Park While in Drive . . .

Ford has had to recall more than 750,000 F-150 pickups, Explorers, Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators and Aviators over a “transmission issue” that’s interesting because it’s the sort of issue that literally never happened in the Before Time because it could not have happened in the Before Time.

The issue?

While driving, the transmission shifts itself into Park. The recall soft-voices this, saying it “could increase the risk of a crash or injury.” Never mind what it does to the transmission when it shifts itself into Park while the vehicle is being driven. “Impacted vehicles may experience temporary engagement of their transmission parking pawl while the vehicle is in motion when certain shifts are commanded by the transmission, potentially damaging park system components.”

Potentially damaging? More like destroying.

It gets better.

“NHTSA said that Ford is aware of 24 allegations of property damage and nine alleged injuries, with two of those being allegations of emotional injuries, related to the issue.”

Italics added. I suppose people might be emotionally injured – traumatized – by the experience of their vehicle’s transmission shifting itself from Drive into Park while they’re driving down the road. The italics to drive home the important point about what’s happening now that could not have happened before the advent of electronically controlled automatic transmissions. Well, it could not have happened without the driver actually moving the gear selector from Drive to Park while the vehicle was in motion. How come why not? Well, because it was not physically possible – because in the Before Time – the gear selector operated a cable that went down to the transmission; when you moved the gear selector from Park to Drive (or from Drive to Park) that cable physically connected your right hand to the transmission. A mechanical lever would move from position to position, in correspondence with the PRNDL detents on the gear selector inside the car’s cabin. It was not physically possible for the transmission to shift itself into Park. The driver could of course do that – if he wanted to destroy the transmission or perhaps inflict some emotional injury on his passengers – but in that case, he’d be the responsible party and (the relevant point) he’d know he was the one who moved the gear selector from Drive to Park.

Then along came drive-by-wire gear selection and electronically controlled transmissions.

Drive-by-wire eliminated physical control over gear selection. The gear selector is still there, of course. Sometimes, there is even a lever that appears to move back and forth through the PRNDL pattern, though increasingly there are just buttons to push or a stalk you rotate to select the range. Regardless, it is the computer that controls the transmission that is telling the transmission which range to be in. When you move the lever or push the button or rotate the stalk, all you’re doing is sending an electronic signal that causes an actuator to actuate. The problem arises when the actuator actuates itself, which appears to be what’s happening (or might happen) to those three-quarters-of-a-million Ford and Lincoln vehicles. A glitch results in the transmission being commanded to go into Park while the vehicle is moving. Resulting in emotional injuries as well actual physical damage and injuries.

“Vehicle owners will be notified by mail and told to take their vehicle to a Ford or Lincoln dealer to have their vehicle’s Powertrain Control Module updated to the latest level software. Dealers will also inspect the vehicle’s transmission for park system damage and replace damaged transmission components as needed. There will be no charge for the service.”

Well, that’s nice of them. But it doesn’t really address the underlying problem, does it?

Drive-by-cable (as in the Before Time) was never even potentially dangerous. The worst that might and sometimes did happen was that the cable would snap or work loose and when that happened, you could no longer get the transmission’s gear selector to get the transmission into Drive or Park. It would be in Drive or Park or whichever of the other positions it was in when the cable snapped or worked itself loose. Maybe that meant you couldn’t drive the car – if the cable snapped when the transmission was in Park (because the car won’t move when the transmission is in Park. Or maybe you couldn’t engage Park when the time came to park because the cable snapped while you were in Drive (and still driving). In which case you could use the emergency brake – which was a separate, mechanical failsafe before that got electronically controlled.

You weren’t necessarily stuck, either – because if you were willing and able, you could crawl underneath the car and work the lever arm on the side of the transmission to get the transmission out of Park and into Drive manually; you could also just replace the snapped cable. This is not possible when an electronically controlled automatic glitches because you can’t get your hands on a glitch. It is something that has to be sussed out by a diagnostic computer.

The high-altitude view of this situation is something like the situation faced by the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The computer that controlled everything in the spaceship ended up trying to kill the astronauts. It glitched. Maybe things were better when things like gear selection were not controlled by computers – because they were incapable of glitching. Also, it’s not as if there’s some great advantage to be had by all this drive-wire/electronically controlled stuff. Ask anyone who has driven a car made before – roughly – the early-mid 2000s – when cars still have cables to control the throttle as well as engage Park and Drive and Reverse. Was it difficult to engage Park or Drive or Reverse in a circa 2000 or so model year vehicle? Was it less reliable?

To ask these questions is to answer them.

And also to beg some other questions!

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