Re: BMW brakes in the news

[Ben Barkow <dr.ben@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2005 Jul  6 , at 4:47 AM, oilheads-digest wrote:

>
> The scenario I was referring to was the "I was standing on the 'brake' 
> as
> hard as I could but the car just kept going like crazy" event.
>
> - -Steve Makohin
>  '01 R1100S/ABS
>  Oakville, Ontario, Canada

Actually, this dramatic and bloody Audi case is of some interest to me. 
If my poor memory serves me right, there were many instances of what 
Steve is talking about (Tom perhaps too, but that may be something 
different).

Put in plain language, after a lot of mysterious cases and 
head-scratching, it began to look like the "dumb" driver stepped on 
both the accelerator and brake simultaneously, if unknowingly.

Sounds like "driver error"?

Well, not to those of us in the human factors (applied psych) field. We 
call that stupid design, putting the pedals too close together and/or 
otherwise too similar in feel.... "dumb" manufacturer.

Ben
Toronto

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