Safe Speed Forums

In the best fly-by-wire autos, one gets constant torque at the wheels for a given static throttle position lower than about 3/4 full, even if it changes gear. That being so, you would not have been flicked into the wall by the gear change. In fact, unless you had your eye on the dashboard, you'd likely not have noticed the gearchange.

Ed

I'm not familiar with Selespeed. Could you explain what this is please.

My current cars both have manual override on auto boxes and can be driven such that they don't change gear unexpectedly (esp. mid corner).

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

manual over-ride, for all gears? thinks are changing quickly this one had a standard P-R-D-1-2-3

selespeed is the fiat/alfa/ferrari system... pretty much the opposite of what you describe.
a manual box & clutch with actuators (supplied by ZF i think).

whether in auto or 'manual' mode (some with paddles) the shifts take forever! literally jolting you back & forth in the seat. (fiat stilo is the particular application i'm thinking of)

i'm told this is the same system as in ferraris, however their expensive gearboxes mean they can take a much more aggressive tune whilst the cheaper road cars are detuned for the less robust gearbox.

going back to the original point about safety features, why is it possible to start any car in gear? Neutral switches have been certainly on farm equiptment for 40 or more years and I'm sure all off road kit can't be started in gear. You can't start a bike in gear.

I agree. My bike has a lock out so that it won't even crank unless you are in neutral AND with the clutch in.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I discovered recently, from looking at wiring diagrams, that the US model of my Subaru Legacy has a switch so that you can only start it in neutral or with the clutch down. The UK model does not have that feature.

On the topic of auto boxes. There's a world of difference between driving a good auto box and a crap one. A lock-up torque converter and limited slip diff improve the situation even more and a big powerful engine helps too. But most small cheap autos are just plain nasty.

My dad once accelerated his Jag into the garage wall because his foot slipped from the brake to the throttle. One of my cars has a very sensitive throttle and can be tricky to park until you get used to it.

I was suggest a "parking mode" where the power would get applied gradually rather than in one big burst. But the more I thought about it, the more I can see that it was a bad idea. The driver is legally responsible for the actions of the car. Therefore the car should always follow the driver's instructions, and no computer software should be allowed to override them. Because, if the computer makes the wrong decision, the driver is still liable.

I see what you're saying, but where do you draw the line? Should ABS, traction control, stability control, cruise control etc. systems be withdrawn because they override the driver instructions to the car? What about parking sensors or other systems which, whilst not directly overriding the driver-car interaction, do provide feedback which, if it were missing or incorrect, could result in the driver being lured into an incident? What about drive-by-wire systems?

Good question, things like Emergency Brake Assist make me nervous. I heard some BMWs even have steering assist, changing the steering ratio depending on how fast you turn the wheel. I imagine these could make one's driving quite erratic and possibly dangerous.

EBA is disturbing but demonstratably benificial (the average user wont do a full emergency stop even when they need to).

variable ratio systems have been around a while but still a little procey to make them widely available. the BMW systems and similar under development are capable of moving the front wheels independantly of the driver other similar systems seek to influence the driver response (i.e. in oversteer) by biasing the assist level in one direction.

The trend in modern cars is to have the computers interpret the driver's inputs. The effect of this is that the car doesn't always do the same thing every time.

For example, my car "shuts down" to an economy programme when cruising to save fuel. If you suddenly accelerate while in this mode it takes a second to decide what you want done before leaping forward. If you have been driving it briskly it responds immediately. I find this quite disconcerting and I would prefer the same response every time.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

U.S. safety legislation is partly led by a requirement to make things idiot proof. Not for safety alone, but because of law suites. Motorcycles which used to have convenient lift up seats with stowage beneath, had to be bolted down, because some idiot yank went and set off without securing his, and sued the bike company when he tipped off because his seat lifted in use.
There is no reason not to be able to start a vehicle in gear, other than some people are dumb enough to not know when they do it. It certainly makes bump starting easier! You can also recover a stall if you still have momentum in some cases. Finally, I was a passenger in a car driven by an elderly gentleman, who drove around a corner straight into a deep flood, and killed the engine. With the water above the floor outside, but still dry inside, I was able to coach him into motoring the car out using the starter motor, until we got to a point where we could exit the car. Any device which prevented use of the starter while in gear would have prevented such a course.
The new Volvo shown on Top Gear recently has all sorts of electronic aids, with the one saving grace - you can turn them off and select the ones you want.
It's only a matter of time before some Yank forgets which ones he has on or off, and it will be removed in the US!!!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

This is an excellent and valuable safety technique in any area of danger (so don't buy an automatic).

