I recently bought a 2018 Edge. I absolutely love it but recently the auto tailgate came down on my elderly Mums head. It could have been nasty but she was ok. Basically she leant into the large luggage compartment to retrieve something from the back and accidentally activated the auto tailgate with her foot. The tailgate hit her head and did not stop closing.  This seems like a major flaw. Any advice?

I would have thought it'd use the same system as an electric window, where any extra load against the window motor (an arm for example) causes the window to stop closing.  You could test this by activating the tailgate and then pushing it up with your hand, it should stop immediately.  It needs to be something fairly solid though, assuming your Mum moved her head immediately that may not have put enough load against the motor to work.

The only way to avoid accidentally activating the foot switch would be to have a finger operated switch inside the tailgate...but that would then make the auto-tailgate pointless when you're carrying a load of shopping.  I agree it seems a bit dangerous but don't see how it can be avoided with that system.