2024 Volkswagen Golf R

Last night when driving home, I came to a stop at a red light. I put the car in first gear and held the brake, waiting for the light to turn green. When the light turned green, I proceeded to drive like normal, when suddenly I stalled out! I felt like my e-brake was on, but it clearly wasn't. I started the car back up and the same thing happened. I had cars piling up behind me and the one closest to me I could tell was very close to making contact with me. On the third attempt, I overpowered the system and "pushed through" the brake, which I know wasn't good for the vehicle. I was very confused what might have been going on as I'm a pretty experienced driver and have never encountered this kind of thing before, at all. Upon researching, I've found within the VW community, the problem is tied to the hill-assist feature. Apparently in the MK8 Volkswagen manuals, the hill-assist was changed from previous generations and now when you are in gear and release the brake, you have to wait for three seconds for the hill-assist to disengage. There is no other way to drive the car forward. This is CLEARLY a safety concern, as I have read of two rear end accidents in my brief time researching this issue. In fact, a member of the VW community has submitted a complaint through NHTSA already. The tracking # is 11587076. I feel strongly that this is a safety issue, there has already been accidents and at some point something major will happen, for example if somebody needs to hit the gas to get out of a bad situation and the hill-assist prevents forward movement. I believe Volkswagen needs to address this issue. Can your agency help get that moving for us? Thank you.

My car has a manual transmission and a hill hold system that is supposed to aid in starting when the car is stopped on an incline. However, the system is implemented so poorly, I feel it is a safety hazard. This is at least the third car I've owned with a system like this, but it's the first time I've felt unsafe driving a car with it. I've done some testing with it and it appears that the only parameter VW uses to release the hill hold is time. That time is about 2 seconds. Nothing the driver can do with the accelerator or clutch pedal will cause it to release faster than 2 seconds. If you try to be aggressive with gas and clutch, the best outcome is that you prematurely wear the clutch from excessive slip. The worst is the car stalls. The steeper the slope, it appears the more aggressively the system tries to hold the car in place. This makes it even worse, because anyone who has driven a manual transmission is going to reflexively be more aggressive with the gas and clutch. That's what their experience has taught them and it's going to almost inevitably end up with the car stalling. I view this as a huge safety issue. There are times when the best thing a driver can do to extract themselves from a potentially unsafe condition is to immediately get themself out of it by driving clear. If they are on a incline, in this car they have no option but to sit there an additional 2 seconds. That 2 seconds can be the difference between safety and injury, or even death. If that driver reverts to their experience and aggressively works that gas and clutch, they could stall the car and add even more time before they can extricate themselves. In the other cars I've had with this system - including a VW Mk6 GTI, depressing the accelerator pedal enough to take the engine off idle would cause the hill hold to release. Obviously, they incorporated input from the Throttle Position Sensor to release the hold. They appear to have omitted that critical override.