They go a step further. They use their cameras to detect the environment and significantly slow down acceleration if they think it might be a mistake.
As a side note, I've never heard of confusing the pedals as an issue for ANY car, so if Telsa's get people to confuse them enough to bring them to court, it's probably bad design.
Edit: The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 16,000 accidents per year in the United States occur when drivers intend to apply the brake but mistakenly apply the accelerator.[3] from wikipedia on Sudden unintended acceleration
Hard to imagine how you fail to design pedals!
Then you haven't been paying attention around the Toyota acceleration scandal.
Pedal confusion is remarkably common when you buy a new car/use a rental (your feet rely on muscle memory), and it's not uncommon in the elderly.
Most of the Toyota unintended acceleration fits the statistical profile of pedal confusion in the elderly.
However, what Toyota really got whacked for is that when people pulled their software for audit, the software was a disaster and didn't even adhere to basic standards. At that point, it was cheaper for Toyota to just admit fault than go through with a whole lot of court cases that they were likely to lose once a jury got involved.
When skimming about Toyota, I'm getting unsafe floor mats and sticky pedals as the cause of acceleration, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. The other commenter also brought up that it's a common issue.
Guess I'm feeling less safe on the road then ever - and I'll get a manual to boot
How many people will have to die before governments impose the software to be submitted for approval?
But it is one of the most common if not the most common cause of unintended acceleration in any car.
I’ve even had it happen to me one time. The typical scenario is that you’re traveling at low (“creep”) speed with your foot on (but not pressing) the gas pedal. You think your foot is on the brake, so you push to slow down… whoops you’re starting to accelerate.
The probable reason that it happens more often with Teslas is that they have less lag between pressing the accelerator and getting juice. So by the time you realize you messed up, you’re already going fast.
In most gas cars, firmly pressing the accelerator results in milquetoast acceleration and a lot of noise for a second while the transmission downshifts and the engine revs up. In an EV, you just… go.
I think this is media bias. The media picks up accidents involving Teslas far more often than they do other manufacturers. The national news will even cover Tesla recalls when it's just an over-the-air software patch with zero known real-world impact), and similarly despite that there are ~25K vehicle fires per year, you only see them in the media when a Tesla is involved. In particular, confusing pedals is pretty common, particularly among very old drivers.
I remember NASA thought so. So I just posted it, thanks for the post idea!
Instead, what was shown in court was that Toyota had a culture of firmware engineering that produced code impossible to consistently QC, debug, test or verify. And as a result, they quietly fired the directors of that department, rebuilt it from scratch, and replaced every TCU from that era with a re-engineered unit in a series of about a dozen recalls spanning a decade and millions of vehicles.
1. Most unintended acceleration events are user error across all vehicles. 2. Some small number of Toyota unintended acceleration events were caused by low quality software on the ECU and a very badly implemented watchdog that did not implement brake override or other safety measures.
Reference, please? Are you referring to a specific complaint, or truly "every" customer complaint?
