And the faulty throttle. Don’t forget about the faulty throttle. :rolleyes:
The ignition is off, but the engine and all the accessories are still turning and functioning. IF you have a standard transmission, leave it in gear, and leave the clutch engaged. The car’s inertia is powering all those things via the drive wheels.
Might want to run outside and double check. The detent button is designed to keep the car from entering reverse while in forward motion, not neutral.
Quite the opposite Joe-Bonkers,
When a engine is increasing speed it is at its lowest vacuum and when decelerating the max vacuum is achieved.
My 1st pick-up was a 1948 GMC and it had vacuum operated windshield whippers that would stall while accelerating and flop like Joe when slowing down:D
My windshield also cranked open a couple inches for a wonderfully soothing breeze
after a day bucking hay bales;)
Drivers’ ed (and maybe the rules of the road books) should teach all the worst case scenarios. People may forget them in a panic–or they may come back to them suddenly. I’ve had two of the problems I was taught, the hood opening while I was driving at speed and loss the power assist to (a very big car’s) brakes. Both were in pretty heavy traffic. I think I would have figured out what to do on my own (look through the gap under the hood; push really hard) but I distinctly remember hearing the drivers’ ed instructions in my head right as it happened. This was about 10 and 20 years after I had the class.
I posted the message after testing it on the drive in to work. I will give it another try on the way home, but I am very certain that it prevented me from shifting at all.
I have some data on this, from a couple dozen cases of coasting down very long (7+ mi) hills with my car in neutral and the engine off. (I’m not saying this is an especially smart thing to do, though I’ve had no trouble with it.)
The first few brake applications are normal, until the vacuum in the accumulator is depleted. Then the pedal effort necessary for a certain amount of braking gets substantially higher - at a guess, strong braking goes from requiring 20 lbs of pressure to something like 80. It’s a little unnerving at first, until you realize that you have full control and there’s nothing very challenging about generating pedal force equal to half your weight.
I never tried a panic stop under these conditions, but nothing about what I experienced suggested this would be especially difficult.
The loss of steering power assist is much less pronounced. This is no doubt because on any normal road at any speed above about 15 mph, the actual deflection of the front wheels from straight is a few degrees at most - and wheels that are rolling are inherently easy to steer.
Did you listen to the 911 call? Sounded pretty calm to me until they approached the intersection and crashed.
http://www.momlogic.com/2009/09/911_call_released_in_stuck_accelerator_crash.php?page=2
I agree that more driver’s education would be a good investment for all concerned. But I think a cost-benefit analysis would find driving home the point about not talking on the phone and texting or watching videos while driving about eleventy-billion times more effective than more emphasis on once-in-a-lifetime emergency situations. How many of those accidents took place on the same day as this one?
I also think car companies and rental agencies should use some judgment in introducing safety-sensitive non-standard features into the rental car fleet. Introducing new features to consumers through rentals is OK for something like satellite radio. It’s not such a great idea for ignition and transmission functions.
Many years ago. a Detroit woman was driving down 8 mile road when her accelerator became stuck. She bailed out of the car and suffered abrasions. Her car smashed into a pole .
When asked why she did not turn off the car, she said she thought it would instantly stop and she would fly through the windshield. Being ignorant of how cars work, is not new.
All the more reason to beef up driver ed programs. Driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do on a regular basis, and ignorance is dangerous.
I suffered “uncontrolled acceleration” once, when the throttle pedal on my 81 diesel Rabbit got stuck on a bunched-up floor mat. Actually, hard to call it uncontrolled, as the thing just didn’t go very fast. After a few seconds of WTF?!? I just turned off the engine. No power steering to lose, the vacuum boost on the brakes never did work in that car, and I don’t think there was even a steering wheel lock.
I can’t believe no one has proposed the Flinstone Method…you know…boots on the ground.
Seriously, instead of dialing 911, I suggest an individual in such a position fire up Vista, Google this page, read through the dozens of often conflicting posts, analyze said posts, and apply the most appropriate remedy - while- at the same time, kissing their arse goodbye.
Conflict or not, it ought to be pretty obvious that the optimal approach is to put the car in neutral; if that doesn’t work, shut off the engine.
If that doesn’t work either, find an empty bit of road you can drive along until you run out of fuel. 
Devil’s adocate here.
Is it possible that the victims did try to shift into neutral but it didn’t work either due to mechanical issues such as the shifter being blocked from going into N from D or software issue such as the shifter was in N but the car keeps accelerating.
What sort of mechanical issue would block the shifter from going into N from D? It can’t go anywhere else.
Not mechanical, electronic.
There is no mechanical connection between the control on the dashboard and the actual transmission. It’s just a joystick that tells the cars’ computer to shift.
Toyota has posted up an instructional video on stopping a car in the event of a stuck accelerator:
http://www.toyota.com/recall/videos/stoppingprocedure.html
Full recall info page:
I tried it today. Found a long gentle downhill, put the gearbox in neutral, and killed the engine. Jiggled the brake pedal a few times to piss away residual vacuum, then stomped on the pedal.
I could not come anywhere close to locking up the wheels.
I believe even more firmly now that it would be impossible for brakes without vacuum assist to overcome a 275-horsepower V6 running WOT.
So is that a yes (kind of)? A glitch could allow the driver to shift to neutral and yet the car could keep accelerating?
As I understand it, Neutral is just a mid-position on the joystick, and the glitch is that the computer doesn’t recognize it when it is in runaway acceleration. But it isn’t very clear; Toyota is not releasing details on this.