When I was about 7 or 8 (guessing) The Eagle had a 'what would you do?' feature on the front page. One of these was dealing with a non-starting car stuck on a level crossing. Driving it off on the starter was the recommended solution. Funny the things you remember...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I've actually done that - really - in my Mini. Well, almost. Not a level crossing but a nasty junction. Cut out and wouldn't start having idled at the crossroads for a while. Gap in traffic, off I went and it cut out as I was 30% out onto the main drag. Pulled right across on the starter - took about 10 - 15 seconds but it seemed for ever.

Thirty years later, I drive autos! What would I do if it happened on a train crossing now in my Accord and it was too hard to push? If I could convince the bloke behind to give me a nudge bumper to bumper all well and good. If not, I'd probably adopt the GTFO procedure

For anyone whose interested the diagnosis was petrol evaporation. I think that was wrong - and I actually had an intermittent fuel pump but... that car's gone now!

Mmmmmm, systems that decide for themselves what they are going to do. Lets hope computerised cars don't go down the road suffered by Airbus Industries who have exprienced a catalogue of damaging incidents which, in some cases, appear to be attributable to their fly-by-wire systems, something the popular press have not been slow to latch onto.
The most popular myth is the crash at Habsheim where an Airbus A320 ploughed a neat swathe through the trees at the perimeter of the airfield. This incident has been widely mis-reported as being attributed to the on-board computer deciding that the aircraft was landing whilst the pilot was executing a flypast at an airshow. Actually, it was purely the fault of the piot who had set the autopilot altimeter failing to take the obstacles at the end of the runway into account!
Not quite so clear cut is the Romanian Airlines (I think) Airbus which decided to carry out its own flying control system BITE (Built In test Equipment) whilst on approach and sent the plane careering around the sky; amazingly the pilot recovered and landed!
I believe Peugeot have recently suffered faults in the ECU of their popular 306 models. The more you stuff in, the more there is to fail.

A friend of mine is a pilot for United in the US he told me told me the same as you, pilot error.

The worry is the he has flown the Airbus. he said there is a re-boot procedure that the have to adopt if the system glitches....

He would not tell me how many times he has had to re-boot the system when he has been flying them.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I love the 4 speed autobox in my Subaru Legacy.

I do a lot of M6 driving so my left foot has become very unhappy over the years of trying to make a manual crawl at 2-10mph for 60 miles, so I got the auto version.

It has the usual override where you can limit it to 3, 2 or 1, it has tiptronic on both the gearstick and on the steering wheel, but the best thing it has is what my friends refer to as the "nutter switch"

Left in the central position, it behaves as a normal auto and is reasonably economical, preferring to sit on the first turbo (up to 4K RPM), the down position has a snow icon which makes it favour higher gears for improved grip in snow.

In the top "power" position it will wait until beyond 7K RPM before shifting and try it's best to keep you using the second turbo (4k RPM and above)

I started with using tiptronic mode for all my sporty driving until I realised that simply putting it in power mode and limiting it to 3rd gear did a far better job than I could ever hope to do (thanks to the weird turbo setup) and let me concentrate just on driving.

It doesn't change modes on it's own, it's consistent and it's kickdown is electronic based on suddenly flooring it rather than just gradually moving past the kickdown point, so it's highly unlikely to kickdown when you don't want it to.

I drove a rental 1.4 auto Corsa once and that really was nasty, it jolted the car every time it changed gear (despite only having 700 miles on it), kickdown was implemented by having a point beyond which you have to press harder to continue accelerating. The whole thing was just cheap and nasty (and the gearbox wasn't very good either!)

The point being that just because some autoboxes are cheap things aimed at people who are just lazy and can't drive properly doesn't mean they're necessarilly bad. I've not tried driving my car on the starter yet though. I hope I never have to!


PS. shameless plug for the UKLegacy.com forums, since there's another Leggy owner reading this thread

You wont be able to! The auto prevents the starter turning if your gears are engaged. Even if you bypass that, you'll still not move as the converter will have at least 300rpm of complete slip.

Try driving the Saxon Armoured car, fully automatic, right foot poud pedal, left foot quiet pedal, the steering column is to much in the way to use your right foot, took some getting used to.

Then there are the fully automatic Trucks, 16 gears, fully laden 44ton, 0 to 56mph in only 7 gear changes.
Once above about 20kph you can drive on the cruise control, even for slowing down because the hand control also operates the exhaust brake.
Can be a bugger to reverse though.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

I love the autobox in my SVX, which I guess is an older version of yours. I believe it's made by Aisan-Warner. It's the best auto I've driven, much better than the one in my Dad's Mercedes.

Unfortunately it self-destructs every 50K miles or so and needs a 2 grand rebuild.

I've been meaning to sign up at UKLegacy. I was told about it by a guy at the JAE while I was on the SVX stand. That wasn't you was it?

Unfortunately not. I missed JAE because my car was at the garage waiting for a new primary turbo to arrive from Japan.