pedal. It was pressing on the brake, but the edge of my shoe was catching the edge of the accelerator pedal, pressing it down as well.

        I'm not at all surprised Tesla is experiencing the same thing. People love to blame anything but themselves for screwing up. And in the case of Tesla, it's easier to convince themselves that it's the car's fault and not theirs, because the car has all sorts of whizbang new techno gizmo features that they don't understand. So if something goes wrong, it must've been the car, because they of course are perfect and infallible.

        • Yeah... most of the accidents seem to be at low speed. With the one-pedal driving habit in a Tesla, I know I have been guilty of hitting the accelerator, letting up, and expecting the car to stop while in a garage. Doesn’t quite work that way... you do actually need to use the brake in close quarters.

          But I only drove one for a day...

          • letting up, and expecting the car to stop while in a garage. Doesnâ(TM)t quite work that way... you do actually need to use the brake in close quarters.

            Actually, it does now, if you enable the option.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 )

      Tesla has pulled logs. The drivers were mashing the gas pedal in a panic situation when they thought they were pressing the break.

      What do you suppose the log looks like when the throttle position sensor, or the A/D converter that feeds it to the computer, goes "hard over" due to a failure? What do you suppose it looks like if the software writes anomalously to the throttle position RAM variable due to a bug? Would it look like someone was accidentally pushing the throttle pedal, ma

      • The logs would have to show 2 accelerator pedal sensors erroneously both showing full application and, somehow not show application of the brake pedal. Seems more than unlikely, don't you think?

      • It looks just like the last two "unintended acceleration" scares, operator error.
        Audi and Toyota were both thrown to the wolves from driver error.
        Both were shown to have no actual failures that lead to deaths.

    • You are the fool for still lingering here. /. has long since jumped the shark. Where have you been? This is a troll playground and nothing more and has been for several years now.

    • If you are on cruise control and need to panic stop, your foot better be over the brake. The problem with cruise control is that your foot is just in limbo and it is easy to forget the last position you had the foot in.

      If you drive without cruise control, you are actively pressing one of two pedals and KNOW which one you are pressing so that when it's time to panic brake you do the right thing since you were still involved in the driving process.

      Cruise control causes my foot to cramp since I'm always h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      I had a 2008 Toyota Corolla Seca Conquest (100kW 1.8L petrol engine, 6-speed manual gearbox), and there was a way to make it accelerate when it wasn't supposed to, but it was somewhat convoluted, and not really dangerous:

      • Switch on cruise control.
      • Engage cruise control at 100km/h in 6th gear by tapping the cruise stalk downwards. This should be remembered as the last set cruise speed.
      • Downshift to 4th gear using the clutch and accelerate to 110km/h. When you step on the clutch, cruise control will disengage

    • Go sulk in the corner and come back in time for dinner..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by linuxguy ( 98493 )

      I decided to quit my Slashdot habit many moons ago. This site truly sucks!

      But old habits die hard. Muscle memory kicks in and I end up clicking on a click-bait article like this one. And then I wonder why I did that. I curse myself and the quickly close the Slashdot tab.

      Goodbye Slashdot. For the 10th time!

    • Agreed. Between Climate Change Denying comments getting modded +5 and Slashdot posting this FUD about a company that is significantly helping humanity, I'm gone.

      Even though Slashdot doesn't write these articles, it needs to have the journalistic integrity not to post BS. Otherwise, it drives away the objective, knowledgeable users that will mod down false comments. Destructive feedback at its best.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I've been seeing this particular whine since around the turn of the century. "SlashDot sucks, posts clickbait, I'm leaving!" With your user ID being even lower than mine I'm sure that you've seen it hundreds of times too.

      Go somewhere else, get even more disgusted there, and then come back. We'll be waiting.

  • This isn't "127 owners complaining", instead this is one non-owner (also a Tesla short) submitting 127 reports gathered from across the Internet.
    https://cleantechnica.com/2020... [cleantechnica.com]

    One independent person who has pulled the logs and challenged owners who claimed "unintended acceleration" is 17 for 17 in showing that, yes, the driver did hit the accelerator.
    https://teslamotorsclub.com/tm... [teslamotorsclub.com]

    • This isn't "127 owners complaining", instead this is one non-owner (also a Tesla short) submitting 127 reports gathered from across the Internet.

      so, in summary:


      127.0.0.1 shortseller

      .

