this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
106 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
85998 readers
4379 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.