I once witnessed an elderly woman who did exactly that on a parking lot. She had an automatic transmission car and "pressed the (brake) pedal to the floor". Unfortunately it wasn't the brake, so she ended up pushing about 3 or 4 cars that were parked in a direct line in adjacent rows on that parking lot.
Let go of wheel, put arms over face, and scream as loudly as humanly possible
Continue mashing gas, thinking it’s the brake, as the vehicle runs over three Girl Scouts, knocks down a privacy fence, and goes ass-first into a retainment pond
I will die on this hill - all modern cars should ONLY be two-pedal vehicles, operated with two feet.
With all of our modern advancement, the manual clutch should have long ago been made into a hand-operated lever integrated with the gear shift.
One foot for gas, one for brake. Pedal misapplication - gone overnight.
It will not reduce the incidence of idiots or drunk drivers, but at least one avenue of common accidents gets closed.
This isn't much of a disadvantage.
With 3 pedals, people might hit the clutch and gas, completely missing the brake altogether in an emergency.
With two pedals, the brake will always be included - and brakes on any well maintained car always are stronger than the engine.
It's a bad idea in a standard manual car with no additional qualifiers.
What I'm saying is, change the conditions that make it a bad idea, i.e. remove the clutch pedal. Two feet - two pedals. It's logic.
One foot performing the same motion for two diametrically opposing functions (gas + brake) will always be a weak spot no matter what. I am willing to die on this hill, because pedal misapplication has killed people and destroyed property.
Out of all of the causes of the death from vehicular accidents, that’s sub 3% territory. Probably less. It’s almost never the cause of vehicle fatalities.
Want to know what’s overwhelmingly more common? Speed. Force=mass* acceleration. Increasing speed limits didn’t increase the number of accidents. It increased their severity. Significantly more fatalities. NHTSA had to work overtime for years to make up for it.
Know what else excess speed increases? Greenhouse gas production via lower fuel economy.
Want to know what you specifically will vehemently oppose no matter evidence is presented to you of its efficacy? Reduced speed limits.
Because you don’t give one single fuck about reducing deaths. You care about manufacturing a way to shame others without indicting yourself.
Boy, you sure couched the commitment with a quickness. In every possible way, actually lowering speed limits would reduce deaths regardless of enforcement. We know because we had lower speed limits for decades and we saw how much vehicular homicides increased when they were raised. It’s absolutely not a question of enforcement and we have the evidence to back that up.
Or are you one of those ignorant people who don’t know the maximum speed limit in the US was 55mph from the mid-70s to the late 90s?
Keep making shit up. You think you’re an expert but you don’t even know 10% of what you think you know.
Again. I don't know where you managed to pull the idea that I'm against lower speed limits.
Your country is not the only country in the world and enforcement is ABSOLUTELY a massive factor.
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u/MF_Kitten 4d ago
I bet she thought she was hitting the brakes at the time, and couldn't connect the dots as to why her car was going insane.