this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Even if a system that actually performed well in a 100% autonomous mode was available, how is having manual override for safety actions like braking a bad thing? Why would you ever remove that? Removing it provides zero benefit whatsoever.
I'm a sane world, removing the brake pedal (etc) would only occur after extended disuse. When the technology is mature enough and so reliable that it's a wasted feature that never gets used, and hasn't been used in a long time.
Not when the technology is brand new and this is something still needed on a regular basis.
Likely to still be used in a maintenance or emergency situation where the electronics are dead. If the vehicle has to be moved and a winch isn't available a brake is pretty much a necessity. Anyone who's had to push a car out of a lane of travel knows this.
Maybe autonomous vehicles don’t need a ‘brake pedal’ specifically, but I do think that for safety’s sake, they do need some kind of emergency kill switch accessible to passengers in the interior. Something that will bring the vehicle to a stop as soon as safely possible and then ensure that the doors can be opened from the inside. And maybe repeated presses of the emergency kill switch should disregard software entirely, using purely hardware pathways to immediately bring the vehicle to a halt and unlock the doors.
Tesla already has this now. The car bricks itself, the controls fail, lights on fire, people cant open the door and they burn so hot on top of the battery that it even turns their bones into powder.
So the feds are wasting their time with this.
Hm... I think that could be improved, though. Maybe by rethinking the 'can't open the door' and the fire? I feel like those parts, specifically, could use some workshopping. Maybe send it to a focus group for analysis?
I have a 2018 model 3 so I have mixed feelings on the matter. I do regret supporting musk in any way but in 2018 he seemed merely lame and nerdy. He hadnt even insulted the thai cave diver rescuer guy yet, or attacked the pandemic response, or turned twitter nazi.
Simpler times.
To be fair, it says brake pedal - there are other possible means of activating a brake such as an old school emergency brake lever.
The "benefit" is, of course, money saved for their own pockets.
No this would remove requirements even for emergency/hand brake.
The brake lever is a parking brake. It's usually (in older cars that don't have an electronic park brake) a cable actuation of the brake meant to keep your car from rolling away if the parking pawl fails. It's not the same as the hydraulic braking you'd do with a pedal (and what you'd want in the event of an emergency braking situation). Getting rid of it is beyond foolish.
I would call a working brake pedal the single most critical safety feature in cars today.
It saves like $20
If nobody is in the driver's seat, then it doesn't matter if the brake pedal exists. If someone does happen to be sitting there, but isn't paying attention to driving, they might accidentally hit it. And it would be in the way most (hopefully all) of the time.
Sounds like this doesn't include it, but I think it would be better to have some centrally accessible thing to manually activate the brakes. Then you could do it regardless of where you sat.
like the emergency stop cable on busses.
In every bus I've ever seen, the stop cable isn't an 'emergency stop' cable -- it doesn't actuate the bus's brakes or anything like that.
All it does is light up a little light in in the driver's view -- it tells them that you're requesting a stop, so they should stop at the next bus stop, even if nobody is waiting to board there. Otherwise, the driver might pass by your stop without stopping if nobody there is waiting to get on the bus.
There should be a mechanical override emergency brake. However it need not be a pedal. The typical use should be the mechanic verifying it works at the yearly inspection