I read that a Prius in SD had a scare yesterday with stuck pedal. My question is why isn't the "N"eutral gear available to the driver? I mean once you do that the engine will just bounce off the rev limiter, right?

 

I read an article involving the same incident that said the car reached 94 mph but the driver didn't shut off the engine until it slowed to 50 mph. I guess he thought calling 911 on his cell phone was a better idea than putting it in neutral or shutting off the engine?

 

I have often wondered the same thing. Can you not take the key out or throw it out of gears (nuetral) it baffles me

 

why not just press on the clutch...?


oh wait.

 

I seem to recall reading that he was afraid if he shut off the car he'd lose power steering and that was the last thing he wanted while going that fast.

 

Which itself is dumb because you don't need power steering at speed.

Bottom line - there are ways to handle uncontrolled acceleration. Occasionally a person is going to make a poor choice or in panic forget what they should know. Doesn't invalidate the issue, just dramatizes what should be an unpleasant episode into potential tragedy.

 

I used to have an old mazda protege that would shut itself off during long right handed turns, like on the interstate and such. (fuel filter problem) anyway, the loss of power steering at those speeds is barely noticeable. it really only matters for low speed turns and what not.

and being 16 I still had the presence of mind to be able to do an in flight restart without missing beat- all it takes is some thinking when your car does something unexpected.

 

Misbehaving cars + bad/stupid drivers = big mess.

 

Love how the media never talks about whether the driver shifted to neutral as a means to stop the car.


Oh wait, that's because DRIVERS DON'T KNOW HOW TO.

 

my bet is it goes down like this:

reporter: after the vehicle started accelerating did you attempt to shift in to neutral?

driver: (thinking to themself: gee, that would have probably worked really well, why didn't I think of that?) to reporter: of course, first thing i tried, it wouldn't shift in to neutral and just kept accelerating. I was so scared.

NEWS HEADLINE: SKYNET IS AWAKENING AND MAKING TOYOTAS KILL THEIR DRIVERS!!!