Old people and stuck gas pedals again.

Factual Questions
1

Recent headlines from “obscurestore”

Driver 66 Gold Cadillac crashes into two-week-old restaurant

Driver, 84, injures three after gas pedal gets stuck

Woman, 71, says new shoes caused her to plow into Starbucks

Driver, 72, says stuck gas pedal caused her to crash into home.

What is the trend here? Is there a trend here? Or does the press not report the under age 60 stuck gas pedals?

2

I tend to chalk these up to age-related momentary bouts of confusion. It’s obviously an embarressing thing to do, so instead of admitting that they just did something stupid they say the throttle got stuck. There is also the very real fear that they may lose their licenses.

This is by no means a new phenonmenon. One of my grandmothers, who showed no signs of Alzheimer’s or related senility before her death, drove through a bank window back in the 1970s. Oops. She had a driver’s license right up until she died and I don’t believe she was involved in any other accidents. Just one of those things…luckily no one was injured…she was especially embarrassed because her husband was the bank’s vice president so everyone knew who she was.

One WAG as to why younger drivers don’t do this might be that their reaction times might be better. I’m willing to bet many inexperienced teenaged drivers accidently hit the gas while in drive while meaning to back out of a parking space but they are probably quicker to react to the situation and thus are able to avoid the front window of the Starbucks.

3

A more important question is what to do if your gas pedal sticks. That happened to me years ago, when I was still young (not that I’m not now). I turned off the ignition. I exited the expressway and coasted down the ramp to a gas station which was luckily at the bottom. I don’t know what else one can do, but that worked for me.

So I suppose that that happens much more frequently than the media reports, but in most cases, no serious harm is done. It could be younger people reflexively know what to do, but, on the other hand, older people in our wisdom should also know what to do.

4

Just yesterday a similar circumstance here in Sacramento, although the gas pedal really was stuck! Cops determined this by 200 feet of skid marks that led to where the car finally stopped. The driver plowed into a 4’ or so retaining wall on the top level of a parking garage. A huge chunk of concrete fell to the sidewalk below and the car teetered precariously over the edge, yet no one was injured. Retaining wall was built to withstand a car driving at 60mph; they figure this one was at 40. BTW, the car was a 1990 BMW.

5
      • Almost all reports of stuck gas pedals and unintended accelleration are driver error: of the hundreds attributed to the Audi 5000 in the US a few years back only a few ended up undetirmined. The only way to prevent it entirely is to remove the accellerator entirely.
  • The ignition will always turn the engine off.
  • In the US, it is one of the AARP’s dirty little secrets that some oldsters use prescription drugs or combinations thereof that probably should disqualify them from driving entirely. Increased testing would help, but the percentage of accidents is still small and many congresspeople are nearing that age themselves, so don’t hold your breath.
  • And younger people do it too. A local convenience store has burn-out marks almost all the way across the floor where a 30-something lady drove forward instead of reverse a couple years back, through the double doorway and right down the main aisle of the store. Luckily there wasn’t anyone in the way to hit. The owner of the store had left the tire marks on the floor as kind of a conversation piece. - MC
6

In the carburator, the butterfly was spring loaded. Unless the spring was physically broken (easy to show), the “pedal” cannot stick. In fuel injected cars, the fuel is not injected, if there is no pressure on the spring-loaded pedal. The computer will shut the engine if the fuel is injected while there is no mechanical pressure on the gas pedal.
Police cannot diagnose “stuck pedal” by skid marks (unless in California).

Peace

7

Dave Barry’s noticed this too. In his column at http://www.miamiherald.com/content/archive/living/barry/1999/docs/dec10.htm , he says about Florida:

8

This “old people” driving is a dilema. How else is one supposed to get around? Old or young, you do need a car in many parts of this country.
I’m 55 now, and I think that I would be willing to give up my license at 70 or so. If I could count on on-demand, reliable transportation from a taxi service or some alternative. Free, of course. I certainly won’t want to sit in my home and rot. No way.
But I won’t want to run over anyone either.
BTW; I don’t think that the stats back up you youngsters worries about old folks driving. So relax, OK? :smiley:
Peace,
mangeorge

9

mangegeorge, I have recently hear a bit on NPR about the oldersters and the car. :slight_smile: Anyway, this report found that in accidents involving senior citizens, they were often caused by failure to yield the right of way, NOT by bad reflexes. The study recommended a refresher course on right of way rules.

I agree with you that mobility is an issue for many. On the other hand, an elderly man in my complex clearly has Parkinson’s (or some other issue that causes shaking) and he drives all the time. A scary thought for me. Is his right to mobility greater than the hazard he poses to other drivers? Who decides?

10

mangeorge, I have argued this “older” driver issue many times. I guess all I can say is that people in our age group pay much lower insurance premiums than some of the people who regard us as bad drivers. That has to prove something, but I am less and less sure of what that something is.

peacesaid:

Speaking as a former mechanic, from back in the carburetted days, the butterfly valve can certainly stick whether the spring is broken or not. If you think otherwise, you obviously haven’t overhauled many carburetors. As to the fuel not being injected (in fuel injected cars) if there is no mechanical pressure on the gas pedal, how do you suppose these cars idle? And, how do you know what police can and cannot diagnose?

11

The trouble with turning off the ignition to cope with a supposedly stuck gas pedal is that you have just disabled the power steering, too.

I will be back in a while (I hope) with a cite for the study that the National Highway Transportation Safety (or whatever it’s called) did, proving that any car’s brake pedal is more than equal to the task of stopping a car with its engine racing, even with it accelerating up to 100 mph. They said, in other words, that all those stories about old people and stuck gas pedals are 99.9% hooey. The pedal wasn’t stuck–Grandma just stepped on the gas instead of the brake and froze.

