Shoppers at Tesco Pusat Bandar Puchong were witness to some drama yesterday afternoon, when a white Perodua Myvi rammed into the building, through glass.
According to the person who recorded the aftermath, posted on a Puchong community Facebook group, the 4.24 pm incident happened when the driver accidentally stomped on the accelerator pedal when he or she was parking, arrowing the car through the glass and into the building. Apparently, a McD staff was hit but no lives were lost, thankfully.
Some would be going “Myvi again!”, but with what seems like half (or more) of the cars on our roads being Myvis, the likelihood of Malaysia’s most popular car involved in incidents is high. Conversely, an accident involving, say a Peugeot 308 GTI, would be a collector’s item.
If the headline caught your attention, it’s no clickbait. Incidents of pedal misoperation are actually pretty common worldwide, and Japan has this issue too as it’s an ageing society and seniors remain active. That’s a good thing, but mistakes do happen. I personally know of a case where an old uncle rammed into his own house. But soon, these incidents might be a thing of the past.
It’s because Perodua has been rolling out cars with the Advanced Safety Assist (ASA) suite of active safety features. It all started with the third-generation Myvi in 2017, where the top AV variant debuted ASA. The upgraded ASA 2.0 then appeared on the Aruz in 2019, and even entry models Axia and Bezza can now be had with ASA. The Ativa took things up a notch with ASA being standard across the range, and top models adding on blind spot assist and semi-autonomous driving features.
ASA includes Pre-Collision Warning, Pre-Collision Braking (AEB), Front Departure Alert and Pedal Misoperation Control. The latter works by preventing the car from moving forward when an obstacle is detected by the stereo cameras, preventing accidental acceleration. This Tesco Puchong incident is exactly what PMC was designed to prevent.
ASA was expanded to the 1.5H and 1.3X variants of the Myvi in a mid-2020 update. The white G3 Myvi you see here is a base 1.3G, which does not have ASA.
If you’re asking why doesn’t Perodua put ASA in all its cars, well, the company sells the most affordable cars in Malaysia and cost is of course a factor. In any case, the market leader has been pushing boundaries with safety tech in the affordable scene, starting with the G3 Myvi in 2017. Four years on and AEB still isn’t a common feature in cars below RM100k, even in the non-national scene, and the just-facelifted 2022 Proton Iriz and Persona maxes out at stability control.
If this safety trend by Perodua continues in this trajectory, one day, all but the most basic variants of cars coming from Rawang might have ASA, and incidents such as this would be largely a thing of the past.
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