  • Complaint raised by a shortseller... who... neither owns a Tesla nor has been involved in an accident in a Tesla. Just stock manipulation plain & simple. The compose a "Press Release" and you all do the rest... Baa baa!!

  • pressed the gas instead of the brake. It's way more common than you'd think.
    • As cars get closer to instant acceleration, this problem will become more visible. Older cars that had to rev to make acceleration gave a bit of warning before rocketing off into the car ahead of them.

      As the problem becomes more visible, I would bet a new full power acceleration delay will be required in new cars to give drivers some time to realize their mistake when they make it.

      I can see the complaints now in car reviews: 'this car could do 0-60 in 3 seconds if only there wasn't that damn 2 seconds

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        As the problem becomes more visible, I would bet a new full power acceleration delay will be required in new cars to give drivers some time to realize their mistake when they make it.

        On a different tack, Tesla last fall introduced "object-aware acceleration", which throttles back max acceleration [cleantechnica.com] if it thinks you're likely accelerate into something that's ahead of you before you have time to react.

        With 16 thousand pedal misapplication accidents in the US alone per year, giving people time to react to their

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Tesla

      pressed the gas

      Hmm. I'll have to think about this.

  • Posting to undo mod error.

  • Not really buying this one either ... (Score:3)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @08:04PM (#59635944) Journal

    The fact is, Tesla has been building these vehicles since the first Roadster back in 2008, and all of a sudden, we're seeing all these complaints popping up of "unintended acceleration" and "spontaneous vehicle fires" and "autopilot failing to see objects and causing wrecks", etc.

    If there was a real design/software flaw causing the cars to randomly accelerate, this should have been experienced every so often by drivers for the last 8+ years. Doesn't seem like it was?

    I'm willing to accept that anything is POSSIBLE -- and by all means investigate it, if you've got 120+ people insisting it's a problem. But I doubt anything will be found here.

    There are a lot of things about these cars that come down to lack of understanding of how they work, too. For example? They let you select multiple modes for the acceleration rate. I find that the vast majority of people set theirs to "insane" mode and leave it there, since they want all the performance the car is capable of. Problem is, the acceleration will be that rapid when the speed adaptive cruise control is on too. And that's not what a lot of people desire or expect.

    • These are not just from the last year. These are spread out over the last 10+ years. So, these are not just 'popping up'.
      The issue here is that Bryan Spark filed this for all of these ppl, most likely hoping to lower the stock price so that he could drop his shorts. I am hoping that he does just that and is caught by SEC, but, I doubt that SEC will do anything.
  • Some short seller collected unsubstantiated facebook posts, tweets and third hand reports and made a complaint, pushed it heavily on the media. Just depress the prices long enough to close the short positions reducing the loss.

    The owners did not complain, their insurance did not complain.

    • > Some short seller collected unsubstantiated facebook posts, tweets and third hand reports and made a complaint

      He must be looking to spend quality time with SEC investigators.

      • He must be looking to spend quality time with SEC investigators.

        I would like to hope so, but I doubt it with this admin.

  • Maybe the cars were trying to get them there on time.
  • Today SpaceX had a resounding success. It was testing the crew escape module of the Dragon spacecraft. [twitter.com].

    The plan called for the simulation of the failure of the main booster rocket. So it shut the rocket down in mid flight and initiated the abort process, the unmanned Dragon separated cleanly and splashed down. The range safety officer destroyed the drifting rocket, which had been reused four times before [twitter.com] and it was in its fifth and last mission.

    The Independent led with SpaceX booster rocket explodes [twitter.com]

    • You have it backwards. Most Tesla fans do not bother clicking on the garbage. It is the negative idiots that do the clicking hoping that Tesla or SX or simply Musk are dying.

  • The head line is wrong (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @10:04PM (#59636202) Journal
    The owners did not complain.

    The complaint was filed on the behalf of the Tesla owners by an admitted Tesla short, pushing it on the media just before the market open. The 127 incidents are all he could find trawling through tweets, facebook posts and other social media droppings, with his own dose of liberal interpretation.

    Last time NTHSB checked such a report did not find any credible report.

    • Unless they tweeted "my Tesla accelerated on it's own and I couldn't be happier", I'm going to count it as complaining.

      • Unless they tweeted "my Tesla accelerated on it's own and I couldn't be happier", I'm going to count it as complaining.

