needforspeed

Almost certainly this entire story is untrue and the driver will end up facing court action.

SolanNo1

Agree. But like its been mentioned on this thread, the driver wasn't particularly bright. :thumbsdown: Or he was like us dads who would give up their lives to save their baby's

rlinger

to better the story about a jammed pedal -- he had to have taken his car to get detailed/washed -- where most of the washing crews dont know to the leave the velcro/anchor mechanism alone. there has been 2 times so far for me in Los Angeles, that i get back in the car after a detail and the driver's mat is so far up on the accelorator that i could not leave the lot if i had to. ???

Rudy

Couldn't the Telegraph quote be taken to mean that he tried to put the car in neutral but couldn't since the throttle was stuck and the car was already over-revving and redlining? If that's a direct quote, it seems like he's saying that the shifter was jammed, just like the BBC is saying...

needforspeed

I'm not going to try this, but... if the driver was able to brake down to 70 before his brakes started smoking, then the engine revs would have been slowed (at least momentarily, until the transmission dropped a cog) and hence the vehicle would not have been redlining.

I find it difficult to believe that this vehicle suffered 2 severe safety related failures simultaneously (transmission jammed + accelerator jammed).

You could argue that the tranny might have burned out during his attempts to brake against full acceleration, but he would have had plenty of time to knock the thing into nuetral before he hit 138mph as reported.

Speed limit here is 70mph, even if he was going at 90mph before the problem stuck in a 318 it wouild have taken quite a while to hit maximum speed.

Either way, I don't see how this can have been true and if it were, why he couldn't just have braked hard switched off the engine, then continue to brake to a complete stop.

There have been a few stories like this over the years and checks on the cars generally reveal that the people involved have either been mad, lying or both.

Rudy

I agree with you completely (and have pretty much said the same things in both threads on the subject.) My main point now is one of semantics. It looks like the two quotes you posted from different media sources could be translated a few different ways -- that's all I meant in my reply.

Clearly, something strange happened to that guy and/or his car...

VTbound

Any car's brakes, if working, can overcome the engine's torque. Also, if you shut your engine off the vacuum brake assist still works (for one or two times) as long as you don't pump the brakes.

Freewilly

:thumbsdown: Put aside how the driver reacted. I am more worry about BMW reliability

xe460

This kind of stories is hard to believe to me. Why would anyone choose to rather go 130mph than just to turn off the engine and loose power steering? I mean it?s not like you can?t turn the steering wheel when the engine is off. How did we drive the car decades ago when the power steering was not invented?
I think he was just trying to find a reason to go top speed.

pedrollo

Don't worry about the cars Willy, far more problems trace back to the faulty humans