Have you ever left your car in gear while getting out of it? I haven't. But it turns out a lot of people are leaving their cars in gear and Ford came up with a new system that will automatically put your car in park.
Ironically, I saw a few days ago, somewhere on the internet a video of a guy that went out of his car to realize he left it in reverse. The driver tried to pull his car to stop it from rolling, sees it doesn't work and manages to get inside the car. As he enters the car, the driver smashed the gas pedal (instead of the break of course), hit a motorcycle and fell into the water afterwards. Ford will now feature a "Return to park" option that will be available on every new 2017 Ford Fusion. The shifter will automatically return to park when the owner tries to exit the car. It will provide more peace of mind and will obviously prevent such accidents. Ford explains that a vehicle in motion without control, even at a very low speed, can be damaged or can also damage other cars or even worst kill people or animals . The system is designed to automatically return in park under these conditions.
However, Ford isn't the first car manufacturer to put thsi kind of feature in its cars. I used to work for a BMW dealership (nothing exciting, I was washing the cars) and a lot of them had this feature. I remember leaving the car on (engine on), sparying it with water, getting back in the car and *trying* to drive with the door opened. Yes *trying* because the car would automatically return to park when the doors were opened. It was some sort of a challenge, moving the car, with the doors opened but without it automatically going into park. I had to sloooooooooowly depress the brake pedal and I found myself "hacking" the system. Fun fact, turns out my boss got fired and he's been replaced by an old guy that used to have his own washing company and now he had the opportunity to work for BMW. He always drove with the doors opened. All the time. But one day, he got to drive a Bimmer with the auto-park feature. It took at least a good 5 minutes before I told him he had to shut the door and he looked at me and said to me "I've been driving with the doors opened all my life, I know what I'm doing here!". Of course he had no choice but to listen to me and then started to drive with the doors closed.
Source: Media.Ford.com
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