On Sun, 20 Aug 2017 16:54:59 +0100, "NY" wrote:

snip

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.

I had to move my mates Range Rover the other day and when trying to
park it nose-on to the house wall again it went so far then didn't
seem to want to go any further. I assume it's fitted with some form of
crash protection (I wasn't going to press the throttle harder to find
out!).

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.

Quite.


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.

Same here. A mate drives all autos with both feet ... that sounds very
dangerous to me but he's done it for years.

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.

I'm wondering if initially the boat was nearer, the car fell onto it
and then the gap widened to the length of the mooring ropes or till
the car grounded on the dock?


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.

Makes the heart beat faster. ;-)

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.

Well done. I would imagine many would have panicked.

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.

I've had throttle cables snap (car and bike) but (luckily) only just
give me no throttle.

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.

Yup, that's what I did.

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!

And elsewhere no doubt!

(*) 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.

I'm not sure they all do / did but I don't think I'd like to test it
ITRW just in case (and I might even kill the engine then put the
ignition back on again (as it would also provide brake lights etc)).

Cheers, T i m

"T i m" wrote in message
...
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.

Well done. I would imagine many would have panicked.

My dad commented afterwards that the first he realised of the problem was
when the car braked hard. I imagine I was stunned into silence while I dealt
with the emergency!

I worked out afterwards that the force on each conn rod with an engine
racing at 7000 rpm (the redline speed on cars that have rev counters, which
this didn't) peaks at about the same as the weight of the car. I remember
thinking, in the split second before I decided that pressing the clutch was
a Bad Idea, that if the engine threw a piston, it would be "expensive" :-)

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.

I've had throttle cables snap (car and bike) but (luckily) only just
give me no throttle.

I suppose that if the cable hadn't frayed and then jammed in the sheath, all
the strands would have broken one by one until one day mum would have
pressed the accelerator and the car wouldn't have moved - and if that had
happened just as she'd set off from a junction, she'd have been a sitting
duck with vehicles bearing down on me. I've had that happen when my Golf
Mark 3 developed intermittent problems with a throttle potentiometer in its
drive-by-wire system (though it took many weeks to diagnose that cause): I
pulled out from a junction, turning right, with plenty of room to spare and
the engine died and wouldn't restart. I rammed it in first and cranked it
with the starter motor until I was at least clear of traffic coming from the
right, and let traffic coming from the left sort itself out. Luckily the car
coming from my left stopped in time, amid a blare of his horn. He leapt out
of the car, calling me every name under the sun, until I explained that the
engine had died after I'd set off, at which point he apologised profusely
and helped me push the car onto a pavement. After waiting ten minutes, the
engine started fine and the car behaved faultlessly for a couple of weeks,
when a bit of lumpy running made me cautious, so I made sure the engine was
racing before I pulled out, just in case.

The car kept going into the garage and they could never find anything. Then
one day I got a phone call from an ecstatic engineer who said that it had
just happened for him while the car had diagnostics attached and so now he
knew what the fault was. The cost of the part was a few pence. The cost of
fitting it was half an hour's labour, but the cost of all that diagnostic
labour was three figures. And the car was now a thousand miles over its
warranty mileage. Luckily I could produce the last service bill, with a
mileage recorded that was under the limit, which recorded "investigate
intermittent poor running and loss of power on acceleration from rest" so I
could prove that the car was well within warranty when I'd first reported
it. VW insurance (with a certain amount of reluctance, the garage said) paid
up!

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.

Yup, that's what I did.

Can't do that on a modern fuel-injected petrol or diesel car. I dare say we
might have been able to rig up a piece of string from the throttle lever or
the throttle potentiometer if there hadn't been the get-out of the slow
running control on a carburettor. The ultimate "hand throttle" - a piece of
string coming out of the bonnet and in through a side window to a loop on
dad's finger!

