Driver goes 60 miles at 135mph after accelerator jams - escapes from crash unhurt

MercMad

Well I will stand corrected if I am wrong on the BMW but on many new cars, my CLK included you cannot move the shift lever into neutral over a certain speed, about 20MPH in my car !

It doesn't budge !

You also cannot turn off the ignition either !

If you did and the engine stopped you would have ZERO power steering and no brake servo, though he obviously overheated and faded the brakes totally. Thats actually not so hard to do since the engine would produce more power to drive than the brakes can do to stop !

If you drive at 75MPH and open the throttle then keep your foot on the brakes you might be able to slow down but your brakes will overheat and become less effective, therefore you may accelerate again !

BrianD3

If he did get the ignition turned off the steering and brakes wouldn't be a problem. The brakes would just need a harder shove to slow the car down and at motorway speeds you'd barely notice if your power steering wasn't working. You'd notice if trying to take a sharp turn at slow speed though!

mike65

The Register is on the case scroll down a little.

Mike.

unkel

mike65 wrote:

The Register is on the case scroll down a little.

The Register wrote:

I experienced something similar when I was driving my E36 M3 late one night.

Luckily it was very late and the road was deserted, I had just finished an evening long sesh with a bunch of mates and was on my way home along the A38 from Exeter to Plymouth when I experienced what can only be described as an uncontrollable compulsion to bury the accelerator.

Let me tell you I really fought back despite being a bit tired and emotional but before I knew it I was doing 165mph, this carried on for about 20 miles before the entity (I can only presume it was of alien origin) released me and I was able to resume the usual 90 mph. Unfortunately there were no police about to help me

He he

el tel

I read this story at the weekend and was thinking to myself what an gimp this guy must have been as he didn't do x, y, z etc.

Then it ocurred to me that between this incident happening and me hearing of it, at the very least there would have been a few reporters, journalists and editors involved who obviously can't have been bothered to ask informed and probing questions that would help investigate the reality and so just slapped that guy's sensational statements straight into a bulletin which ends up on the front pages of the rags for the titillation of the average punter.

You'd think too they might have got someone slightly less biased than BMW's UK media relations manager who tells us that it was a 'freak accident'. Maybe an expert police driver could have been asked 'what should he have done'?

(I don't rate journalists at all...:))

SouperComputer

If you did and the engine stopped you would have ZERO power steering and no brake servo, though he obviously overheated and faded the brakes totally. Thats actually not so hard to do since the engine would produce more power to drive than the brakes can do to stop !

IF the engine stopped, the servo would hold up as long as you dont pump the pedal repeatedly. Even still you would probably get 4 or 5 pumps out of it. Try it sometime!

I still think that most cars breaking ability exceeds the power/torque output, but if you try to gently to slow the car down, you will end up worse off as the brakes will be way overheated. At a lower speed, and cars I have tried it on require a moderate amount of brake to produce a signifant slowdown on full throttle. Id love to try it out, cant think of anywhere safe to do it though

Alun

MercMad wrote:

Well I will stand corrected if I am wrong on the BMW but on many new cars, my CLK included you cannot move the shift lever into neutral over a certain speed, about 20MPH in my car !

How do you manage to change gear then? Or are we talking about an automatic here?

EDIT: Ooops ... just noticed in the original post that the car in question was an automatic. Oh well, another reason not to buy one then

Anan1

I'd be very, very surprised if a BMW 318i put out even a quarter of the power which its brakes are capable of absorbing. Try hitting the brakes hard in any car at say 50kp/h (a low speed, so wind resistance is not a large factor). Now ask yourself how many cars can replicate that kind of g-force under acceleration. As has been said earlier, the guy probably braked too gently, thus overheating his brakes.

SouperComputer

even quick road cars generally have heavy brakes.

Only problem I could see would be with a FWD car, you may end up locking the rears if you dont have ABS.

maidhc

Anan1 wrote:

I'd be very, very surprised if a BMW 318i put out even a quarter of the power which its brakes are capable of absorbing. Try hitting the brakes hard in any car at say 50kp/h (a low speed, so wind resistance is not a large factor). Now ask yourself how many cars can replicate that kind of g-force under acceleration. As has been said earlier, the guy probably braked too gently, thus overheating his brakes.

Also in 5th the car wouldnt have that much torque so it should drop away quite rapidly.

Henry Ford III

Spike wrote:

...318's are well capable of hitting that speed

I doubt it.

"R" reg is 97-98, and that model had a mere 115bhp and was an automatic. Futhermore it has well over 100,000 miles on the clock.

120mph perhaps?.

colm_mcm

I don't buy it, i reckon he knew he had been caught and was chancing his arm

Henry Ford III

colm_mcm wrote:

I don't buy it, i reckon he knew he had been caught and was chancing his arm

My exact thoughts.

milltown

60 miles at 135mph would take ~26mins.

By the look of him that's not long enough to think of anything as obvious as what's been posted here!

I wonder what speed he was doing when this catastrophic set of failures happened. If the brakes were able to keep him at 70mph, why not press them harder? At what point did he decide to forget the brakes and just see what happens?

And if there was a load of cars waiting to get onto the roundabout, there was presumably a load of cars already on it. If he came from the hard shoulder and hit the roundabout how in God's name did he not kill a few other people?

Anan1

My guess, for what it's worth, is as follows:

1. Floormat jams accelerator down.

2. He brakes constantly, but not hard enough to actually stop the car

3. After a while, brakes overheat, become ineffective, away he goes...

That figure of 135mph is probably a fantasy. Remember when the two Guards were killed on the Stillorgan dual carriageway a few years back? The papers were all talking about 130mph then too. In a 1.6 litre MX5..

qz

ando wrote:

i dont understand, could he not just turn the engine off? well then again, he's a bmw driver

Careful now...

Anan1

ando wrote:

i dont understand, could he not just turn the engine off? well then again, he's a bmw driver

Turn the engine off?? Sure those boys can't even turn their foglights off!;)

Turner

Anan1 wrote:

My guess, for what it's worth, is as follows:
That figure of 135mph is probably a fantasy. Remember when the two Guards were killed on the Stillorgan dual carriageway a few years back? The papers were all talking about 130mph then too. In a 1.6 litre MX5..

It was a 2001 1.8 litre MX5 which hit the Garda Car. Top speed of 122mph.