Research Papers (2009 – 2013)

Abstract

Public complaints of unintended acceleration in motor vehicles are regularly received by Transport Canada’s Defect Investigations and Recalls group. Some years ago, a major study of such cases was conducted using conventional investigative techniques, including physical inspections of subject vehicles and in-depth interviews with their operators. The results of this study demonstrated that the phenomenon was essentially due to operator error and not related to malfunction of any vehicle control system. In particular, the incidents resulted from so-called “pedal error” where drivers were pressing down hard on the accelerator pedal while believing themselves to be fully applying the vehicle’s brakes. The advent of vehicles equipped with event data recorders (EDR’s) capable of storing a range of pre-collision information, including the status of the brake-light switching circuit, and the disposition of both the accelerator pedal and vehicle throttle, has provided investigators with an objective dataset with which to evaluate unintended acceleration complaints. The present work uses recent public complaints of such incidents that have been received by Transport Canada, where the case vehicles were equipped with EDR’s, and pre-crash data stored on these devices were downloaded following the alleged incidents. The analysis of these data clearly demonstrates the potential for EDR’s to assist in determining the precise operator actions leading up to unintended acceleration incidents.

Trevor Lehouillier, William Holmes, Alan German