> The disadvantages are equally apparent. It alters the core driving logic learned from the beginning – "press the accelerator to accelerate and press the brake to decelerate." When applied to the crucial acceleration and deceleration control of a vehicle, the associated safety risks are considerable.
Well, in most vehicles if you take your foot off the accelerator you start to decelerate. It would be good if strong deceleration lit the brake lights, I agree, but that's a separate issue.
Sohcahtoa82 · 1h ago
That amount of deceleration can vary a lot from car-to-car.
I had a rental recently that would just keep going and going when I released the accelerator. I could be going 65 mph, release, and 30 seconds later, still going ~60 mph. As someone that used to drive manuals and now drives and EV, I hated it. My typical driving style is built around the idea that the brake pedal is an evil device that converts cash into brake dust and waste heat, so I use it as little as possible and release the accelerator earlier when I'm going to need to stop. That doesn't work on a car that barely slows down at all when you release the pedal.
I don't know if this was considered a feature for this car, or if maybe the throttle cable was too tight or stuck or something, but I hated how much more I had to use the brake pedal.
HankStallone · 1h ago
A high-school friend of mine had a VW Bug, and he claimed it was easier to change the clutch than the brakes, so he downshifted to decelerate as much as possible. Maybe Bugs were special that way; on every manual shift vehicle I've owned, brakes were much easier.
mikestew · 14m ago
When I was a pro mechanic, I watched someone drop the engine on a Bug in like 15 minutes. For that car, clutches are easy.
Now do a front-wheel-drive of any era. Hey, guess what you get to do first? Take the wheels off, thereby exposing the brakes.
trenchpilgrim · 40m ago
The Bug's motor was in the back of the car, in a very accessible spot.
bee_rider · 1h ago
It is shocking how much driving you can do without using the brakes. And, often I wonder about these quirky mini-games people play while driving (optimizing metrics other than safety seems bad), but if you really try to minimize brake usage you are forced to maintain a really generous following distance.
Terr_ · 57m ago
Yeah, IMO it's excellent "mini-game" more drivers should be playing.
1. It encourages safety through adequate following-distance.
2. Drivers doing it are more aware of upcoming hazards, rather than less.
3. Overall improvement in traffic, reducing hard-stops, reducing hard-acceleration, and encouraging zipper-merging.
4. It displaces wayyyy-worse things bored drivers might end up doing.
Terr_ · 1h ago
> My typical driving style is built around the idea that the brake pedal is an evil device that converts cash into brake dust and waste heat, so I use it as little as possible and release the accelerator earlier when I'm going to need to stop.
Agreed and well-put. An attentive driver should always be noticing the frequent situations where you'll need to stop/slow ahead, and gradual slowing is far safer for everyone involved than delaying before slamming on the brakes.
Could some differences in opinion might come from the places people drive? Where I live, it's almost never safe/desirable to dial in a constant speed for an extended period. There's always traffic or a bend or something. The rare exceptions are best-solved by using the explicit cruise-control feature.
In contrast, perhaps another person is out on straight empty rural highways a lot, and they like the "it just keeps going on its own" behavior because it's basically cruise-control-lite.
slaw · 48m ago
I hate when people write 'in a country I visited' or 'I had a rental EV' or 'I paid good price' or some other useless comment without saying exactly what was the car brand.
tomatotomato37 · 1h ago
Most ICE vehicles with automatic transmissions (aka 90% of them) either explicitly open the clutch or do torque converter things when off throttle, the result being that the vehicle starts freewheeling. Air resistance and friction and what not means the vehicle will eventually stop, but in a modern car at highway speeds that stopping distance can still be multiple miles; and that's before you bring hills into the equation.
My point being for most people expected behavior is for a car to only slow down during active braking and maintain momentum otherwise, and trying to change that otherwise would bring more danger than it's worth.
