Sudden-onset car accidents, why are they still treated as driver error, and what responsibilities do car companies and governments have?

Since 2009, sudden-onset car crashes are still treated as driver error. To protect victims, the government should mandate the disclosure of EDR information, and car companies should be held accountable for fixing the problem.

 

In April 2009, an acquaintance of mine was involved in a rollover accident, less than a month after purchasing a new car. He pulled into an underground parking garage and slammed on the brakes to park. But instead of stopping, he heard a loud “whoosh” and the car lurched forward, hit a wall, and then reversed backwards into a pillar, which really scared him. Eventually, he sued the car company over the incident, but the court ruled that the driver was negligent. This is despite the fact that he claimed that he clearly didn’t make the mistake of pressing the wrong pedal.
According to one lawyer, as recently as 2023, no driver had ever won a lawsuit in South Korea for sudden acceleration. All cases were ruled to be accidents caused by driver negligence due to insufficient evidence. In each case, the car companies have vigorously denied that sudden jerking accidents occurred. If you listen to interviews with people who have been in a sudden-death accident themselves, they describe their memories as horrifying and terrifying. Many people are still suffering from the after-effects of the accident years later, or still have scars from the accident that have not healed. The number of reports of sudden car crashes to the police is also increasing every year. Although this problem has been raised since 30 years ago, when cars became electronic, there are still no effective measures in place, and the current situation in Korea is that the car company’s hand is always raised in every court case. People who get into accidents are just pitied. It is urgent for the government to take measures against sudden car jumps.
Sudden death accidents began to occur when cars began to be electronized. Cars began to be electronized about 20 years ago. The ABS system, as we know it, is an element of automobile electronics. Car electrification is the attachment of a computerized control system (ECU-electronic control unit) to a traditional mechanical car that is controlled by pedals and a shift lever. This allows for more precise and sophisticated control of the car. For example, a computer in the car can read the driver’s needs and time the engine’s ignition correctly. It can also make the brakes work better, or apply and release the brakes repeatedly to prevent the car from skidding on icy roads. This electronification of the car has become an integral part of today’s automotive technology.
But with the transition from mechanical to electronic, comes the potential for malfunctions. High heat from the combustion process of the car’s engine, or rainwater seeping into the car’s interior and corroding the semiconductor elements, can cause the ECU to malfunction. In a conventional mechanical car, when the driver presses the brake pedal, the brake system is activated directly through the lever, but in an electronic car, the brake system is activated through the ECU, so if the ECU malfunctions, the brake system may not work properly. Also, in a mechanical car, the car does not accelerate unless the accelerator pedal is pressed, but if the ECU malfunctions, the car can accelerate rapidly without the accelerator pedal being pressed. This is what leads to sudden acceleration accidents. A malfunction in the ECU while driving causes the car to accelerate rapidly on its own without the driver pressing the gas pedal. At the same time, the brakes are not applied, or if they are applied, the engine is still accelerating and the brakes are not working properly. This is a sudden acceleration accident.
The problem is that if you turn the car off and on again after a sudden acceleration accident, the traces of the ECU malfunction disappear completely. Therefore, most malfunction accidents are considered to be driver error, not a problem with the car. The solution is simple. The solution is simple: store the ECU’s processes moment by moment in non-volatile memory, such as a hard disk or flash memory. In fact, car companies have already equipped their cars with an event memory device called an Event Data Recorder (EDR). These EDRs record ECU malfunctions at the time of the sudden acceleration. However, the automakers have encrypted the recordings in these EDRs so that only their subsidiaries can read them. Even if the driver demands that the EDR be released, the company steadfastly refuses to do so. Unsurprisingly, to date, the EDRs have never been released in Korea, which suggests that the automakers must have something to hide. To make matters worse, South Korean law does not allow for enforced interpretation of EDRs. The government and the automakers are in cahoots, and they’re playing the public for fools. In the United States, for example, a law was passed in 2012 requiring automakers to provide EDR information to drivers whenever they want it. South Korea should also enact a law requiring automakers to provide EDR interpretation results. In the event of a sudden-onset accident, the exact cause of the accident should be made clear to avoid wrongful victimization.
In the absence of such a law, many people are installing dash cameras as a makeshift solution. The idea is to place the dashcam in the area where the pedals are, so that it can determine whether the driver was pressing the accelerator or the brake pedal at the moment of the sudden acceleration. While there is no evidence that this dashcam footage has ever been used as evidence to win a case, it could be a valuable piece of evidence in the event of an accident.
However, neither the mandatory EDR analysis nor the installation of dash cameras will prevent sudden-onset accidents. In the last 20 years since sudden death accidents began to occur, the state has sided with the car companies in every trial, which is why you can suspect that car companies do not have a solid plan to prevent sudden death accidents. If they were at fault and had to pay a lot of compensation, you’d think they’d grit their teeth and work on their technology. In fact, it’s hard to know what they’re doing to improve their technology because they’ve been publicly denying the sudden deaths. However, for 20 years, automakers have been denying the accidents without any clear measures. The fact that the number of sudden-onset accidents continues to rise suggests that they are either working hard or just trying to avoid responsibility.
If the electronicization of cars is the state of the art in automotive engineering, there is nothing to stop it. I know how difficult it is to eliminate program errors in electronic control systems. No program can prepare for every possible exception in advance. Furthermore, due to the nature of the automotive interior, which can be easily exposed to rain, dust, high temperatures, and physical shocks, the electronic circuits that make up the ECU are exposed to a significant amount of physical risk. Reducing this exposure can only go so far, so it may make more sense to find a mechanical solution rather than an electronic one. An example of this would be putting the clutch pedal back into a car.
Gears are what transmit the power of a car engine to the wheels, and they use different sizes depending on the speed. To gain more speed while driving, smaller gears need to be engaged with the engine, and the clutch pedal is what disengages the gears from the engine. While the clutch pedal is depressed, the gears and engine are disengaged, and when you release the clutch pedal after changing gears in between, the gears and engine are re-engaged. The presence or absence of this clutch pedal divides cars into manual transmission vehicles (Stick) and automatic transmission vehicles (Auto). Automatic transmission cars don’t have a clutch pedal because the car’s ECU shifts gears automatically when the driver speeds up. However, the clutch pedal can be a great defense in the event of a sudden acceleration. If the ECU malfunctions and the engine accelerates uncontrollably, the disconnected gears will not allow the car to gain speed, and the wheels that have lost power will be forced to stop due to friction.
Putting a clutch back in your car is a surefire way to fix the jerking problem. However, since most of the existing cars are automatic transmissions, they don’t have a clutch pedal, and retrofitting a clutch pedal can be very expensive. Obviously, it’s not possible to retrofit every car with a clutch pedal. However, it would be nice to add a clutch pedal to the options available to new car buyers. Even if you don’t need it normally, it should be available in a pinch.
So far, I’ve gotten a sense of the seriousness of the problem of car jerking. Car companies don’t do anything about it and insist that their cars are not defective. This is despite the fact that there are many victims. Governments are also avoiding responsibility, claiming that they are not responsible. As a result of the blame game, people are still being harmed. The government needs to get involved in the issue of sudden vehicle death and enact legislation to require automakers to disclose EDRs. It should also urge automakers to recognize the problem as a defect of the car, not driver negligence, and to take action as soon as possible. Finally, it would be nice to see a policy that encourages the installation of dash cameras that record the pedal area of cars. For example, subsidies or mandatory installation policies should be put in place to ensure that there are no more innocent victims of sudden acceleration accidents.