An automatic vehicle only has two pedals: the gas and the brake. So she pressed on the “absurdly dangerous” feature of her car, which is in fact actually the primary feature cars have to offer?
Digging into it a little more (insomnia, how I loathe you): I’m not sure what it’s called on Omoda cars, but automatic acceleration from stop / tap-to-accelerate is a feature in every EV I’ve driven with adaptive cruise control. The ‘dangerous’ part is alleged to be that Omoda cars lack a cutoff integrated with the rest of the sensors that disable the function when road conditions aren’t identifiable (like because there’s a preschool in the way). This is absolutely a failure on her part to remain in control of her vehicle, but it’s a failure that was exacerbated by dangerously poor design.
Oh, so just tapping the accelerator makes it continuously accelerate? I know that electric cars operate slightly differently, but I agree this seems absurdly dangerous.
I’ve only ever seen it set up as a tap-and-release on the brake (or on the wheel cluster + attention warning) before (both feel really sketchy, btw. Do not love that feature.) - if what I read is accurate about how this functions in the Omoda cars and it really is tapping the accelerator, I cannot fathom how someone could be so dumb as to design that.
To be clear she is still insanely stupid - she did run over a preschool after all. The poorly configured tap to accelerate just lowered the threshold at which that stupidity goes from “Oh man, that was scary but I’m glad nothing bad happened” to “record scratch, freeze frame yep, thats me. I bet you’re wondering how I got in this situation…”
An automatic vehicle only has two pedals: the gas and the brake. So she pressed on the “absurdly dangerous” feature of her car, which is in fact actually the primary feature cars have to offer?
Digging into it a little more (insomnia, how I loathe you): I’m not sure what it’s called on Omoda cars, but automatic acceleration from stop / tap-to-accelerate is a feature in every EV I’ve driven with adaptive cruise control. The ‘dangerous’ part is alleged to be that Omoda cars lack a cutoff integrated with the rest of the sensors that disable the function when road conditions aren’t identifiable (like because there’s a preschool in the way). This is absolutely a failure on her part to remain in control of her vehicle, but it’s a failure that was exacerbated by dangerously poor design.
Oh, so just tapping the accelerator makes it continuously accelerate? I know that electric cars operate slightly differently, but I agree this seems absurdly dangerous.
I’ve only ever seen it set up as a tap-and-release on the brake (or on the wheel cluster + attention warning) before (both feel really sketchy, btw. Do not love that feature.) - if what I read is accurate about how this functions in the Omoda cars and it really is tapping the accelerator, I cannot fathom how someone could be so dumb as to design that.
Oh wow, I really wish the journalists had covered that instead of just quoting the woman in a way that made her sound insanely stupid.
I’ve only driven a few EV here and there when I needed to rent a car and none did that; that feels… insanely dangerous.
To be clear she is still insanely stupid - she did run over a preschool after all. The poorly configured tap to accelerate just lowered the threshold at which that stupidity goes from “Oh man, that was scary but I’m glad nothing bad happened” to “record scratch, freeze frame yep, thats me. I bet you’re wondering how I got in this situation…”