Absolutely right. After reading any number of stories about these "runaway death machines", what becomes clear is that the only realistic way for a car to accelerate at full power against the wishes of the driver is for the driver to be flooring the gas while thinking he is on the brakes.
We should be adding smarter automatic systems to the cars to assist drivers, rather than e.g. throwing out drive-by-wire linkages and replacing them with mechanics, which are generally less reliable.
There are already cars which will slam on the brakes in any collision which is strong enough to deploy airbags - it stops the car from careening around too much. It should be possible for cars to detect an impending collision and slam the brakes 1/2 second early to prevent or reduce it.
We should be adding smarter automatic systems to the cars to assist drivers, rather than e.g. throwing out drive-by-wire linkages and replacing them with mechanics, which are generally less reliable.
There are already cars which will slam on the brakes in any collision which is strong enough to deploy airbags - it stops the car from careening around too much. It should be possible for cars to detect an impending collision and slam the brakes 1/2 second early to prevent or reduce it.