Re: Brake Pedal Position & UI

[Tur <getur@bellatlantic.net>]

Al Powell wrote:

> Allen said:
>
> >Actually, the pedals are moved to the left in the models with
> >automatic transmission, so the gas pedal is placed pretty close to
> >the place where the brake pedal would normally be. I guess this may
> >have caused some of the incidents.
>
> That's my bet as to the problem.  My theory is that many of the
> people driving Audi automatics were graduating from Olds Cutlasses or
> similar middle-'Murrican cars (a status move) and simply were not the
> kind of drivers who were aware of anything about their cars -
> including the relative positions of the pedals.

..... snipped out some stuff
I have some first hand experience with unitended acceleration, and it's
directly related with the brake pedal position. The first Audi we had was
an 82 5000s automatic. One day I was trying to back it out of the
driveway around stacks of lumber and other junk. In trying to  get a
better view of what was in back of me I sort of twisted around and and
stretched my body. As the car inched back down the drive way I pivoted my
foot over to brake and lo and behold I took off down the driveway.
Luckily I had cleared the junk in the driveway and for some reason
instead of stepping harder on the brake, or what I thought was the brake,
I instead released the pedal. The car promptly slowed down and that gave
me a chance to look and get my foot on the proper pedal. Because of the
way the car slowed when I released my foot from the pedal I'm convinced
that I had stepped on the gas pedal rather than the brake pedal. At that
point I took a good hard look at the pedal positioning and spent a bit of
time training my foot in Audi pedal pushing. When I examined the pedal
positions on the 82 the other thing I found a little off, in comparison
to an American designed car, was the placement of the pedals relative to
the center line of the seat. The pedals were off set much more to the
center line of the vehicle than they were in my Olds Cutlass or Chevy
Impala. I noticed that on our next Audi, an 87, the pedal position,
relative to the center line of the driver's seat, seemed to be closer to
the center line than it was in the 82. I don't know if one story like
that can explain all the other incidences but in my mind most if not all
can probably be attributed to drivers unfamilar with that type of pedal
setup.

my 2 cents...