        Unless they start tweeting "my Tesla accelerated because I fucked up and pressed the wrong pedal", I'm going to count it as bullshit until vehicle audit trails start proving otherwise. So is the NHTSA, along with every Tesla automobile insurance provider.

        Humans lie to avoid embarrassment. Sadly, that's not something you need to "count" on happening.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Hmm. Is that not a criminal stock price manipulation attempt?

      • First let us be clear. Shorting is legal. Shorting is necessary. Shorting provides the motivation for a large number of investment firms to read the SEC filings of company with critical eye. There is windfall potential. After Enron scandal, so many shorts were analyzing so many companies for fraud it cleaned up the reporting of so many of them. Windfall went to Enron shorts, lucky or diligent one can't tell. But it did create an army of accountants who read the reports of all other companies critically for
  • So many lies, from ppl like Bryan Sparks or Caffeinated Bacon, etc.
    Tesla is physically incapable of doing "Sudden Acceleration" on its own. [twitter.com]

    Not only that, but it is trivial to have the logs checked, which all were. At any time, I can look at the logs on our Tesla. No issues.

  • 127 Tesla Owners hit the right side stalk down while maneuvering, thus initiating cruise control.

    The default speed of the cruise control is the speed limit. It shows that on the screen. Start cruise control while driving and it will accelerate to the speed limit if you don't first adjust the cruise speed. When above the speed limit, the cruise speed follows your current speed so when you start cruise control it will just maintain the speed.

    When in a car park, next to a road, it's entirely possible for the c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Which is why many cruise controls activate at your CURRENT speed, and don't let you enable at low speed at all.

      It's a case of proper design - suddenly going up to 70 because the road you're on has that as a utter, maximum, absolute, top speed limit... no matter what your initial speed was, that's not sensible.

      If it works as you suggest, I'd call it poor design no matter what car it was installed on.

  • So... better than average? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jnaujok ( 804613 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @12:36AM (#59636448) Homepage Journal
    The NHTSA says there are 16,000 cases of "Sudden Unintended Acceleration" per year in the United States, per 263,600,000 private vehicles. Which means, that with 500,000 vehicles, over the 7 years of the study, the expected number of events would be 212.

    So, if 127 events have been reported, that makes them twice as safe as the average private vehicle. Congratulations on proving the opposite of your point, Mr. Short Seller...
    • There is room for improvement though. On a "gas" pedal with physical linkage to the gas engine, the foot gets a physical feedback; whereas an all electric would tend to feel as smooth as a break pedal. It takes some time to get used to the smoothness of drive by wire pedals - especially with regenerative braking involved since both pedals engage the motor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cwatts ( 622605 )

        There is room for improvement though. On a "gas" pedal with physical linkage to the gas engine, the foot gets a physical feedback; whereas an all electric would tend to feel as smooth as a break pedal. It takes some time to get used to the smoothness of drive by wire pedals - especially with regenerative braking involved since both pedals engage the motor.

        As a tesla owner, I can assure you that the above is unmitigated bullshit. The "feel" of driving a tesla is no different that any other automatic transmission vehicle, though you will accelerate faster in a tesla than you would in a hyundai. But the shape of the pedal depression vs acceleration curve is not substantially different than any other car. The regenerative braking is what you would expect to feel if you were driving a manual transmission in fifth gear and downshifted to fourth gear.

        • I used Creep for a while, it allowed the car not to slip back or roll forward while waiting for a light on roads with ups and downs. Then they introduced the auto hold setting. Perfect. It comes to rest, parking brakes automatically applied. When you green light, just press on the go pedal and it goes forward without any slide back on up gradients.

          BTW Tesla disables regen braking below 6 mph. It will use only friction brakes. Unused rotors will rust. So the use of friction pads below 6mph basically polishe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nice find!

    • Except you can't expect car vendors to anticipate every single mechanical issue that can happen over time, but you can and should expect a self-driving vendor to anticipate bugs in their logic.

  • When on Autopilot and the speed limit is suddenly higher than before.
    Like it says in the manual.

  • Unless you have some very obscure software errors in there (a race with very low probability, e.g.), something like this basically cannot happen this rarely except by user error. My guess is just the usual people trying to blame others for their own mistakes.

    • They don't really know what is going on in a neural net trained to self drive. Why would you think obscure software are rare? It seems the entire thing is set up for obscure software errors to happen.

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