The MG Windsor Moved On Its Own — Here's Why and How to Prevent It

A video doing the rounds on social media shows an MG Windsor moving on its own after being parked by its owner, eventually crashing into a roadside fruit cart and then a tree. ElecTree has found that the owner is from Ludhiana. We are withholding his name for privacy.

In the video, he can be seen running alongside the car, warning bystanders to clear the way as it rolls forward uncontrolled. After it got stuck against the tree, he wedged stones under the tires himself. The driver's door wouldn't open, so bystanders helped him break the driver's window, reach in, and shift the car into park. The rear does not show the ADAS badging which rules out any automatic intervention which could have prevented this.

How It Happened

Once the window was broken, the seatbelt is seen still buckled, with no one sitting in the driver's seat. That single detail explains the entire sequence of events.

The Windsor doesn't have a physical start-stop button, it relies on the key fob's proximity and the seatbelt sensor to judge whether a driver is present and ready to drive. When the owner opened the door to step out, the car applied its electronic parking brake automatically. When he closed the door again, the belt still read as buckled and the key was still in range, and since Drive was the last active mode before he'd stepped out, the car appears to have inferred a driver was present and ready to go. Without a start-stop button forcing a fresh, deliberate re-engagement, it released the parking brake and resumed creep in drive on its own. Because the owner ran alongside trying to stop it, the key stayed within range the entire time, so the car's proximity check kept being satisfied and it never received a signal to stop. Since the car assumed driver was inside, as a precautionary measure against theft, it did not allow opening of the door from outside.

This isn't unique to MG or the Windsor. Any keyless, start-stop-button-free EV that relies on seatbelt and key-proximity status alone to judge driver presence, without requiring a positive human action to re-engage drive, is vulnerable to the same failure mode. None of this has been officially confirmed by MG Motor India yet.

How It Can Be Prevented

• Leaving the belt buckled behind you, or simply not unclipping it, to silence the seatbelt reminder chime is a common habit among drivers, and it's exactly this that fed the car false information about someone being present. That habit needs to stop.
• OEMs should add weight sensors on the driver's seat, with a minimum threshold, around 50 kg, required before the car can be put into Drive. This would also guard against children left alone in a car engaging drive by accident.
• A physical start-stop button should be mandated across all EVs, not left optional. In this particular case, the driver may have used the button while getting out. Even with the seat belt buckled the car would have been switched off before exiting the vehicle.
• Whenever a door is opened and the electronic parking brake engages, disengagement should require manual re-engagement, only possible once the door is closed and the seatbelt is freshly fastened, rather than resuming automatically. This should be the case irrespective of the last used drive mode. This is a software-level fix every OEM could roll out via an update, since the underlying risk isn't limited to any one brand.
• If one faces a similar incident, instead of going near the car, first go away so that key is far from proximity and the car stops. One can then go near the car and open the door because the system has been reset.

We've reached out to the owner for his comments.