A lot of wrecks on YT, which are more sideswipes than head-on t-bones, will have at least vehicle just keep on keeping on, only stopping when it hits something else.
It always seems to be young or old drivers with the runaway vehicle problem. I don’t think any vehicle is being sold where the engine can overpower the brakes. Too many drivers can’t or won’t fully press the brake, won’t fully turn the wheel, etc. That said, maybe the floor mat was bunched up under the pedals keeping them from fully pressing.
I blame power brakes.
I had an F350 with the Powerstroke diesel. The vacuum pump which powered the brake booster died on a trip. I found that as long as I was fully aware that I had no power assist, I could drive the truck more-or-less safely, but it meant that I had to step on the brake pedal with both feet if I wanted to stop quickly.
I think that new drivers are probably afraid to apply that much force, and are probably not taught to try.
It’s been so long I can’t find an on-line news reference…
But there was a woman in Mesa AZ, probably in the late 80’s-early 90’s that had a Geo Metro that “wouldn’t slow down”. When they finally got it stopped, strangely, nothing was found to be wrong with the car. No one would come out and just say “she faked it for attention”, but yeah, she faked it for attention.
You can be sure, because a month or so later, it happened again.
She ended up moving out of state, probably to hide, or try again to a more sympathetic audience. Wonder where she is now.
I don’t know anything about new cars. But for older cars, turning off the engine while driving will result in the loss of power steering and power brakes. And if the key is turned back a little more, the steering wheel lock will engage.
I read that the police officer braking in front of the Pilot caused the Pilot’s collision avoidance system to engage, and the Pilot collided with the Charger at 50 mph.
So evidently the brakes weren’t completely out of commission, physically.
Been looking for something about that too. Nothing wrong with the car either time.
My wife’s aunt drove her car into a bank leaving the parking lot. Of course it was in drive instead of reverse and she panicked. She was old and she knew the local police chief since he was a child and he came and picked her up, had the car towed back to where she lived. It was a very old Chevy Malibu with less than 20K miles on it since she never drove anywhere outside of that small town. So old it was built like a tank, and barely damaged compared to the wall of that bank. I don’t she ever drove again after that. That kind of thing happens. When someone is driving down the highway and says their car won’t stop, says the brakes don’t work, can’t shut off the ignition (possibly a bad idea anyway), and a police car has to get in front of them and stop the car with their own brakes, you know it’s driver and not the car.
When someone says their car won’t stop because they won’t take their foot off the gas pedal they’ll also say the engine won’t turn off, and they can’t shift into neutral. Other ways to stop the car will fail also. This is not about sudden acceleration problems or any mechanical failure.
Before there were cell phones did this happen to anyone? Not about panicking after stepping on the gas instead of the brake, I mean someone driving on a highway for miles claiming they can’t stop or even slow down a car.
You mean before car braking and acceleration were controlled by electronics? Cell phones were not the only thing that changed between the 80s and now.
It does seem unlikely that the electronics controlling the accelerator, braking, and shifting all failed at the same time. But those are all systems that can fail without user error.
This kid would have been starving for attention to have faked this. There’s dash cam footage from the cop car (see video below) showing the Pilot absolutely flying down a narrow town street at night, and the whole thing didn’t end until he rear-ended the cop car pretty damn hard. If he didn’t total both cars, he probably came close.
Electric power steering is pretty common in newer cars, but I’m not sure it’s active when the key is in the accessory position. Brakes are still vacuum-assist, so with the vacuum reservoir under the hood, you usually get one or two good firm presses on the pedal before the assist goes away, and then you have to really stomp hard on the pedal to get significant braking.
No manual-transmission vehicle will engage the steering wheel lock unless the gear selector is in park.
Before cell phones, cars didn’t have push-button start. If you wanted to turn your engine off while rolling down the highway, you just turned the key from the run position to the accessory position.
Cars also didn’t have electronic push-button PRNDL selection with esoteric, non-obvious behavior. If you wanted to put your car in neutral while rolling down the highway, you could do it, even with the accelerator pedal to the floor.
They don’t have to fail, it’s enough of a problem if their normal functionality is not what you’re used to or expecting.
I recently saw a ‘reel’ (FB video) presented by an Asian woman who says she’s a driving instructor. She said that in the event of a runaway car, shift to Park. (IIRC, the car she was demonstrating had a pull-up button – like a window control.) She said that if you use the button ‘normally’, the car will think it’s an error and not do anything; but if you hold the Park button then the car thinks, ‘Oh. S/h really means it,’ and the car will ‘come slowly to a stop.’
I don’t know if that would work on the Prius. But I do know that if you shift into Neutral while driving, it will go into Neutral. (I’ve moved the lever inadvertently a few times.)
Yes. The case of the woman in a Geo Metro happened when there were cell phones but not electronic controls like that. @Machine_Elf points out a case where there was a problem with a modern car. Seems absurdly stupid that you can’t shift a car into neutral with a simple mechanical control.
It’s good that it has this feature, but a driver will have to have studied the manual in advance to know that:
they’re supposed to put the car in P (not N) if it’s running away with itself, and
to get it into P while rolling, they need to hold to button for a few seconds.
The average driver will not have reviewed the owner manual for how to disable a runaway car, so they won’t know that you have to hold the button for a few seconds - besides which, their first impulse when hauling ass down the highway (if they haven’t studied the manual" is not going to be “I should put it in park.”
Unconventional user interfaces for potentially dangerous machines operated by the great unwashed masses is guaranteed to cause disasters from time to time. FWIW, a bizarro PRNDL selector is what killed Anton Yelchin:
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), the manufacturer of the Grand Cherokee, was aware of 2014 and 2015 models having a high rate of rollaway incidents due to a gearshift design that could make it difficult for the driver to determine whether the vehicle was in park or still in gear. FCA had already recalled all 2014–15 Grand Cherokees for this concern in April 2016, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin’s death. Following his death, FCA accelerated the recall campaign and took steps to get the affected Jeeps repaired more quickly than originally planned.[53]
Older cars could certainly have the throttle cable stick or get caught on something also. Not at all uncommon. Or the carb slides could stick–I had that happen on a motorcycle and it resulted in my worst crash ever–in the ER with a severely bruised kidney. My first experience with fentanyl and I was very grateful.
Other articles I’ve read on this incident say that the electronic fail-safes on the Pilot make it VERY unlikely this was the cars fault, but we’ll see.
