Why must you hold the brake down before starting the engine?

bmwexecutive said:

Just curious: why is it required that you hold the brake pedal down before pushing the start engine button if BMW employs the new Start-Off Assistant feature that prevents your car from rolling backwards when starting it on an incline?

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Way back in the late 1980's there was an incident with the Audi 5000s in which a lady was parked in the garage and started the car. She claimed the car started in drive and launched forward into the wall of the house. Several more reports popped up and lawsuits started.

It seemed some computer gremlins caused unintended acceleration and multiple deaths and hundreds of accidents were reported.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=il&vol=1922763&invol=1