I’m hoping that someone here will test out what happens if you race at high speeds and shift into Park or if you turn off the ignition. It has to be a newer model with fully electronic controls. My car qualifies, but it’s not paid off yet. And it’s not a Honda. And I’d be scared to do it.
Sounds like a good reason to test drive a new car.
Back in the 1980s there was a big “unintended acceleration” scandal involving the Audi 5000. 60 Minutes even did a story on it. It really tarnished Audi’s reputation in America for a while.
IIRC there was never anything found to be mechanically wrong with the cars, rather, sporty-ish German cars traditionally placed the pedals a bit more to the left compared to the typical placement in American cars. So Americans who weren’t used to this pedal placement were stepping on the gas when they meant to step on the brake.
ETA: Ok, Wikipedia did mention a problem with the “idle-stabilization systems” that could cause high idle speeds which could cause a brief unexpected acceleration. So I guess it wasn’t completely true that there was nothing mechanically wrong. But it goes on to say that couldn’t explain the prolonged acceleration reported by drivers. That still was most likely pressing the wrong pedal, possibly after being startled by the acceleration caused by the high idle speed.
Yes, it is my understanding that all Hondas since 2011 or so have brake override systems which will cut power if both the gas and brake are pressed at the same time. It also looks like the 2022 Pilot has a foot operated parking brake.
Do electronic foot operated parking brakes even exist? I’d imagine there must be a cable from the parking brake pedal to the rear brakes. Can’t get much simpler than that. Though the rear brakes alone (or does the Pilot have a parking drum?) may not be able to overcome the engine, they should be able to lock up the rear wheels, which would be bad while also going 100MPH at full throttle.
My thought on unintended acceleration incidents is that anything happening from low speed is due to applying the wrong pedal, but that unintended acceleration at high speed is possibly something other than user error.
The incident reads like all of the pedals somehow completely stopped functioning, with the brake off, but the throttle fully open. I guess you could roll up the floor mat just so to wedge the gas down, but prevent pressing the brake?
It’s plausible, as it’s the kind of thing manufacturers are doing with electronic interfaces. My own car has push-button start/stop, and the manual says that to kill the engine while in motion, I have to:
The problem is that these kinds of things are non-intuitive actions, so they’re unlikely to be things that spring to mind under duress. They’re also different from car to car. 25 years ago, if you got into a new car, you would have automatically known how to shut down a runaway engine, because it had a real mechanical key just like every other car out there. Now, the car you’re driving might have a key, or it might have a button, and the button might be in a different spot, and it might have a unique emergency shutdown procedure that you won’t know unless you’ve read the manual, which most folks aren’t going to do.
Does the NTSB know about these problems? Again, I think it is absurdly stupid that any car transmission can’t be disconnected from the engine with a simple and reliable mechanical device. Maybe there was a way to stop that Honda Pilot but no one available knew what it was.
NTSB awareness depends on people reporting incidents to them, and action depends on the NTSB becoming aware of a pattern with sufficient prevalence and severity as to be worthy of investigation/correction. If only one car in 50 million ever experiences a runaway condition, NTSB probably isn’t going to step in, even if a wacky user interface makes it difficult for a driver to regain control.
A bus that couldn’t stop was part of the plot of a 1976 movie called “The Big Bus”.
I haven’t seen a manual transmission with a “park” setting.
Hold on a sec while I pull my foot outta my mouth…
What I shoulda said was:
No automatic-transmission vehicle will engage the steering wheel lock unless the gear selector is in park.
For people who still have a manual-transmission car with an old-school ignition key, yes, it’s certainly possible to lock the steering while still in motion. For late-model stick cars with push-button ignition, I wonder whether those cars are smart enough to not engage the steering lock if the driver shuts the engine off while in motion.
TSB
This appears to be a matter for the NHTSA to consider. Like NTSB their reporting mechanism is based on drivers who encountered the problem reporting it.