Why can a vehicle still accelerate when the emergency brake is engaged?
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Many cars don’t have emergency brakes. Most very modern cars do, and the government is expected to make emergency brakes law soon.
The emergency brakes, are not actually a separate system – it’s the same brake system as the regular brake – however, when a radar, camera or laser sensor on the front of the car detects that you are about to hit something, the ABS computer will activate full braking.
There is a related system which is not completely automatic. The car monitors how quickly and hard you press the brake pedal. Because most people don’t press the brake hard enough in an emergency, a computer monitors this, and if you press the brake unusually hard and fast, but not full, the computer will override you and give full emergency braking.
In both of these cases, the emergency braking computer will also send an emergency signal to the engine computer telling it to deactivate the accelerator pedal so that the car can’t accelerate.
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