this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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I'm a sane world, removing the brake pedal (etc) would only occur after extended disuse. When the technology is mature enough and so reliable that it's a wasted feature that never gets used, and hasn't been used in a long time.
Not when the technology is brand new and this is something still needed on a regular basis.
Maybe autonomous vehicles don’t need a ‘brake pedal’ specifically, but I do think that for safety’s sake, they do need some kind of emergency kill switch accessible to passengers in the interior. Something that will bring the vehicle to a stop as soon as safely possible and then ensure that the doors can be opened from the inside. And maybe repeated presses of the emergency kill switch should disregard software entirely, using purely hardware pathways to immediately bring the vehicle to a halt and unlock the doors.
Likely to still be used in a maintenance or emergency situation where the electronics are dead. If the vehicle has to be moved and a winch isn't available a brake is pretty much a necessity. Anyone who's had to push a car out of a lane of travel knows this.