zeroptzero

Whenever I hear of the stories where people drive several miles at ridiculous speeds with the car "out of control" , I just think it must be crazy. Like it could never happen to me - just slam the car into neutral and shut off the engine. But then I think of people like my son with zero mechanical knowledge or not a lot of street smarts or experience, and I think yeah maybe it could happen to some people lol. But what a wild scene that would be. Back in the Toyota and Audi unintended acceleration days the cars weren't that smart, they still had conventional ignitions and trannies, so it all sounded baffling to me.

dlq04

Joey, if my memory is right (not always good these days) you spent time playing boy racer on a race track. The way a person handles a situation depends to a large extent on muscle memory. It's reacting correctly without thinking about it. If you have to think about it (ie. correcting a slide) it's often too late. When something totally unplanned for and never thought about before happens such as happened to me I find you're it's so simple explanation is not as matter of fact as you make it sound. And that's why I wanted to share it.

I too recall the Audi in the pool stories.

robb

It’s because we are ‘car people’
so we have an idea of what to do. A lot of people aren’t and also a lot of people can’t drive for s#*t on a good day lol! I can always tell when I get in a vehicle with someone driving when they are not the best driver just by the way they handle the controls.

zeroptzero

I guess you have to walk a mile in "their shoes" to really know. I just had an fella drive through our commercial garage door last week at one property, he hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, a $10,000 mistake for him.

zeroptzero

Perhaps some of my track driving helped a bit, but I have probably driven to several millions of miles in my years in all kinds of weather. Northern drivers who drive in bad winter conditions learn pretty quick. I know in winter when I hit black ice my instincts kick in pretty quick, and I usually do pretty good at saving the vehicle while others around me end up in ditches.

You seemed to handle the situation pretty good Dave, I wasn't referring to you in my reply, but more the people who make the news and report driving many miles at WOT, and requiring other vehicles to slow them down.

boltonblue

Being a geek...
there was a post mortem and statistical analysis done of the AUDI stories.
I'm paraphrasing from memory, so my precise details may be off.
In short, all drivers were short, under 5'6" as such had the seats well forward.
Virtually all drivers were new to the vehicle when they crashed.
a significant percentage had been conquest sales from GM. as you may recall GM had the weirdly offset gas and brake pedals relative to driver position.

In short drivers unaccustomed to the ergonomics moved their seats well forward and couldn't accurately find the correct pedals.

Kyras

Dave, !