Stuck accelerator
Today I have read another report of an elderly person driving right through a building and injuring a lot of folks.
The reason reported; a stuck accelerator.
Why is it that ‘stuck accelerators’ seem to afflict the elderly so often?
Is there an inherent defect in all late model Cadillac’s and Lincoln?
Is the ‘stuck accelerator’ hard to detect after an accident like that?
Inquiring readers want to know.
I have no idea, but I’d guess that it happens to everyone (duh). Perhaps elderly people are more likely to panic and cause accidents, while younger people are more likely to react quickly and take appropriate actions. Or perhaps the media is more likely to report accidents caused by elderly people - a helpless old woman killed by a malfunctioning piece of machinery makes for a more dramatic news story than a 17-year old kid in the same situation.
Yes, I know there are plenty of counterexamples - I know very good elderly drivers too, etc. - but I’m just talking overall trends.
Because, like the Yellow-Journalism reported Audi “unintended acceleration cases”, in almost ALL cases the real fault is a panicked person who stomps on the gas, holding it to the floor the whole time the car is running over people, animals, buildings, etc.
There are two simple truths about “unintended acceleration”:
I do not believe there are any production cars in the world that have an engine that can overpower brakes that are actually working at even 50% of braking force. I have tested this theory many times with rental cars, and have never found one that could do it. Even my Mustang GT, with 300 lb-feet of torque, will very quickly stop with one foot full throttle on the gas, and one on the brake.
In most all cars I have seen, there is this thing called a “key”. If this “key” is turned to the “off” position, the car often stops going. I remember a recent Fox “Police Wildest Chases” where a woman was barelling down the highway at 100+ mph, sceraming bloddy murder in her cell phone because she could not stop her car. While it is true that she burned out her brakes by simply not stepping once, hard on them (instead of riding them for miles and miles), no one asked her the “hard question” of why she was unable to turn the key to “off”. Which they demonstrated after the inevitable finish did actually shut off the car. But it wasn’t her fault, of course. :rolleyes:
IMO someone who is the “victim” of “unintended acceleration” where no physical defect can be found in the car to verify that it actually happened should be banned for life from possessing a driver’s license. However, since people like the AARP crusade violently against the concept that a 100-year old might have any kind of reduced mental or physical capacity to operate a vehicle, that will probably never happen.
My guess is that the accelereator is “stuck” beneath a foot that is firmly planted upon it. The old “she hit the gas when she should have hit the brake”.
That said I did once have the experience of a stuck accelerator, but I immediatly noticed when I turned the old Chevy truck on and it reved to about 1000000000 RPM. I immediatly shut if off and got a little WD40, ‘cause there aint nothin’ in the world that can’t be fixed with WD40 and duct tape!
stuck accelerator can happen, its happened to me (parked). I started the car, pumped the gas pedal, and a screw on the bottom of the gas pedal got caught in the carpet, causing it to stay down, and of course to rev the engine at a very high rate. didn’t happen while driving, but it easily could have. I guess I will never buy one of those chrome ‘surfer’ gas pedals again…
I have been in a vehicle with a stuck accelerator. A 1968 Kaiser ex-US Army dump truck. The rod connecting the accelerator to the throttle got itself welded to something in the engine compartment which presently escapes me. I would have said it was the ignition coil, but the truck’s a diesel. At any rate, it was some other high-flow electrical device. Anyways, the pedal was stuck quite firmly to the floor. We didn’t go crashing into buildings or pedestrians, the driver simply pushed in the clutch and we coasted into a parking lot. Push the engine stop button and all was well. Except for the batteries that got fried, and the rod that had to be pried off of the thing it was welded to, there weren’t any big problems.
My apologies…wrong link:
The right link: click here
It happens…
My friend and I had this happen in a 1970 Datsun truck. We were cruising down the highway and entered a small town, when my friend took his foot off the gas nothing happened, the truck just kept revving along at 60mph. There is some panic involved when your vehicle decides it is just going to keep going. The clutch got a workout as everytime we stopped at a light the engine would keep revving at 3500rpm, we had some fun popping the clutch and squealing the tires… we couldn’t help it… heh heh heh.
Once we got the truck home and took things apart we discovered the throttle cable had broken a few wires and these wires got hooked up in the linkage. It took all of an hour to replace the cable.
KCB615: Love the brush bars all the way around and over the deuce-‘na’-half!
I think the incident referred to in the OP is “sudden acceleration something-or-other”, and is caused by the brake and gas pedals being too close together, so it was easy to accidentaly hit the wrong one. Used to a big problem on Ford vans.
And Antracite: (point 1) I tried that once in my Jeep, but stopped before I got a definite result because it sounded like it was starting to rip the pads off the shoes. Gotta love 350 ft-lbs at 1800 rpm 
I am with Anthracite on this one. My elderly neighbor is so blind she can hardly function at home and yet she drives around. She totalled a car a couple years ago and now she is driving a new one. There are too many people like this driving around and they are a danger.
Happened to me once.
Appraently some mice got into the carburator or something and were stockpiling dog food…
I was just driving down a gravel road, pressed the clutch to shift, and then the engine started revving. So after a couple seconds of total confusion, I turned the car off. Tried starting it again, but it would just rev up again.
