Interesting.
In the mid 80's there were many reports of this very thing happening with Audis. It is the reason we now have to press on the brake pedal , or you can't put it in drive or reverse(from park).
I think the final results of the Audi deal weren't conclusive-no smoking gun was found.
The weight of opinion from "experts" was that most of these accidents were caused by folks accidently hitting the gas when they meant to hit the brake.
Car are much more automated now, and more things are drive by wire.The driver has less direct control. However, I think that the brakes are still mainly under the drivers control. I could see gently brake pressure being over ridden by the "computer" telling the car to just apply regen brakes, and not the actual hydraulic brakes.
I just don't know if it is possible for a heavy braking imput to be over ridden by the cars automatic controls. I think the "real" disc brakes will be engaged-I don't think there is a way to over ride-or pop off like a turbo valve- the hydraulic pressure.
Does anyone know this?Any car engineers out there? It would seem to be very dangerous to "fool with" the actual disc brakes-to drop the pressure in the line to allow more regen braking. There would be too much potential for accidents.
Alina,I'm just parroting the common wisdom, not taking a swipe at you. The common wisdom can be wrong- your car might have a flaw..
Good luck,keep us up to date on this,
Charlie

 

I am sorry I am coming off the wrong way.

Regarding the dealer...

I leased the car and walked out a happy camper. Two weeks later, the dealer called me to say I had made too large of a down payment, so they needed to refund some of my money. I happened to be home sick that day and thought I'd go pick up the refund since it seemed like a quick and easy task. When I got there, they said that yes, they were giving me some money back AND that my monthly payments would double. I took issue with that, so they offered to sell me the car instead, which would be slightly lower payments but still considerably higher than the original contract. My head was fuzzy. I should have walked out and consulted a lawyer first. I went ahead and allowed them to change the contract. They then proceeded to totally mess up all the paper work, so that the registration was incorrect and the DMV was threatening me. It was something the dealer had to clear up and it took them MONTHS.

They also entered the wrong address for my billing, so my first bill arrived late and they called me with nasty messages (I had called them a week before trying to locate the bill).

These were all errors on the dealer's part. Not mine.

I feel like you think I'm an idiot.

 

It's possible to move forward if you have your emergency brake on, so it seems like the car would be able to move forward. This is a computerized drive-by-wire type of car. The computer could have been doing things that override what I was doing. It's not necessarily mechanical. It could be a software to hardware malfunction.

I sure hope there's a "blackbox" or stored data about what the car did. I want to know.

 

I responded to this in another post. The shenanigans began after I took possession of the car and caught me so off guard that I definitely handled it incorrectly. I should have gone to a lawyer.

Yes, education does cost money, and yes I learned something.

 

In a fwd car, you can over power your brakes (automatic).

In a rwd car, depending on the surface, you can over power your brakes.

In an awd car, you can over power your brakes on any surface.

All cases are with an automatic tranny. Too hard to do in a standard.

 

Thank you Charlie! Finally, someone who doesn't just assume I'm at fault. Believe me, when it was happening, I wondered if my foot was on the wrong pedal, but it wasn't. The HAH drive-by-wire handles differently than regular cars. I'm in a rental now, and feel more in control. The HAH was always lurching and adjusting its speed. It was very hard to parallel park because the engine shuts off when you stop, then when you try to inch forward, the engine kicks on and it lurches a bit. Those of you who drive this car know what I'm talking about.

I really appreciate your post Charlie. I'm so tired of being beaten down, and not having anyone stop and consider all sides.

 

No, that would upset the best of us.

You should create a thread on your dealing with the dealer separate from this. It made me not really take your issue seriously because I figured you had an axe to grind. That's all.

 

Thank you.

You're correct, I should have kept the original dealer situation separate. It really had nothing to do with this, other than this is all costing me a lot of money during the holidays, so it's very frustrating.

 

After doing some more research, I have discovered that the brakes on ALL modern vehicles are REQUIRED to be able to overcome the engine even at WOT (wide open throttle). The parking brake only applies the rear brakes which produce much less braking force than the front brakes due to the way weight is distributed in the car.

So, if you had the brake pedal pressed down hard the car would have had to experience simultaneous, unrelated failures of the electronic throttle AND mechanical brake (even if the ABS system fails you still have full braking power) for the car to be able to move forward on its own.

Occam's razor applies. Given the choice of A/ a simultaneous multiple point failure (throttle and brake) or B/ a single point failure (the driver); I have to go with B as being far more likely.

I'm not saying that A/ couldn't happen, it's just not very probable.

 

Since this feature was implemented, the number of "sudden unintended acceleration" events has decreased considerably, which lends more credence to the idea that the problem was driver error.

I would bet that the number of these events that occurs with manual transmission vehicles is also miniscule if not nil.