Drive by brake? What??

Drive by brake

Last week, Edmunds reported that a 2025 Dodge Charger EV they’ve been testing began an unintended acceleration. This week Dodge produced an answer: drive by brake, which it turns out is a feature. Well this needed some digging.

We’ve examined the car’s manual during our recent symbols update and had come across anything remotely like drive by brake. So we dug in again searching for the phrase as well as the word “message” end to end. That last one was an assumption that, at minimum, if the car began to move due to an actual feature, the instrument panel would inform the driver.

Nothing.

So here’s what we found on Drive by brake. It refers to a system where a vehicle’s brake pedal can be used to control its speed and potentially accelerate if the accelerator fails or is malfunctioning. This feature is also known as “Drive by Brake” or “Drive by Wire”. It allows the driver to maintain a low level of power and constant acceleration (up to a certain speed) to safely continue driving, rather than being stranded.

Ok, that would seem to be a reasonable idea, and one that would certainly warrant some mention and explanation in the vehicle’s owner’s manual so that the driver could actually use it at a time of need!!

It should be noted that the system is used in Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram vehicles as well.

Engineers noticed a couple of faults that likely led to the triggering of drive by brake, which they also believe is now resolved with a software update. They also softened the problem by calling it unexpected acceleration.

Finishing the article, the author noted that he was “surprised that such a feature wouldn’t have been bundled with appropriate and obvious in-vehicle notifications.”

Exactly…

Maybe we should just call this another owner’s manual rant!

Check out the Edmunds article here.

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