Glant · 2h ago
I believe in the past year or two someone passed a law with a specific deceleration amount. If you were decelerating at or beyond that amount, brake lights are required to come on. Maybe the EU? Can't quite remember. Would definitely be good to have that here in the US
bwanab · 1h ago
Total overreach. I go from one pedal driving on my EV to my manual 5 speed 2004 Saab on a regular basis. I've been doing this for 6.5 years. I'm really glad nobody has been telling me that I can't do it.
underdeserver · 24m ago
This is one of those things that sounds scary until you try it.
Everyone I know who uses one pedal driving thinks it's intuitive enough.
I alternate between my EV with one pedal driving and my wife's automatic Mazda without issue.
bluefirebrand · 15m ago
It doesn't sound scary to me, it sounds stupid and uncomfortable though
You can't just take your foot off the accelerator and coast, even downhill, is that right?
No thanks
badc0ffee · 2h ago
"One-pedal driving" means the vehicle slows to a complete stop when you release the accelerator pedal.
(I had never heard of this before just now.)
HankStallone · 1h ago
Neither had I. I've heard of clutch braking, where you downshift to slow the vehicle, though that won't bring it to a stop. Truckers use that sometimes because it saves wear on the brakes, and it's banned some places. I suppose regenerative braking could have a similar effect, but why not have that turn on the brake lights the same way pressing down on a brake pedal does?
NobodyNada · 54m ago
> it's banned some places
"Engine braking" bans usually target jake braking [0] (opening the exhaust valve at the end of the compression stroke), which greatly increases the effect of engine braking at the cost of producing a very loud noise [1] (which is why it's often banned in residential areas). As far as I'm aware, such bans do not limit the use of "normal" downshifting to decelerate.
It's quite common in electric cars these days. Makes driving much more pleasant, and once you get used to it there's minimal need to swap back to the brake pedal.
bluefirebrand · 24m ago
Sounds incredibly dangerous to me
What do you do if you have to stop asap rather than coasting? Emergency brake?
jcotton42 · 22m ago
There's still a separate brake pedal.
bluefirebrand · 13m ago
Okay, so it's a misnomer
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
I know that one-pedal has some ardent fans, but I’ve not been able to come around to it. The control it gives feels almost too direct which makes me feel like I need to be neurotic with my pedal control in order to be able to smoothly drive and not have “quivery” speed fluctuations when not leaning on cruise control. The more eased speed falloff that comes with a more traditional setup feels better.
bob1029 · 55m ago
Sharing the road with drivers on an entirely different control scheme is something I am not a fan of. Going from 2 axes of control to 1 axis of control is not a change to be trivialized. Some in the commercial trucking industry would argue that allowing 2 pedal driving was a catastrophe with regard to filtering out low skilled and unsafe drivers.
Cruise control whenever feasible and safe is probably the most polite solution to the consequences of one pedal driving. The freeway is where this kind of driving causes the most frustration for me. I don't think it should be banned but I think drivers should really give a shit about how they impact others around them. We can make it entirely about safety if that helps. At some level being polite aligns with basic physics.
amluto · 50m ago
I’ve contemplated a modified one-pedal scheme. The accelerator pedal could a haptic mechanism such that a smallish force could hold it at the neutral point and a significantly larger force would be needed to depress it into acceleration territory. This would allow light foot pressure to maintain speed without constantly oscillating a bit.
“Neutral” could be defined as zero motor power, constant speed, or something else — there’s plenty of room for experimentation.
spicybbq · 27m ago
I find it odd that Tesla removed creep mode as an option. For newer vehicles, there is only one-pedal mode. I've heard it increases the rated mileage, but not sure if that's the reason.
altairprime · 2h ago
To clarify the submission headline, the policy change limits, but does not prohibit, electric car regenerative braking when neither gas nor brake pedals are depressed:
> The braking deceleration in the default state should not exceed 3m/s²
tt_dev · 2h ago
Seems reasonable, standardize on operability. It will be quite a shift in driving behavior for the vehicle the come to a complete halt during deceleration
more_corn · 13m ago
Specifically:
“releasing the accelerator pedal should not decelerate the vehicle to a complete stop.”
