Had a scary situation driving my soon-to-be wifes car on the NY thruway 20 years ago.

Four of us in the car and it is my turn to drive so I put the pedal to the metal and it stays there stuck to the floor while we are driving down the mountain in the rain:eek:

First I made sure everyone was still asleep-no need for an audience freaking out at 100 MPH.
Then I turned the ignition off without locking the steering wheel and dropped into neutral.

I think I learned the procedure from an old CHIP's episode.

Problem was the mechanic that worked on her car attached a clamp in the wrong position near the air cleaner that caused the cable to jam at WOT.

I think in the Lexus that crashed, they had the ignition switch that is a button. Push On - Push Off. I think the car is too 'smart' to let you turn it off if moving. Normally, Push Off engages Park in transmission. I suspect Neutral shift, or burn up the brakes is the only way. I'll try it out later out here in the boonies (at 5 MPH).

+1. Try this- on an empty highway going 80, floor your car. Now, while continuing to floor it, slam the brakes full on with your left foot. The car will stop. Every time. Brakes are always way more powerful than the engine, right?

From the OP

Ah....so the dead person all of us are denegrating might not be an idiot after all huh? It might actually be the brilliant engineer that's the idiot?

Imagine that.

Originally Posted by URY914
For vehicles with engine start/stop buttons, Toyota said the engine can be shut off by holding the button down for three seconds.

3 seconds is an AWFUL long time to be accelerating at WOT in bumper to bumper traffic. If i was on the jury i would award the deceased's family MILLIONS for toyota's stupidity of design.

That being said, i'd have just stomped the brakes and thrown it in neutral. These cars all have a rev limiter nowadays anyway.

Was driving to work one day in my RWD Starion on a road with a lot of overpasses. Bad ice storm so I got off the highway onto local roads.

Take off from a light and I see about a 1/3 mile up the road a Lincoln LS come around a turn and lose it.

I stop with plenty of daylight between us.

Car is in its right lane, drifts into it's left, then over the yellow line and is heading for some houses on my side of the road.

Just when I thought driver was toast she managed to get car heading back to her side of the road.

She clips the front of my car and continues back to her side, jumps the curb heading for a water drainage sump, (small man made pond for rain runoff).

Luckilly the chain link fence prevented her from ending up in the sump.

I jump out and run over, the woman is panicked, "I don't know what happened, I had my foot on the brakes but the car would not stop."

I said "Mam, when you passed/clipped me your wheels were spinning like crazy, you had your foot on the gas the entire time."

There is 911 audio of that CHP trooper calling in right before the crash talking to the operator, explaining what is happening right up to the crash. This was an experieneced trooper who im sure had alot of road miles. I cant believe he didnt have the sense to either turn the car off, or put it in neutral or nail the brakes.??( granted, at that speed he might have cooked the brakes trying to stop with the engine loaded). I understand the pushbutton on/off crap but still dont seem right .

and no, I'm not bashing the dead guy...

Bash the dead guy all you want.

He had time enough to make a call to 911 ON HIS CELLPHONE before the crash.

Seriously, WTF.

How does a Highway Patrolman, who are supposed to be trained in high performance driving and car control, manage not to select neutral?

He was busy gabbing with the 911 operator on his cell. :rolleyes:

Apparently there's something all we armchair experts are missing, huh?

That is true- 3 seconds is a long time and how many people actual read the user manual to find that out? I'm sure it's an obscure fact that with the car in drive ti takes 3 seconds to hold the button it, compared to instantly turning off in park.


But like you said, I would have just thrown the car in park/nuetral if it came to it. I'd rather smoke the engine and tranny to death than hit a concrete wall at 120.

This wouldn't happen in a manual transmission car, ever, though. Accelerator starts to get out of control, driver instinctively slams the clutch to the floor, engine hits rev limiter, and you're fine.

I just listened to the tape. The CHP driver also say he had no brakes.

For the life of me though, I can't understand why he didn't kick it out of gear.

I drive a similar car with the same push button starter. I can understand the problem with turning off the motor, but I know from experience you can shift to neutral while driving, and I can't believe that the brakes, if functioning, couldn't bring that car to a stop.

Apparently there were no brakes according to the CHP cop. Trying to use the E-brake at WOT and at speed would be an exercize in futility. What's more it could cause the car to spin out, making things even worse. The 3 second push button engine kill is a terribly stupid idea, and will probably be changed because of this incident.

The only real option this cop had was to throw it in neutral. I wonder why he didn't. It makes me wonder if the electronic trans had some quirk about letting a wot car shift into neutral.

These drive by wire cars are stupid, stupid, stupid. I will never own one...i want to be in control, not a computer.

Now you're really speculating.

Most people I know aren't safe driving at 45mph while on the cellphone. This guy was going over 100mph. Why didn't he hand the phone to a passenger and FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND?

What did he expect to gain by calling 911? Remote shut-off of the engine?

It's a tragedy that 4 people died in this accident. I agree that the lack of a real ignition switch probably exacerbated the situation.

But 911 is the number you dial AFTER you've crashed. Let's get real here....

Well it seems so obvious to just throw it in neutral/park that i'm seeking alternatives as to why an experienced cop wouldn't.

And it forces me to ponder the possiblity that the drive by wire car he was driving doesn't actually have any real mechanical linkage to the tranny, that it makes the request via the CPU, and that under some circumstances the CPU will over-ride that request because some engineer who never even contemplated this scenario made it so.

When you drive these new cars you don't do much more than make input "suggestions" or "requests." Same as a modern pilot flying a fly by wire plane.

Dude, this was a Lexus. Not a BMW with iDrive. :D

If i had one handy i'd climb underneath and see if there is an actual mechanical linkage to the trans from the shifter. I would not be surprised in the least if there's not.

I hope this doesn't result in the end of floor mats in cars :rolleyes:

Velcro seems such an obvious solution.