12

The gas pedal stuck down on our old Dodge 4x4 the other day. It was about -10 and nothing was starting. I got in the truck and put my foot to the floor while cranking and the pedal stayed there.The linkage was white with frost. I visually traced the linkage and noticed the knuckle was frosted up. I had just bought a new,to me at least, product to spray on windshields to help defrost them. Sooo instead of crawling under a frozen up truck in the snow at -10 I thought What the hell. I tried it. It worked. The only thing I noticed is that if the deicer was 70 degrees it would have worked easier. Before spring I’ll have to give that knuckle a shot of oil or it will rust.
Now what was I saying???

13

South Carolina Drivers Licensed By Age and Sex as of January 27, 1998
Reported South Carolina Traffic Accidents by Age of Driver: 1997

Drivers 15-24 were in 52,617 accidents, and there were 385,808 licensed drivers age 15-24 (13.63% accident rate). Drivers 25-34 were in 42,601 accidents, and there were 543,167 licensed drivers age 25-34 (7.84% accident rate). Drivers 65 and older were in 14,546 accidents, and there were 347,857 licensed drivers age 65 or older (4.18% accident rate).

My understanding was that older drivers caused far more accidents per driver than younger ones; however, the statistics don’t seem to back this up. I suspect that most of the licensed drivers age 65 or older don’t actually drive on a regular basis. Any idea where to find statistics on that?

14

When it happened to me I did not have power steering. BTW, I still don’t.

As far as the butterfly valve on the carburetor, forgetting about the fact that few cars have carburetors now, that was not the only reason a gas pedal can stick. I believe in my case it was a linkage problem, and that is more likely than something happening in the carburetor, I believe, altho I’m ** CERTAINLY NOT**a mechanic.

15

A professor of mine once told us about being hit head on by an elderly driver. When she asked the guy and his wife why they didn’t respond to her honking the horn, the wife said, “Oh honey, he can’t hear!” I’d have been like, “Then what the %#@**& is he doing driving?”

16

Stuck throttles CAN happen. I was driving from Seattle to Everett one night and sped up to pass a car on I-5. Once I am past that car I take my foot off the gas to shed some speed. Nothing happens, the car just keeps going at full throttle.

I’ve a car full of friends (I was in college at the time) and they don’t notice anything is wrong until I tell them. I was going about 85 when I started my maneuvers.

I put the car in neutral but the engine kept going at full force and sounded like it wanted to explode so I put it back in gear. Turned on my hazards, pressed the breaks as hard as I could without locking up the tires and judiciously applied the emergency brake until I could pull over and finally come to a stop. Took almost 2 miles to do this (fortunately traffic wasn’t bad).

When I got pulled and could look at the engine (while talking to may mechanically inclined dad on a phone) I found that a throttle flap (not the proper name) was stuck in the open position. I pushed it down and never had another problem with it.

But the stories of the OP are just user error, I’m sure.

17

There is an older man who works with my dad who does the same thing. His hands do shake horribly, to the point that he has great difficulty even moving a computer mouse. However, the shaking in his hands ceases if he is gripping an object–such as a piece of paper, or a steering wheel–with both hands. He has an excellent driving record, and from my observations poses little risk to other drivers. The man you describe could have a similar situation.

18

Could it be that older drivers are actually safer (better) drivers than younger folks? That the real problem is that they tend to drive slower, and take forever to park etc? In other words, they just get in the freakin’ way?
Guinastasia, my youngest daughter used to refer to the horn as the “hello”, because her mom was one of those many people who used it as just that. Honk honk, wave wave, hellooo.
My hearing is still fine, but I tend to ignore honks.
Deaf persons do just fine without the ability to hear,IMO.
Peace,
mangeorge

19

I had a beater deathmobile Skylark that had a sticky gas pedal in the late '80s. This only happened near the end of its life, when all its wheels were threatening to fall off in mid-transit, but I would have to stick my toe under the pedal to pop it up sometimes IIRC.

A coworker of mine has a Dad with Parkinson’s. In the coworker’s experience, it’s not the shaking that makes those who suffer from this disease unsafe drivers, it’s the impaired reflexes. For instance, if he falls forward he cannot get his hands up in time to catch himself, and he falls on his face. For this reason they won’t let him hold the baby unless he’s seated.

Even though he still insists on driving, no one will agree to be his passenger.

FWIW, when I periodically exhume my car from whatever snowbank it’s in here in Chicago and brave the traffic, I find that the sample group of idiots on the road, emboldened by the bad weather for god-knows-what reason, has no discernable skew for age.

20

Okay, here we go. The actual report I think is here, except that it isn’t there. :frowning:
http://www.volpe.dot.gov/opsad/pubs.html
It’s called “Pollard, J. K. and Sussman, E.D. An Examination of Sudden Acceleration. Final Report No. DOT TSC NHTSA 89-1.” But as far as I can tell, they don’t have it posted anywhere on the Internet. It says you can e-mail Pollard at http://www.volpe.dot.gov/opsad/bios/jpoll.html and ask him to send you a copy.

So here is some other stuff regarding what they call “Sudden Acceleration” or sometimes “Sudden Unintended Acceleration” or “SUA”.
http://www.autonews.com/html/main/stories/nhtsa15.htm

http://www.safetyforum.com/sua/

Then there’s a fascinating transcript of ABC’s 90-second sound bite about this, especially concerning the notorious Jeep Cherokee “sudden acceleration”.
http://more.abcnews.go.com/onair/ptl/html_files/transcripts/ptl0507a.html
Stuck gas pedal and turning off the ignition:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/pgs56thru58.htm

http://members.aol.com/is1lael/page5/chap10a.htm