Going From Strength To Weakness.

[SurGie 54]

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Looks like there could be up to 500k cars that should be recalled due to these cars made on the cheap because they have the servo/master cylinder on the left for right hand drive cars

 

Its not just Citroen, its Peugeot and Renault cars as well...

[welshpug 1,657]

Nothing new there, BMW's used to have the same issue

 

206's were built the same, as were the 406 and 106 though their mechanisms were on the engine bay side of the bulkhead.

[Alessandro513 0]

Typical. I have a friend who works at a Peugeot garage and he says the same.

[harryskid 193]

Just the job for a cheap driving school car!

[Henry 1.9GTi 36]

i believe you can also yank the hankbrake whilst cornering from the passenger seat causing a complete loss of control. Doesn't mean you have to.

[mickie 3]

people are standing on it without knowing what they just did.. handbrake is different, stop trying to stick up for the french, the cars are crap

[Matt Holley 11]

people are standing on it without knowing what they just did.. handbrake is different, stop trying to stick up for the french, the cars are crap

 

He does have a point, once you know it's there stop sticking your foot into the underside of the dash and get on with your life, yes it shouldn't be like it but are we so stupid the we can't live with it.

[Henry 1.9GTi 36]

It was ment to be a stupid comment. I do understand the not knowing side of things, and ofcourse it is a real issue with potential safety concerns. Was just being silly!

[Jrod 7]

You could do it on Novas aswell, a bit more tricky as it was a fairly narrow gap but I managed it!

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

And old Audi's

[GLPoomobile 958]

So the problem has been around for years on numerous different marques/models, and still they're making cars like this!

 

 

once you know it's there stop sticking your foot into the underside of the dash and get on with your life, yes it shouldn't be like it but are we so stupid the we can't live with it.

 

What a 'tarded coment! You only need an oblivious passenger to do it once in the wrong circumstances for it to result in dire circumstances. Should owners have to learn the lesson the hard way? My wife is a nightmare for sticking her stupid long legs all over the footwell on long journeys, so I'm glad I don't have one of the affected cars as I could tell her 'till I'm blue in the face not to put her feet near the affected area and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.

[Matt Holley 11]

So the problem has been around for years on numerous different marques/models, and still they're making cars like this!

 

 

 

 

What a 'tarded coment! You only need an oblivious passenger to do it once in the wrong circumstances for it to result in dire circumstances. Should owners have to learn the lesson the hard way? My wife is a nightmare for sticking her stupid long legs all over the footwell on long journeys, so I'm glad I don't have one of the affected cars as I could tell her 'till I'm blue in the face not to put her feet near the affected area and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.

 

This world is full of blame culture, if your wife won't listen to you thats not my problem.

[GLPoomobile 958]

Brilliantly logical reply

 

Blame culture my arse. I'm far from being one of these namby-pamby H&S obsessed types, and I don't support the "where there's blame there's a claim" culture either. This is a significant design fault, and you can't brush that off by simply expecting owners to make sure that all their passengers are aware of the problem. Perhaps it's not taken seriously because it's a fault that's been around for years and not caused any significant accidents yet, but surely you don't ignore a ticking time-bomb just because it's not exploded yet!

 

I think your attitude the problem is a fairly typical car/driving enthusiast mentality. What about the remaining 99% of the car owning population who aren't driving enthusiasts? Fact is that a great deal of drivers simply aren't equipped/prepared to deal with the consequences of finding their brakes suddenly being applied, taking them totally by surprise.

 

Try and put yourself in the shoes of one of the "normal" car-buying public for a moment, and imagine yourself going in to a car showroom and looking at a new car. Imagine that the salesman says to you

"Oh I must warn you Mr Holley, that you need to take care when you have a passenger in the car. Please make sure that they don't put their feet near this part of the footwell and press down, as it could apply the brakes". Are you going to just shrug your shoulders and accept that on face value, or are you going to seriously re-consider whether that is the car for you? Before you answer that, I'll re-iterate that I want you to think about this as if you were Joe Bloggs who just uses a car to get from A to B and has no interest in how it works, and not Matt Holley the driving enthusiast.

[Anthony 1,003]

Out of interest, even if you can get your foot on the brake bar, can you actually apply sufficient force to significantly slow the car? You aren't going to have much leverage without a pedal I wouldn't have thought, and whilst it's a bit silly not properly boxing it in, I do wonder if this is Watchdog once again blowing everything out of all proportion in their normal manner...

[feb 47]

My wife is a nightmare for sticking her stupid long legs all over the footwell on long journeys, so I'm glad I don't have one of the affected cars as I could tell her 'till I'm blue in the face not to put her feet near the affected area and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.

 

You can tell her to put them like this but I think this will be a higher accident risk due to the distraction!

 

As Anthony says, I would also be curious how true this is, surely the manufacturers wouldn't bury something as serious as this under the carpet (no pun intended).

Edited May 29, 2011 by feb

[SurGie 54]

Out of interest, even if you can get your foot on the brake bar, can you actually apply sufficient force to significantly slow the car? You aren't going to have much leverage without a pedal I wouldn't have thought, and whilst it's a bit silly not properly boxing it in, I do wonder if this is Watchdog once again blowing everything out of all proportion in their normal manner...

 

 

I haven't actually tried to push the brake on the passenger side my self, however if a passenger had pushed it just before a bend, then a driver did just after the passenger, it could cause over braking which is a cause for an accident.

 

Now i do agree that Watchdog can over dramatise things, however this issue is serious enough to get the manufacturer on the case big time calling back a load of cars to get them sorted out properly.

[ada205 2]

Out of interest, even if you can get your foot on the brake bar, can you actually apply sufficient force to significantly slow the car?

 

Yes. Many years back one of my best mates had a fiat, cant remember if it was a panda or uno, which had same set up. Another mate discovered he could get his foot on brake linkage whilst in passenger seat, through hole in foot well, which ment for the best part of a week, the driver would stall every time he tried to pull off, but in his own words, "why does the bag of ~@it play up only when it's dark!!!"

 

After finding out the truth, the lad also convinced his not so bright misses that the car was haunted and had a "friendly ghost" that would slow the car down for you if you drove to fast...Honestly, I'm not making this up...she was blonde!!

 

I miss those days.

Edited May 29, 2011 by ada205

[GLPoomobile 958]

even if you can get your foot on the brake bar, can you actually apply sufficient force to significantly slow the car? You aren't going to have much leverage without a pedal I wouldn't have thought,

 

Fair point Anthony. In one of the reports I read they said that they tested it at 10 mph and it slowed the car quite quickly, and couldn't pull away with it applied, but that's a lot different to how significant the effect would be at 30mph+.

 

I suppose that in 99% of cases the effect won't be significant and that's probably another reason why it's not been taken that seriously. I'm looking at this from the worst case scenario though - so for instance if you had some big, lanky lummax in the passanger seat, and let's say he goes for the full body stretch and put's all his weight against the footwell and presses down hard (I know I've done it before. Sometimes you need a good old stretch on a long journey ), just how much pressure could actually be applied to the brakes? You also have to consider how an unwary driver is going to react to anything like that, even if the effect isn't significant. People crash all the time because they react to ridiculous circumstances. And what if it happened on a soaking wet bend in the road? There's all sorts of possible circumstances that could lead to an accident.

 

I may be looking at the extreme side of this, and believe me I don't want to live in a nanny state, but it's such a fundamental flaw that has no right to be accepted when it could be so easily designed out. I wouldn't want to be the innocent party in an accident caused by another car that had crashed due to this fault.