On Sunday, August 20, 2017 at 4:55:08 PM UTC+1, NY wrote:
"T i m" wrote in message
...
- you only need see the number of reports
of cars that manage to leap across streets from a high level and land up
in or on buildings the other side of the road. Usually drivers with
automatic transmission and a stuck throttle cable - they start it, think
"oh its making a bit of noise", ignore that, then slap it in gear
anyway. Next thing they know, it sets off like a scaled cat and does a
good Batmobile stunt!)

Is that how a lot of these accidents occur - often involving elderly
drivers. I'd assumed that the driver put their car in gear, touched the
throttle slightly too hard and then panicked and hit the accelerator instead
of the brake to get them out of the mess.

In a manual you'd have several opt-outs: you could press the clutch, you
could take your foot off the accelerator and the car would probably stall
rather than carry on crawling forward.

In any automatic car I'd always let the brake off cautiously, ready to
re-apply it if the car did something unexpected, and then if all was well,
transfer my foot to the accelerator to drive off.

Or between the car park and a boat even. ;-(

http://www.mosesinsurance.com/Portal...esized-600.jpg

That must have been going at a fair speed to jump across the gap and land
with its front end on the boat rather than nose-diving into the water.


The only time I had problems with a stuck throttle cable was on my mum's
(manual) car when I was learning to drive. I came to a steep up-hill so I
changed down into second and pressed the accelerator down. As I came towards
the top of the hill and changed up into third, the engine raced a bit but I
thought I'd just cocked up the clutch/accelerator co-ordination. When I
changed up into fourth, it happened again but I let the clutch up before my
brain was fully engaged and had processed "that's twice I've cocked up - if
there another explanation?". And the car, now on the level, took off like a
scalded cat.

My first instinct was to press the clutch to disengage the engine that was
propelling the car out of control, but I realised that it was not a good
idea to relieve a fast-racing engine of all its mechanical load (!) so I
pressed the footbrake hard and very gingerly turned off the ignition key,
taking care to only turn the engine off, to the "accessory" position and not
so far as to engage the steering lock (*) and let the car slow down, only
then did I press the clutch to avoid the car lurching to an abrupt halt. It
was a bit unnerving. My dad and I looked under the bonnet and sure enough
several strands of the clutch cable had freyed off and were jammed inside
the sheath of the cable. It was my dad who had the challenge of driving the
car back home, using the slow-running control of the choke to vary the
engine speed and not touching the accelerator pedal at all. All went well
until we stopped to turn into the drive, and then he instinctively touched
the throttle to set off, and the car careered down the drive towards the
lounge window. He left some impressive skid marks in the gravel!

(*) I've since learned that steering locks don't work that way: the steering
will remain free even if you turn the key right to the off position, and
will only lock if you remove the key.

No speed involved. The impact would push the boat away from the quay and it wouldn't take a lot of force to do it