On a related note, ever try putting your car into cruise control when you’re in neutral?
I’m with Anth in that 99.9999% of the time it’s blatant, unabated human stupidity, but I think the stories here show that .000001% of the time, it really is a non-human error. My old Escort GT 5 speed would rev to 5 grand when I put in the clutch because of vaccuum problems, but when the clutch was engaged it’d pull it back down to normal, and sometimes the screw on the back of the pedal would catch on the carpet, but seeing as how I’m not an idiot, a toe slipped under the pedal would pull it free, so, sadly, no 140mph “stuck accelorator” problems. I wonder, though, if you ran from the cops for speeding, how easily you could get them to believe you about the pedal sticking? Probably hard to fake.
On old people driving: This old lady who goes to my church was driving along a few years ago and started messing in her huge ass purse to find something (hammer, maybe?). Her boat of a car jumped the curb, drove through a yard, and ran over a poor man who was tending his garden. He died. She wasn’t charged with anything, it was an ‘accident.’ She stills drives. ::sigh::
–Tim
Sometimes the pedal gets caught by the carpet…
Also, some cars have the pedals too close so people get confused & hit the gas instead.
I have had my accelerator stick while driving in really cold weather(-30f or so). It is a hard decision of whether you want to hit the brakes while it’s puching the engine, or just clutch into neutral and red line the engine hard. I guess a person who panicked when it stuck could just fail to stop at all, but anybody who wouldn’t at least hit the brakes while heading into a building shouldn’t have a license. On the other hand if it happened long enough in an old car with four wheel drums I guess the heat could cause the brakes to fade completely, but I’m with Anth, you would have to have a serious engine to brakes advantage to even make the wheels move at all. On the third hand I have seen a shitily installed aftermarket cruise control fail to release when the brakes where pushed.
Completely true. All cars sold in the US, anyways, have the ability for the brake to override the accelerator if both are hit at the same time. I’ve tried the same thing Anthracite mentions in many cars and it’s worked every time.
I think it’s confusion, or utter stupidity (more likely).
–tygre
Back when I was in junior high, I experienced the “unintended acceleration” problem at a go-kart track. It was totally my fault. 
The gas and brake pedals on these particular vehicles were both right-foot-operated, and all went swimmingly until our time was up and the guy came to wave us into the pits. Somehow, I couldn’t find the brake, and kept hitting the gas instead: on several goosings of the throttle, I whizzed through the tires and actually passed under a chain-link fence to the parking lot. That’s where I decided to lay off and just coast instead of trying again to brake.
No one was injured, and nothing was damaged. I went and did it again immediately (looking back, I’m surprised they let me), and managed to find the brakes that time.
I’ve never had it happen to me in a “real” vehicle, though. I’ve even driven some of those infamous Ford vans.
tygre wrote:
I think it’s just that there are no production cars with enough engine power and lousy enough brakes, for the engine to win if they get in a contest. It’s not that there is a special override mode, I don’t think.
By the way, I owned a very nice 1984 Audi 5000 Turbo back when the “unintended acceleration” fiasco broke, which I think was late '86. The car was fun as hell to drive, but its resale value plummeted after Ed Bradley aired the story on 60 Minutes. After that, 60 Minutes lost every bit of their credibility in my eyes. The segment was some of the most irresponsible journalism I’ve ever seen, and on a national news show, no less.
And then just about three or four years later, Ed Bradley did it again with his completely unfounded scare about Alar.
Yes, and it is truly amazing that our society allows journalists to get away with this sort of thing scot-free. Years after the “expose”, 60 Minutes even went so far as to make a wild speculation that the reason for the unintended acceleration was due to the Evil, Satanic, “antilock brakes”, which were obviously “not locking”, and thus allowing the car to go rampaging across the countryside.
The fact that:
just made the journalism look even more criminally negligent. IMO only, of course.
Back when I was a young lad of 18 or so, I was driving my friends 1964 Belaire (this is in 1980). It was an old ‘three on tree’ manual transmission. It didn’t have a gas pedal, only this rod sticking down. Well I’m driving along, and right when I pass city hall in my small town (pop. 1000) I push in the clutch to shift gears. The accelerator stuck in the carpet. I probably don’t need to tell you what happens when you hold the accelerator to the floor and then try to shift… The engine started racing wide open! I did the only thing I could think of… I got my foot off the clutch as soon as possible! Again, I probably don’t need to tell you what happens when you’re holding the accelerator to the floor and you dump the clutch. That’s right… right in front of the police station (city hall, jail, and fire department too) as a town meeting was letting out! It look to everyone that I was showing off in front of the police station and ‘doing burnouts!’ The one and only cop on duty, got in the town’s on and only cop car and came screaming after me! I got a ticket for reckless driving. (Actually I think the ticket was for “Driving in a manner other than reasonable and proper!”. Ahh to be a teen again.
Anthracite
What happens to the steering in your car when you switch the enginge off? In my car, I lose the power steering, and then the steering wheel is locked in position. Some might consider that to be a problem. I would also lose my power assisted brakes - again a bit of a problem.
I once had a very old MG Midget, and the accelerator often jammed in the full on position. A little scary the first time, but easy enough, if you remember, to pull it back with your foot.
Russell