Anyone buy into it ?

didnt get all the storey but just heard a guy on radio telling his story about his car stuck in gear on the A1 doing 135 mph with the brakes on burning out, and the car still accelerating ?

knock it into neutral maybe and kill the engine too ?

Dog ate my homework....honest miss!!

some of the pug 106/citroen saxos used to accelerate on their own when it was very cold as the idle air valve got stuck fully open but that wouldnt do much in higher gears as it was like the throttle being about 1/4 open.

foot on clutch/ yank it into neutral should do it if not then the car was obviously way past being road worthy

What a load of nutsack If the gear linkage broke it would be stuck in gear, butthere are plenty of ways of stopping a car.

I was visited by aliens last night....

So just happned to be stuck in gear AND the throttle stuck wide open, AND the igntion switch jammed on?

Damned unlucky that.

Wasn't it supposed to be the pedal 'stuck to the carpet'. So knocking it into neutral would have destroyed the engine, but then he pranged it anyway.

Sounds like a poor excuse to me, but BMW want to see the wreck so no doubt he'll get called on it if he is lying.

Can't find the story on the bbc website which seems strange as it was on the radio news this morning.

Only he wouldn't have wrecked the engine.

On all the modern German stuff, if you floor the throttle with no load on the engine - i.e. in neutral it has a very nice soft fluffy rev limiter at 3500rpm (ish). It was a Mercedes tech. who showed me this on my old leased car.

here is the storey

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006110627,00.html

According to the Mail, he decided not to turn the ignition off in case he locked the steering... I think I would have tried to turn it - normally the lock doesn't kick in until you actually take the key out?

it was an automatic so maybe it was locked in gear so you couldnt put it in neutral but you could still turn the ignition off.

[Edited on 11/3/06 by cossey]

What a load of B******S

I drive down the A1 regularly and I can think of a good few places on that route were not even the average handling cars will get round the bends at 100mph plus without hitiing the barriers.
What time of the day was this, in any case, I've never seen the A1 clear enough to do the alleged speed over this distance and if the throttle was stuck why did he leave the A1 were it forks from the M1 north of the M62. The M1 does not have any roundabouts before the M25. Surely this would have been safer!

Dickhead Fantastist

yeah, Mark, but you had the thought, clutch, turn off, why couldn't he ?????
Didn't go through a speed camera first did he ?????????

Jason

Can a 318 do 140? And it was in the sun so who cares?

its not completely implausible. As an auto, theres no clutch to press, so thats out of the window. At full throttle you couldnt pull it out of gear by hand, so its possible an auto would also be jammed by the torque. The brakes would indeed eventually burn out.

Obvious way out is to kill the engine, you loose your servo assist on the brakes and the power steering too, but the lock doesnt come on until the key comes out. Maybe he didnt realise that, but i think even if you didnt you'd still try it.

Only possible flaw is if it was new enough to be keyless, but im not sure how all that works wrt steering lock.

Either way, the police say they arent going to prosecute him.

ps its on the telegraph site and also on local radio too, so not just a sun tale!

[Edited on 11/3/06 by JoelP]

the throttle cable stuck on my bike once at full throttle as i was approaching lights, took me a few seconds because i panicked a bit but pulled the clutch in and killed the engine pretty sharpish.

Ive had same on race track when a pebble from the kitty litter got stuck under pedal,
I'm sorry but surely most people would have killed the engine and coasted onto the hard shoulder not too hard without power steering or the servo not working is it ?

I think I would have took my chance decelerating into problems rather than accelerating into them, roundabout coming up, I'm not gonna make it, lets try mmmmmmmmm nothing.

You'd have thought the Police would have told him to just turn it off and that the steering lock wouldn't have come on.

And even if it had there's enough straights on those roads to have braked to a standstill with the steering lock on.

Why didn't the police try one of those rolling roadblock manouvers that they are so eagar to show off on police camera action etc?

Was in yesterdays sun that BMW and the Police investigators had found NO fault that could have caused this.... sounds like the being caught speeding b4 making up the story is looking likely!