Every electric car I’ve driven needs brake pedal engaged to bring it to a complete stop. Regenerative braking seems to disengage at ~5mph.
I honestly see no safety reason for this, but they’re not banning one pedal control they’re specifically saying it can’t bring the vehicle to a complete stop.
I would actually think there’s a safety argument for the reverse. In absence of an active driver shouldn’t the vehicle slow and eventually stop?
Well, in most vehicles if you take your foot off the accelerator you start to decelerate. It would be good if strong deceleration lit the brake lights, I agree, but that's a separate issue.
I had a rental recently that would just keep going and going when I released the accelerator. I could be going 65 mph, release, and 30 seconds later, still going ~60 mph. As someone that used to drive manuals and now drives and EV, I hated it. My typical driving style is built around the idea that the brake pedal is an evil device that converts cash into brake dust and waste heat, so I use it as little as possible and release the accelerator earlier when I'm going to need to stop. That doesn't work on a car that barely slows down at all when you release the pedal.
I don't know if this was considered a feature for this car, or if maybe the throttle cable was too tight or stuck or something, but I hated how much more I had to use the brake pedal.
Now do a front-wheel-drive of any era. Hey, guess what you get to do first? Take the wheels off, thereby exposing the brakes.
1. It encourages safety through adequate following-distance.
2. Drivers doing it are more aware of upcoming hazards, rather than less.
3. Overall improvement in traffic, reducing hard-stops, reducing hard-acceleration, and encouraging zipper-merging.
4. It displaces wayyyy-worse things bored drivers might end up doing.
Agreed and well-put. An attentive driver should always be noticing the frequent situations where you'll need to stop/slow ahead, and gradual slowing is far safer for everyone involved than delaying before slamming on the brakes.
Could some differences in opinion might come from the places people drive? Where I live, it's almost never safe/desirable to dial in a constant speed for an extended period. There's always traffic or a bend or something. The rare exceptions are best-solved by using the explicit cruise-control feature.
In contrast, perhaps another person is out on straight empty rural highways a lot, and they like the "it just keeps going on its own" behavior because it's basically cruise-control-lite.
My point being for most people expected behavior is for a car to only slow down during active braking and maintain momentum otherwise, and trying to change that otherwise would bring more danger than it's worth.
Everyone I know who uses one pedal driving thinks it's intuitive enough.
I alternate between my EV with one pedal driving and my wife's automatic Mazda without issue.
You can't just take your foot off the accelerator and coast, even downhill, is that right?
No thanks
(I had never heard of this before just now.)
"Engine braking" bans usually target jake braking [0] (opening the exhaust valve at the end of the compression stroke), which greatly increases the effect of engine braking at the cost of producing a very loud noise [1] (which is why it's often banned in residential areas). As far as I'm aware, such bans do not limit the use of "normal" downshifting to decelerate.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_release_engine_bra...
[1]: https://youtu.be/z3bLqjPBlx8
What do you do if you have to stop asap rather than coasting? Emergency brake?
Cruise control whenever feasible and safe is probably the most polite solution to the consequences of one pedal driving. The freeway is where this kind of driving causes the most frustration for me. I don't think it should be banned but I think drivers should really give a shit about how they impact others around them. We can make it entirely about safety if that helps. At some level being polite aligns with basic physics.
“Neutral” could be defined as zero motor power, constant speed, or something else — there’s plenty of room for experimentation.
> The braking deceleration in the default state should not exceed 3m/s²
Every electric car I’ve driven needs brake pedal engaged to bring it to a complete stop. Regenerative braking seems to disengage at ~5mph.
I honestly see no safety reason for this, but they’re not banning one pedal control they’re specifically saying it can’t bring the vehicle to a complete stop.
I would actually think there’s a safety argument for the reverse. In absence of an active driver shouldn’t the vehicle slow and eventually stop?