Happened to me once, although it wasn’t quite mechanical malfunction. I was driving an old VW Rabbit when the throttle (no gas pedal in a diesel!) suddenly stuck on the floor. Was flustered for a second, but had the presence of mind to simply push in the clutch, shut off the engine, and coast to the side of the road. Turned out the (aftermarket) floor mat had pushed up in just such a way that the pedal had snagged on it and the spring return wasn’t strong enough to push it back up.
I had an extensive conversation about this with two family members who are auto racing aficionados. One referenced cases of mechanical problems but opined that a floor mat was to blame. The other discussed footage shot in the interiors of crashed race cars where the driver was quite certain he’d hit the brakes, but the footage showed that he stepped on the accelerator.
This is where I’m getting stuck. Who are the plaintiffs? Who are the defendants? What is the cause of action?
I suppose family members could try to bring an action against Bentley Inc. based on vehicle malfunction, but that runs into the evidential issue.
I can’t see Uncle Sam suing for the damage caused to the customs booths.
Would the injured customs officer have a claim (in theory), or would that be covered by workers comp?
Yeah, there can be cases where the accelerator pedal gets stuck, such as on a floor mat. But that’s not what’s claimed in the cases referred to as “Sudden Unintended Acceleration”. There, the claim is that the driver is stepping on the brakes, and the car nonetheless has positive acceleration. All cars, though, have brakes more powerful than the engine: If you floor both pedals, the car will slow down, not speed up (though more gradually, of course, than if you were just flooring the brakes). A stuck pedal also won’t cause the pedal to go in any further than it was pressed by the driver: It’ll result in continued acceleration, but it won’t start the acceleration.
And PP said the media was calling it a terrorist attack. He later claimed it was CTV tweet. The problem is that CTV only posted the tweet 30 minutes after PP made his comments. As far as I know the only station saying it was a terrorist attack prior to PP comments was Fox News. I know… shocking.
Just had my sixty-first birthday a bit over a week ago.
My next birthday will only last a minute. That will be my sixty-second birthday.
A very expensive car, indeed, if that’s what it was. Basically, what’s left of the Rolls Royce automotive heritage. Volkswagen bought the Rolls Royce automobile operation back in the 1990s, but they did not get the rights to use the name or logo. BMW got the rights to the name and logo, and now builds automobiles under that name, but Bentleys, now built by Volkswagen, are the only cars that are genuinely tied to the Rolls Royce heritage.
In every car that I have ever had, except my current one, the throttle has been connected mechanically to the accelerator pedal. Pushing the accelerator pedal directly, and unconditionally opens the throttle. Releasing the pedal, closes the throttle. Likewise, the brake pedal is mechanically/hydraulically connected to the brakes.
Now most of my cars have had cruise control, in which a separate system can also open the throttle, and a couple have had antilock brakes, wherein a separate system can release the brakes to avoid lockup. But for the most part, both throttle and braking were directly, mechanically, under the driver’s control.
More modern cars are drifting more toward fly-by-wire-type controls. In my present car, a 2016 Dodge Dart, there is no mechanical connection between the accelerator pedal, and the throttle. The accelerator pedal is just an electronic input to a computer, which has control over the throttle.
If you think, especially about something as complex as a Prius, you’d come to understand the need for the throttle to be completely under computer control. There’s no way to expect a driver to reasonably manage the complex interaction between the internal-combustion engine driving the wheels, and the electric motors also doing so.
Also, many hybrids and electric vehicle employ regenerative braking; wherein the car’s motion is captured by the motors, now acting as generators, to put that energy back into the batteries; rather than just wasting it by heating up and wearing down brake rotors and pads.
As you take these functions away from direct mechanical control by the driver, and hand them over to computers, the potential certainly exists for those computers to malfunction in a way that could cause the car to runaway uncontrollably.
Probably workers’ comp would cover the workers, but in turn, the agency handling the workers’ comp claim might turn around and go after Volkswagen if it thought that it could prove that it was a manufacturing defect in the Bentley that caused the accident. Or it might go after the estate of the driver.
I hadn’t really thought of this aspect of such things, until about a year or so ago, working under the same foreman I had been working under a few years before that, when I had a stack of drywall fall on me and break my leg. I said something about the unfairness of my employer being on the hook, indirectly (by way of an insurance company than handles the workers’ comp claim) for the costs of my injury, that was caused by another company. He said something suggesting a likelihood that my company, or the insurance company, probably went after the company that was responsible for the drywall that had injured me.
But that’s probably what’ll happen here. They will be covered by workers’ comp, and if the insurance company handling that claim believes it can assign blame and recover its costs from someone else for causing the mishap, they will probably do so.
Many years ago I almost T-boned another car doing precisely that. Managed to switch to the correct pedal just in time, but it still gives me the shudders when I think of it.
Well, that will happen until you overheat the brakes and/or the fluid boils. Once that happens, the brakes don’t do so much and the car can take off.
SUAAA makes a fine acronym, because I imagine “SU-AAA!!” is just the kind of thing someone would say who is experiencing Sudden Unintended Acceleration!
The brakes only have to hold the car back for a few moments until you figure out the situation, realize you have a stuck throttle, put it in neutral and turn off the freaking ignition!!
Well, yeah, that is my first instinct. If the engine is trying to run away from you, put it in neutral and let it pop itself if it doesn’t die when you turn the ignition off (a runaway diesel, for example). However, as evidenced by the people who’s Toyotas ran away from them due to the floor mat problem, not everyone has the presence of mind to do so.
My First thought, given that this was a 50-something married couple, was that they missed the KISS concert, weren’t in a good mood, had a fight in the car, and road rage ensued. I can imagine the driver yelling, “Screw you!” and hitting the gas, forgetting that a Bentley like that will hit triple digit speeds in a few seconds.
My first thought is they were fuckin’ HIGH AS FUCK!
In the absence of evidence that they were high, speeding, angry, arguing, or suicidal, I’m assuming he stepped on the wrong pedal for now.
At least they shared a last KISS.
I dunno. As I approach my 50s, I find myself getting into fewer and fewer altercations with my wife. Late 30s/early 40s was really peak. At this point, it’s just who cares?