Brake Pedal Behind the Times?

I drive a vehicle with an automatic transmission. I would rather drive either a Jeep tricked out with all the off-road accoutrements or a cruiser style motorcycle with some rumble. However, I have children and not a lot of cash. Ah well, I'm not due for my mid-life crisis just yet, anyway.

Anyway, as I was heading home from work today, accelerating and decelerating through traffic, the configuration of the gas and brake pedals caught my attention. Now, I recall learning in some driving class or video all the dangers of following too closely behind another vehicle, especially in bad weather. To drive the point home we were given statistics concerning the time it takes to lift the foot from the gas pedal, transfer it to the brake pedal and depress it. Add this eternity to the issue of your vehicle's mass, velocity and the time it takes to bring it to a halt and it's a wonder we're ever able to stop at all. Understand I am not really trying to make fun of the issue of safe driving. I am all for making it to my destination alive and if terribly important statistics delivered to driving students in dire tones helps accomplish that, well, yippee.

Too, let us not forget that training is not the only tool in our arsenal for combatting traffic tragedy. Engineers have been improving automobiles since the day they dreamed the things up. Anti-lock brakes, improved tire design and specifically engineered weight distribution are some of the advancements in just the field of motion impedance...which brings me to my point.

With all of this technological advancement why are the brake and gas pedals still designed the way they are? In my van, and in most cars I can remember driving, the gas pedal is lower than the brake pedal. It is on the right, directly in line with right leg while the brake pedal is set left of center to the right leg's alignment. Also, the gas pedal is longer, stretching pretty much to the floor, while the brake pedal is typically a relatively small square.

Now, if you wanted to quickly transfer your foot from the accelerator to the decelerator wouldn't you reverse all of that so that you foot could simply slide off the gas to the right where it could not help but catch and depress the brake as quickly as possible? If those terrible statistics about the interminable time it takes to transfer the foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal are so important why haven't we made some simple physical changes to improve them?

These are the sorts of things I muse about when left to my own devices...