Public service announcement: What to do if your car accelerates out of control

1. hit the brake--do NOT pump the brake!
2. shift to neutral--engine will rev but car will stop
3. turn off engine once car is stopped.
4. practice this in a safe place like an empty parking lot

items of note:
brake will not stop car with engine at full throttle
pumping brake will result in no brake power at all
turning off engine results in no power steering and no power brakes

vw and some other cars have brake over-ride so both throttle and brake cannot be applied at once.

this happened to me in a '92 T-bird. wish I'd read this before that happened, it would have saved a perfectly good pair of pants . . .

The brakes will overheat and become ineffective.

That is apparently what happened to the patrol officer who crashed the Lexus, the brakes overheated.

The best plan is to put the transmission in neutral, very few cars will blow the engine these days because the engine management computer won't let it overrev.

Keep in mind also that in cases of full throttle the power brakes are not going to work for very long if at all, almost all power brake units in passenger cars work from engine vacuum and there is little to no vacuum at full throttle.

If you turn the engine off you will lose your power steering, in some larger cars that can make it hard to control the vehicle.

The last time I bought a car with an automatic transmission was 1977. The car was great but the transmission failed two months out of warranty. I love driving a manual, it keeps you involved and you can be a better judge of what you need to do than some engineer trying to cover all bases.
I'm not sure I'd know what to do if I didn't have that clutch peddle.

So few people can drive a stick these days that the resale value is a good bit lower on cars that don't have an automatic.

I enjoy driving a stick too.

That one story they tell about the out of control car where the wife called 911. And that was supposedly an ex-cop driving. They had that much time and he couldn't think to put it in neutral!

Don't Panic! "My car is revving out of control. Wow. Shift into neutral. Okey-dokey. Brake and pull over out of traffic. Cool. Turn car off. Far out. Call for help."

Toyota myself but have never used the OEM floor mats. I put Weather Tech mats in mine when I bought it and it doesn't look like it could happen with those mats. But from what I have read about their solution for the problem to shorten the gas peddle, it appears to me that then I would have the same problem with the Weather Tech mats. I think they should have to go to the VW system where the brake peddle overrides the accelerator.

98 ford explorer and f150
after turning the key off then what? hope the road swerves the direction the wheels lock at cause it ain't straight ahead

At the first "off" position of the key..

I have a '97 Expedition and it has a key position where the engine is off and the steering wheel is unlocked, you have to move the key one more position to lock the steering. I also have an '84 F150 that's the same way.

I think if you test it you will find that the engine does indeed turn off before the steering wheel locks, most people aren't aware of this because they never thought about it.

Guess I'll just have to crash it .

Anything that will grind up the car but not You..

In a pinch, here's your chance to stick your arm out the window, over the roof, and give Everyone the Finger on the way Out.. :)

http://www.detnews.com/article/20091129/AUTO01/911290320/Experts-point-to-throttles--not-floor-mats--in-Toyota-incidents

Last Updated: November 29. 2009 6:57PM

Ken Bensinger and Ralph Vartabedian / Los Angeles Times

Eric Weiss was stopped at a busy Long Beach, Calif., intersection last month when he said his 2008 Toyota Tacoma pickup unexpectedly started accelerating, forcing him to stand on the brakes to keep the bucking truck from plowing into oncoming cars.

Toyota Motor Corp. says the gas pedal design in Weiss' truck and more than 4 million other Toyota and Lexus vehicles makes them vulnerable to being trapped open by floor mats, and recently announced a costly recall to fix the problem.

But Weiss is convinced his incident wasn't caused by a floor mat. He said he removed the mats in his truck months earlier on the advice of his Toyota dealer after his truck suddenly accelerated and rear-ended a BMW.

"The brakes squealed and the engine roared," the 52-year-old cabinet maker said of the most recent episode. "I don't want to drive the truck anymore, but I don't want anyone else to, either."

Amid widening concern over unintended acceleration events, including an Aug. 28 crash near San Diego that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and his family, Toyota has repeatedly pointed to "floor mat entrapment" as the problem.

But accounts from motorists such as Weiss, interviews with auto safety experts and a Los Angeles Times review of thousands of federal traffic safety incident reports point to another potential cause: the electronic throttles that have replaced mechanical systems in recent years.

I simply turned off the ignition. But it was an old car (1969 Corolla) that didn't have power steering or power brakes or any of that stuff; it even had a manual choke. The throttle cable had stuck; after I got the car stopped I simply popped the hood and wiggled the throttle cable. It was fine after that. It seems that improvements in technology sometimes introduce unforeseen complications.