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On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? Also while it's not mentioned in this article, The Guardi

On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? Also while it's not mentioned in this article, The Guardian's article says "MG Motor UK has been urgently trying to make contact with Mr Morrison so that his vehicle can be fully inspected by our engineering team." It does seem a bit suspect that he's happy to chat with journos and pull faces in front of photographers, but not to chat with MG.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
Nonsense. He doesn't stand to gain anything by interacting directly with the car company which if he has a lawyer they most certainly pointed this out.
- salawat 3y ago
  Jesus Christ. Get out of lawyer land for a second and realize if there is a flaw in the design that resulted in this outcome, you've gotta do a full teardown to find it. If you want a neutral third party to do it fine, but they'll still need to interface with the people who made the damn thing.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    Dude got taken for a joyride by his car. If ever there was a time to camp out in lawyer land this would be it.
    - kimixa 3y ago
      The first step in any legal fight would be to root cause it to determine liability. Arguably the best people to figure that out are those intimately familiar with the design of the vehicle - like those who designed and built it in the first place. And true there some pressure to "sweep it under the rug" - but that's what government safety agencies are for. And they'll probably ask the designers to help figure out what happened anyway, but they (should) have the power to counter that pressure and provide oversight. I suspect the first step of any retained lawyer would be to report it to that exact agency. This wouldn't end up being some personal lawsuit about an issue where "Don't speak to your opponent at all" is often good advice, as the courts are simply not equipped to make a ruling on such a thing. This isn't some disagreement on some contract interpretation, but a material statement of "Is this design unsafe according to the law". So those agencies that define that will need to be involved anyway, and end up taking point on any legal process too, and the process would likely look very different to "Making your personal argument in front of a jury" that some people seem to think is the end result of any such process. Most countries have mandated reporting of safety issues already for exactly this purpose, and again they should have the teeth to enact heavy penalties if their rules are found to have been circumvented. They would look extremely poorly on any attempt by the company to strongarm the one who reported a safety issue into dropping it.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        You definitely do not want the counterparty to have unfettered access to the vehicle until it has been independently inspected. They obviously have good reasons to want access but if your goal is a damage claim you should be very careful with preserving the evidence.
        kimixa 3y ago
        I'm still saying that treating this like a lawsuit isn't really correct, as "Is this design inherently" unsafe isn't a legal issue, so not answerable by the courts. And honestly if a car company is willing to subvert a safety investigation to that extent, it doesn't really matter if you gave them "unfettered" access or not. If they're willing to break DVSA rules they'll have plenty of chances to do so during their investigation anyway.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Yeah you're off your nut if the first thought reading this wasn't MASSIVE LAWSUIT.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Ok so in a situation where you're looking at a lawsuit that could clock in at an order of magnitude more than the cost of the car your plan is to let the people you're thinking about suing have access to the car before you've had an independent 3rd party perform a thorough examination? Good luck with that.
scrumper 3y ago
> On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? It's a while ago now, but I had a Jaguar XJ with an electronic parking brake. If you just pulled it up while driving it would beep angrily at you, but if you held on to it for a few seconds it would apply (while beeping angrily). I tried it once in an empty parking lot to see what would happen, but only at like 20mph. It just slowed down a bit. Not a chance it could've overcome the engine at any more than idle. In fact, I remember my dad once trashing his handbrake in the '80s by driving his car for 50 miles or so with it applied. He just thought it was down on power for a bit, before the brakes heated up and they stopped having any effect.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Especially not with an electric car, the torque is 100% at standstill. A conventional handbrake doesn't stand a chance.
pengaru 3y ago
> On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? It's not like you'd actually want to do that if the car is fwd and refusing to stop. These are more parking brakes than anything applicable to an emergency. A fwd car with a yanked handbrake is a poor mans drift machine, and not stopping. This is because they generally only engage the rear brakes.

forgetfreeman 3y ago

Nonsense. He doesn't stand to gain anything by interacting directly with the car company which if he has a lawyer they most certainly pointed this out.

salawat 3y ago
Jesus Christ. Get out of lawyer land for a second and realize if there is a flaw in the design that resulted in this outcome, you've gotta do a full teardown to find it. If you want a neutral third party to do it fine, but they'll still need to interface with the people who made the damn thing.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Dude got taken for a joyride by his car. If ever there was a time to camp out in lawyer land this would be it.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    The first step in any legal fight would be to root cause it to determine liability. Arguably the best people to figure that out are those intimately familiar with the design of the vehicle - like those who designed and built it in the first place. And true there some pressure to "sweep it under the rug" - but that's what government safety agencies are for. And they'll probably ask the designers to help figure out what happened anyway, but they (should) have the power to counter that pressure and provide oversight. I suspect the first step of any retained lawyer would be to report it to that exact agency. This wouldn't end up being some personal lawsuit about an issue where "Don't speak to your opponent at all" is often good advice, as the courts are simply not equipped to make a ruling on such a thing. This isn't some disagreement on some contract interpretation, but a material statement of "Is this design unsafe according to the law". So those agencies that define that will need to be involved anyway, and end up taking point on any legal process too, and the process would likely look very different to "Making your personal argument in front of a jury" that some people seem to think is the end result of any such process. Most countries have mandated reporting of safety issues already for exactly this purpose, and again they should have the teeth to enact heavy penalties if their rules are found to have been circumvented. They would look extremely poorly on any attempt by the company to strongarm the one who reported a safety issue into dropping it.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      You definitely do not want the counterparty to have unfettered access to the vehicle until it has been independently inspected. They obviously have good reasons to want access but if your goal is a damage claim you should be very careful with preserving the evidence.
      - kimixa 3y ago
        I'm still saying that treating this like a lawsuit isn't really correct, as "Is this design inherently" unsafe isn't a legal issue, so not answerable by the courts. And honestly if a car company is willing to subvert a safety investigation to that extent, it doesn't really matter if you gave them "unfettered" access or not. If they're willing to break DVSA rules they'll have plenty of chances to do so during their investigation anyway.
        forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Yeah you're off your nut if the first thought reading this wasn't MASSIVE LAWSUIT.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      Ok so in a situation where you're looking at a lawsuit that could clock in at an order of magnitude more than the cost of the car your plan is to let the people you're thinking about suing have access to the car before you've had an independent 3rd party perform a thorough examination? Good luck with that.

scrumper 3y ago

> On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? It's a while ago now, but I had a Jaguar XJ with an electronic parking brake. If you just pulled it up while driving it would beep angrily at you, but if you held on to it for a few seconds it would apply (while beeping angrily). I tried it once in an empty parking lot to see what would happen, but only at like 20mph. It just slowed down a bit. Not a chance it could've overcome the engine at any more than idle. In fact, I remember my dad once trashing his handbrake in the '80s by driving his car for 50 miles or so with it applied. He just thought it was down on power for a bit, before the brakes heated up and they stopped having any effect.

jacquesm 3y ago
Especially not with an electric car, the torque is 100% at standstill. A conventional handbrake doesn't stand a chance.

pengaru 3y ago

> On cars with an electronic handbrake, do they have a way to apply the brakes while the car is moving? It's not like you'd actually want to do that if the car is fwd and refusing to stop. These are more parking brakes than anything applicable to an emergency. A fwd car with a yanked handbrake is a poor mans drift machine, and not stopping. This is because they generally only engage the rear brakes.