It’s a bit unfair that she’s not allowed to drive for two full years. This lady has many toddlers to crush and frankly at her age it’s difficult work without a big SUV.
She could always just go the panda route and crush them in her sleep. Not as efficient, but you make due.
Come on… That’s a bit unnecessary. It could have been a harsher punishment but two years without driving makes an example.
Can she just go back to driving after two years of letting those skills (if any) deteriorate? Or does she have to pass a driver’s exam? I would very strongly prefer the latter. Prove that you’re still able to drive responsibly.
“She went on to say that she had been driving the vehicle for a number of months and said there was a feature on the Omoda, an automatic vehicle, that meant it would begin to accelerate if a certain pedal was pressed whilst it was stationary.”
A gas pedal!?
“He suffered a considerable friction burn on his torso which police believed to be from the still-moving wheel he was trapped under.”
Sounds like another case of an elderly driver mistaking the gas for the brake. And when trying to stop the car end up pressing harder on the gas.
63 isn’t what I’d call “elderly”
No I believe ancient is a much better descriptor.
Usually that happens in an unfamiliar vehicle, when the pedals are located slightly differently than the person’s muscle memory, but apparently she had been driving the vehicle for a number of months…
How?!
Sounds like a combination of a brief lapse in attention she failed to recover from and an absurdly dangerous feature in the car, which combined with the usual predictable results when that happens while controlling a massive vehicle.
She went on to say that she had been driving the vehicle for a number of months and said there was a feature on the Omoda, an automatic vehicle, that meant it would begin to accelerate if a certain pedal was pressed whilst it was stationary.
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 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.
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.
Old
Sounds like a freak accident, I hope. So lucky nobody died.
Nop. It was an old person forgetting how to drive.
