'Green' Nissan Pedal Pushes Back When Drivers Accelerate Too Much

These electronic babysitters have already gone way too far, and now this?? If the driver isn't intelligent enough to figure this out on his/her own, yank the license and get them out from behind the wheel of a car.

Great! Just what I need! My wife yells at me for being a passive-aggressive driver. GPS systems electronically scream if you are going too fast. Now, my car will try to stop me from accellerating?! Screw that! Just learn to drive smarter at all times. I don't need my car telling me that I am driving outside of what it considers acceptable limits.

Not to mention, imagine you are in a situation where you NEED to accellerate, and then, when you aren't ready, your pedal pushes back at you, slowing you down. This could be almost dangerous. Please note, though, that this is worst-case scenario.

I can see the lawsuit now when someone needs to accelerate fast to avoid an accident and the car doesn't let you.

This is as stupid as having the car lock the doors when you start driving. If my car has power locks and I get into an accident, the last thing I need them to have trouble doing is opening the doors.

I tend to side with Nissan in this one. I mean it can be turned off so you can choose if you want it on or not. Also the fact that if you are a careful driver all you would need to do is turn out of the way to avoid an accident. I also believe that this technology could be used in cars for people that are more proned to speeding tickets. (and I'm not talking just about most teenagers)

You can't always just turn out of the way of an accident.
If the road ahead is clear and you have cars on all sides, turning will just cause the accident.
In that case, only accelerating would avoid it.

Well actually they only situation I see that this would put you in danger is if you decide to run a stop sign or light and a car's coming at you, the only thing to do would be to accelerate and you wouldn't be able to, kablamo lawsuit.

Also if you wanted to ram someone you wouldn't be able to reach as high a speed if you did had the pedal pusher-backer.

All other situations I don't see accelerating to escape danger, i.e. flat tire, speeding up?? car in front of you flat tire, acceleration? losing control of the car, what!? tornado, go faster! chicken, speed is your friend. going to be rear ended, doubt your reflexes won't let you react fast enough!

I've never heard to anyone speeding up to avoid an accident, brakes are your best bet.

Sure, they say you can turn it off, but knowing how cars generally work with features like this is that it would require a service call probably.

Here's one way to reduce excessive acceleration: make the cars run on Diesel. They get better gas mileage with diesel, you can run them on vegetable oil also, plus the reduced acceleration from a stopped position would essentially do the same thing as this one would do.

For an unknown reason (other than taxation), Diesel costs more than unleaded gas even though you can make more gallons of diesel from a barrel than unleaded.

Stop making cars be nannies and let me decide how to drive. Imagine what happens if there's a bug in the programming and someone dies from the computer stopping acceleration. If I were to hit a gravel patch or a muddy section, the car will think it's in motion as the spedometer will increase and the tire will spin quickly. The car will push back and you'll pobably not be able to get your car out of the ditch unless the button were within reach of the driver.

If you're at a stop-light stopped and you see someone barrelling behind you and want to get out of the way quickly, you'll step on the gas. Oh, wait, your ECO pedal just saved you 3 cents in gas but now you have $3,000 worth of damage to your car plus medical expenses.

If it's an optional piece of equipment and someone decides to put it in their own car, fine. I never will because it's as stupid as the 3rd brake light. For that, I still think that they should put the 3rd brake light in the front of the car so that you know when the car behind you is slowing down and pedestrians know when a car is stopping or slowing.