I’m very surprised that there isn’t legislation requiring a way to stop the car if it does run away. (Although it’s quite possible that’s what the police used once they got in the car, and the user missed it in the panic)

Kinda like how you should know how to stall engine runaway on a diesel.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Scary story. But something that doesn’t quite make sense to me, as it wasn’t a self driving car as far as I could tell,

    Morrison said: "Eventually I came up to a roundabout which slowed the car down to about 15mph and the police van was waiting for me on the other side.

    Why did it slow down for this roundabout? Was it a coincidence, since previously the roundabout was taken at 30mph? Or was the car aware it was a roundabout and slowed itself?

    • snacksM
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      1 year ago

      Some cars have adaptive cruise control, and they use sat nav data to locate speed limits. He’s basically been on cruise control and didn’t know how to cancel it.

      Edit - there was a malfunction, but the cruise control got locked and for some reason there’s no way to force it off.

      • GreatAlbatrossOPA
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        1 year ago

        And if you’re going along, then change direction, you’ll lose speed.

        Honestly, it’s a pretty good job by the police. They worked out a way to slow it down cleanly, and went for it.

      • JoBo
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        1 year ago

        Cruise control does not force the car to stay at the requested speed if the driver is telling it to slow down (nor prevent it speeding up if the driver deems it necessary), that would be ridiculously dangerous. It just makes it a little easier to cruise at a constant speed.

        It was a brand new car. Faulty off the production line.