How do you stop a car with a jammed accelerator? (BBC news online)
February 4th, 2010
It’s a driver’s worst nightmare. You try to slow down but find the accelerator pedal is stuck – you’re in a runaway car.
The world’s largest carmaker Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles across Europe and the US due either to the risk of accelerator pedals becoming stuck on the floor mat or jamming on their own.
Toyota insists the jamming problem is very rare and that it has only received 26 reports of any kind of problem in Europe. But stories have surfaced in recent days of Toyota drivers who have briefly experienced being out of control of their car.
A recording of an emergency call from a family of four who died driving a Lexus in California paints a horrifying picture. The caller says: “We’re in a Lexus… and we’re going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck… we’re in trouble… there’s no brakes… we’re approaching the intersection… hold on… hold on and pray… pray.”
It seems almost like a sequence from a film. But however unlikely the scenario is, there is a practical question – how would you react if your accelerator became stuck?
The most important thing to do is to stay calm and not do anything rash, says Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA.
“The brakes will still work, the clutch will still work. The biggest problem is staying cool – as we’ve seen from the snowy weather people tend to panic when things start to go wrong. In a few seconds you can go into a skid and hit a tree.”
Some drivers might be panicked into an unwise course of action.
“In the case of the accelerator sticking, the immediate response for a lot of people would be to unjam the accelerator when the proper reaction is in fact to try to stop the car,” says Mr Howard. “That is the difficulty here – human nature makes it so hard to sort out these things.”
For most people the place where they are driving fastest is on the motorway.
“Imagine you’re driving down the inside lane of the M4 at 70 mph,” says Stephen Mead, assistant chief examiner at the Institute of Advanced Motoring.
“The car ahead brakes, so you take your foot off the pedal but nothing happens. What should you do?”
It’s easier said than done but Mead insists that by following a few simple steps you can quickly bring the car to a stop, saving your own and other people’s lives.
If the accelerator is stuck, you should first firmly depress the foot brake, he says. This will override the accelerator.
It must be the footbrake and not the handbrake, which could cause the brake pads to burn out and potentially put the car into a spin.
Next, the driver needs to depress the clutch, effectively stopping the engine from powering the car. The equivalent in an automatic car is to put the gearstick into neutral.
Continue braking and keep an eye out, forward and back, for an “escape route” to the hard shoulder. Do not try to steer straight across in one quick swerve – this could be dangerous, and destabilise the vehicle at such a speed.
In a short time – perhaps 10 seconds – you can bring the car to a halt, he says.
But what happens if the accelerator isn’t the only faulty part of the car? It is very unlikely these days that the brakes will fail, as modern cars have dual brakes. There are typically two pistons controlling the brakes – if one fails you should still be able to stop the car, Mr Mead says.
But in the event the brakes do completely fail, you can still help by depressing the clutch.
Vanessa Guyll, technical specialist at the AA, argues it is easier to use the clutch to disengage the gears than to turn the key to switch the engine off.
It may be difficult at high speeds to put the car into a lower gear. So Mr Mead suggests a very gentle use of the handbrake to slow the car.
But what if the clutch has failed as well as the accelerator and brakes?
“Turn off the ignition but it’s vital you leave the key there,” Mr Mead says. “If you remove the key from the ignition, the steering lock will go on and that’s the last thing you want.”
If in addition to all the above, the key is also stuck, you are in the realms of the mindbogglingly unlikely.
“Then the fates are really against you,” Mr Mead says. There is no ideal solution here as nothing is going to be painless, he warns. You can try and phone the police or take the car onto a grass verge or onto an HGV escape lane.
The last two are both dangerous ways of trying to slow down a car. Hitting the escape lane, designed to stop a 44-tonne truck by sinking its axle into gravel, would rip the front suspension off a car and be like hitting a brick wall, he warns.
If all else fails and there is something ahead of you that you need to avoid this might be your only option.
But all of this assumes you are on the motorway. Mr Howard says much of the same advice would apply at lower speeds on city roads, or minor roads in the countryside.
The speeds may be lower but there could be greater dangers in terms of junctions, pedestrian crossings, trees, sign and lamp posts, and closely-spaced cars.
“I’d rather it happened on the motorway in some ways,” says Mr Howard. “It’s not as if a few miles an hour change matters much. I wouldn’t want to be approaching a zebra crossing when this happened.”
Entry Filed under: UK reportage