SUV suddenly takes off, crashes during auto auction; 3 dead

[sand_man]

I hate freak accidents like this (if that's what it proves to be)!

BILLERICA, MASS. — A SUV being shown to prospective buyers at a crowded indoor auto auction suddenly accelerated with a screech of its tires and crashed through a wall Wednesday morning, killing three people and injuring nine.

An auction employee in his 70s was behind the wheel of the 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee when it apparently lurched out of control and mowed people down at LynnWay Auto Auction in Billerica, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Boston...

SUV suddenly takes off, crashes during auto auction; 3 dead :: WRAL.com

[sand_man]

And I have a feeling it didn't just "suddenly take off"...somebody stood on the accelerator...or possible mistook the gas for the brake! Again, this assumes it wasn't intentional!

[GH85Carrera]

Likely he foot was on the accelerator not the brake pedal. Just like the Audi unintended acceleration debacle. On a regular basis someone crashes into a store because their foot hit the wrong pedal.

Bad deal to have killed three people.

[MRM]

Usually it is operator error, but not always. Several years ago a City of Minneapolis police Ford van accelerated out of park during a holiday parade and mowed down several people. two or three people were killed and several were very badly injured. Ford went to trial on the case and it was proven that series of vans had a known defect that allowed them to go from park to drive and accelerate spontaneously. If I recall, the issue was whether the van had been modified, but it was pretty clear the accident happened without anyone touching the gear. Not that it's a good idea to have a vehicle idling in park around a parade full of families with children.

So anyway, it does happen from time to time.

[rusnak]

That's terrible. I'm going to guess that there will be a lot more precautions taken when operating a vehicle within a crowd.

[Por_sha911]

An auction employee in his 70s was behind the wheel

Old people have a much higher percentage of accidents where the driver stomped on the gas instead of the brake. My insurance agent knows this first hand when a customer tried to put their car through the front on his building.

[vash]

an old man drove a car into my stepdad restaurant before. effen scary.
RIP to the departed and quick healing to the wounded.

i hope the OG is able to put this behind him.

[dad911]

"In avoiding the cars, whoever was driving this vehicle hit several people."

Driver error. Hope that man never drives again.

[widgeon13]

70 YO, what could go wrong?

[sammyg2]

Sometimes cars accelerate all by themselves for no reason at all.

But it seems like they only do it when elderly people are sitting behind the wheel.

[stealthn]

I thought Chrysler had a recall for sudden acceleration?

[sc_rufctr]

[MBAtarga]

Originally Posted by stealthn

I thought Chrysler had a recall for sudden acceleration?

Trans "slips" out of park and into gear due to the totally revised design of the shifter turned into joystick.

[GH85Carrera]

The vast majority of cars on the market today will just stop if the brake pedal is pressed hard, even if the gas is floored. Most likely the driver just screwed up and hit the wrong pedal, freaked out and steered away form the other cars and chose to run over people instead.

It is a very sad situation and only the driver will ever know exactly what happened, and he may well not know. Like the majority of airplane crashes most of the time it is pilot error, most car crashes are just simple bad driving.

[Holger]

Oh my God, now they have to pay BILLIONS and take all cars back!

[dad911]

My mother's friend drove through my wife's parents house. Crazy but true. Backed into a tree, panicked threw it in drive and hit the gas instead of brake. Back tire spinning burned through rug when the car 'stopped', she obviously was pressing gas so hard. But I think she believed her foot was on the brake instead.

I'd wager it's pretty common accident. I hope I recognize when I shouldn't be driving anymore.

[sand_man]

Many years ago, when I was in college, I worked for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This was in FL, land of the elderly blue-hairs. Anyway, I drove an elderly lady to a body shop to pick up her car; she was renting a car from us, while her's was being fixed. After dropping her off, I'm stopped in traffic just a block away from the body shop. Out of no where, I see her come flying past me, out of control. She turns the wheel sharp, still on the accelerator, and sinks down under the dash (I could no longer see her head or hands on the wheel through the back window), and smashes into three or four more cars, before coming to a stop. I pull over to check on her and the other drivers, nobody hurt. She asks me to take her back to my office for another rental!!! I call the office, and they tell me "hell no" just come back without her!

[GH85Carrera]

Years ago I was looking out the front door window at work drinking my coffee. There was a full blown ice storm going on outside. The cars were moving slowly if at all.

A Brinks armored truck happend to stop in traffic in front of the building. A lady that was at least 80 smacked into the Brinks truck at 5 or 6 MPH. She backed up and rammed him again, and a third time. I put on my coat and grabbed a co-worker. We when out there and stopped the lady and brought her into our front office and we managed to get her car off the road and stuffed into the icy parking lot on the north side of our building. The Brinks truck was of course unhurt. One of the security guards did come in to check on her.

The lady was totally rattled and it took one of our female employees 15 minutes to get her name and her son's phone number. It took him a long time to get there to pick her up. A few weeks later the son came back over and thanked us for rescuing his mom. She was blind in one eye and did not see real well out of the other eye. She was on her way to see her bingo friends at the bingo parlor. The son said he took away her car keys and disabled her car so she could not drive anymore.

[ckelly78z]

This reminds me of the old joke; My worst nightmare....being in front of an Audi, and behind a Pinto at a light.

[intakexhaust]

Condolences to those families.

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I was with Audi during the 60 Minutes bogus / sensationalized story -CBS Ed Bradley. Infuriated at the reporting including many owners who attempted to capitalize on the episode by repeat 'intentional' incidents. We even had natnl. television invade us. It took a long time for recovery but good came out of it.

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On a lighter note, this is why we have a few of these in the family fleet. 15 million of these three pedal, wonky lever wonders were made and where people from age 12 to 80 could operate them.

Driving a T, one is strictly focused on operating the machine, where as today on modern vehicles people are dizzied out with gizmo's or become lackadaisic on vehicle operation. Of course many accidents happened back then but there was respect to operating the machine and less carelessness.

How to: Drive a Ford Model T - Feature - Car and Driver