I didn't have much luck with that car: on another occasion I'd reversed into
a farm gateway while out practising for my test, and the gear lever linkage
came off and the lever flopped upside down in my hand. I uttered the
immortal words "it's not supposed to do that, is it?" :-) It was a Renault
6 which had a hockey-stick lever that came out of the dashboard (as on a
Citroen 2CV) and the rod ran across the engine and then a plate welded to
the end engaged with a conventional gear lever sticking out of the gearbox
which was ahead of the engine. A rubber gromit in the plate had come out and
allowed the plate to disengage from the lever.

On another occasion, after I'd passed my test, I'd dropped my mum at work
and went into town. When I came back to the car, there was a huge gash in
the front wing - we think someone in a pickup truck reversed into the car. I
had to drive to pick up mum that evening, making sure I parked with the
opposite side facing where she'd come out, so I had chance to explain what
had happened before she saw it!

At least I didn't blow up the engine, which is what my sister did to mum's
next car some year later. That car, a Renault 14, had a temperature gauge
down by the (conventionally-placed) gear lever - well out of sight of the
dashboard. There was no "high temperature" light on the dashboard. A hose
had leaked and the engine had overheated - and the first my sister knew was
when the car stalled and the starter wouldn't turn the engine. That cost a
new engine - I remember us taking the car to a *very* dodgy garage in west
London that her boyfriend knew of, to get as cheap a repair as possible.
That car eventually was written off, again while my sister was driving, when
a dustbin lorry ploughed into the back of her when she was stopped at
lights.

As a family, we take great care of our cars - but my sister and I seem to
have been very unlucky with unexpected things that weren't really our fault;
one was due to atrocious design (fancy putting a temperature gauge where
it's not in the driver's line of sight), two were things that even a service
might well not have picked up, and one was someone else's fault.

The Car Park has blue painted steel legs on the other elevations ot support
the canilevered floors. Look on Google Map Street View. An admission of a
problem

DerbyBorn wrote:

The Car Park has blue painted steel legs on the other elevations ot support
the canilevered floors. Look on Google Map Street View. An admission of a
problem

They look odd, but not much evidence of substantial fixings from the
triangular tubes to the concrete structure, there's been scaffolding
within the internal bay since about 2015 according to streetview history

It's certainly a bit of a grotty car park, I used to use it when
visiting the Health Authority site round the corner.

On 20/08/2017 19:17, Andy Burns wrote:
DerbyBorn wrote:

The Car Park has blue painted steel legs on the other elevations ot
support
the canilevered floors. Look on Google Map Street View. An admission of a
problem

They look odd, but not much evidence of substantial fixings from the
triangular tubes to the concrete structure, there's been scaffolding
within the internal bay since about 2015 according to streetview history



It's certainly a bit of a grotty car park

Google for "attractive NCP car park".



--
Adam

In article ,
Tim+ writes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-40986193

There seem to be a distinct lack of rebar in the bit that's fallen off.
That can't be right surely?

Got to admire the guts of the guy using a kango
underneath the bit that hasn't fallen off...
yet.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Got to admire the guts of the guy using a kango
underneath the bit that hasn't fallen off...
yet.

He'd shored it up with a couple of Acrows!

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

On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 02:54:50 -0700 (PDT), fred
wrote:

snip

The impact would push the boat away from the quay and it wouldn't take a lot of force to do it

I suggest the impact (eg. sudden / short pressure) would need *huge*
amounts of force to do it but pressure applied slowly wouldn't need
much (depending on the size of the boat etc), as anyone who has ever
played around in boats will attest.

Even a flat bottomed boat with little in the way of keels but with
slab sides will often 'dig in' when you try to push it sideways (like
a barge or narrow boat).

After all, that's why you need massive engines in tugs to move even
small ships sideways (and do so slowly) and why they often launch
ships sideways when they don't want it to go too far. ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcKAWj7xqrE

Cheers, T i m

In article ,
jim k wrote:
Ah right. I was imagining some sort of pedestrian walk way behind
the armco.

I assumed it was the walkway that had collapsed as a car park off Ley
Street in Ilford that was demolished about 15 years ago looked similar.
There was a yellow line up to which cars could park and then the
overhanging section was the pedestrian walkway to the stairs. There was
not barrier to stop the cars encroaching on the walkway.

Alan

--


Using an ARMX6