MO woman goes 59 miles @ 110MPH because of 'stuck' gas pedal

[Dominus Atheos]

Another thing you can do if you have a runaway car is downshift to a lower gear, which will obviously make it so the car can't go 100mph. I don't know what the actual maximum speed on a car in first gear is, though.

Also, the parking brake works via a cable so it should always work. (but pulling it all the way up locks the wheels, so just pull up on it slowly)

[Phantasee]

Did you even read the thread? That was mentioned. And your car will only downshift once, out of overdrive, if you throw an automatic into the lowest gear. It won't downshift any further until the vehicle slows down enough to shift into a lower gear.

[Enigma]

But in each case, even though I had lost all brake fluid I still was able to stop both vehicles, albeit I had to press the brake pedal all the way down for the brakes to engage. Even with no brake fluid I never lost the ability to stop the vehicle. But as mentioned before, the vehicles were moving slowly when I braked.

That is actually not possible. You may have been low on fluid, but there was still fluid in the system. If the fluid was gone then the brake pedal would be completely physically detached from the braking mechanisms and they would be impossible to operate except via the emergency brake, which is cable operated. When a car loses all its braking fluid, the pedal simply falls all the way to the floor under its own weight, with no resistance.

Also, having low brake fluid is a totally different scenario than having a loss of power assist. Low fluid will involve having to depress the pedal further than usual before brake force is applied, whereas the loss of power assist increases the force needed to depress the pedal by several hundreds of pounds compared to normal.

I had to press all of the way down to get brake response. I knew I didn't have brake fluid was when halfway through driving to the repair shop I no longer saw the spray of fluids on the ground (this happened during the winter. I could see the spray of fluids on the snow.). The puddle kept getting smaller and smaller until I saw no spray of fluids at all, yet I still was able to engage the brakes by pressing it all the way down. If there was still fluids in the system, they were hiding.

You may be right with the Aerostar since I did not travel as far to get to my parent's home, so there may be some that remained.

[fordlltwm]

But in each case, even though I had lost all brake fluid I still was able to stop both vehicles, albeit I had to press the brake pedal all the way down for the brakes to engage. Even with no brake fluid I never lost the ability to stop the vehicle. But as mentioned before, the vehicles were moving slowly when I braked.

That is actually not possible. You may have been low on fluid, but there was still fluid in the system. If the fluid was gone then the brake pedal would be completely physically detached from the braking mechanisms and they would be impossible to operate except via the emergency brake, which is cable operated. When a car loses all its braking fluid, the pedal simply falls all the way to the floor under its own weight, with no resistance.

Also, having low brake fluid is a totally different scenario than having a loss of power assist. Low fluid will involve having to depress the pedal further than usual before brake force is applied, whereas the loss of power assist increases the force needed to depress the pedal by several hundreds of pounds compared to normal.

I had to press all of the way down to get brake response. I knew I didn't have brake fluid was when halfway through driving to the repair shop I no longer saw the spray of fluids on the ground (this happened during the winter. I could see the spray of fluids on the snow.). The puddle kept getting smaller and smaller until I saw no spray of fluids at all, yet I still was able to engage the brakes by pressing it all the way down. If there was still fluids in the system, they were hiding.

You may be right with the Aerostar since I did not travel as far to get to my parent's home, so there may be some that remained.

You probably have dual circuit brakes. I.E your front and rear lines are semi independent so as the rear can be empty whilst the fronts still work (to some degree).

[Dominus Atheos]

Did you even read the thread? That was mentioned. And your car will only downshift once, out of overdrive, if you throw an automatic into the lowest gear. It won't downshift any further until the vehicle slows down enough to shift into a lower gear.

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.

[Terralthra]

Did you even read the thread? That was mentioned. And your car will only downshift once, out of overdrive, if you throw an automatic into the lowest gear. It won't downshift any further until the vehicle slows down enough to shift into a lower gear.

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.

"A runaway car" meaning "no brakes" is different from "a runaway car" meaning "stuck accelerator pedal." The former can be slowed and stopped by downshifting. The latter can generally not. In a manual, if your accelerator is stuck, putting the car in neutral will keep you from accelerating any more and let you stop, but the engine will quickly red-line and seize. In a manual, the interlocks will prevent you from downshifting to 2 or 1. They'll let you take it out of overdrive (incidentally increasing your RPM and putting more strain on your engine), but not any further, and almost certainly not to neutral.

[Phantasee]

How Stuff Works and WikiHow?

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-part ... rking1.htm

The next thing to try is the transmission. You can downshift a gear at a time and use the engine for braking. Lots of people do this with their manual transmission as a matter of habit. It works just as well with an automatic transmission. Drop to a lower gear, wait for your speed to decrease and then drop down another gear.

http://www.autoevolution.com/news/stopp ... -6487.html
Does not mention anything about automatic transmissions, only references manuals, where the clutch would stop a runaway acceleration by itself!

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories ... y-car.html

Tom: The next thing to do is downshift. It doesn't matter what speed you're traveling. If you have an automatic transmission, go right to the lowest gear. Modern transmissions are electronically regulated, and the computer won't allow the transmission to go into too low a gear. It'll drop to the lowest appropriate gear for your current speed - which will help - and then it will drop down again once you've slowed some more.

http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-a-Car-with-No-Brakes

Shift into low gear. Shifting into lower gears helps slow you by using your engine to slow the car. If you have an automatic transmission, downshift a gear at a time into low range (generally labeled as “1” on the shifting mechanism).

Go fuck yourself. Your own links don't disprove me you stupid fucker. If you have runaway acceleration, your car won't slow down enough to let the transmission downshift you further.

God, I fucking hate you.

[Phantasee]

Did you even read the thread? That was mentioned. And your car will only downshift once, out of overdrive, if you throw an automatic into the lowest gear. It won't downshift any further until the vehicle slows down enough to shift into a lower gear.

Yeah, no. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.

"A runaway car" meaning "no brakes" is different from "a runaway car" meaning "stuck accelerator pedal." The former can be slowed and stopped by downshifting. The latter can generally not. In a manual, if your accelerator is stuck, putting the car in neutral will keep you from accelerating any more and let you stop, but the engine will quickly red-line and seize. In a manual, the interlocks will prevent you from downshifting to 2 or 1. They'll let you take it out of overdrive (incidentally increasing your RPM and putting more strain on your engine), but not any further, and almost certainly not to neutral.

I think you mean "automatic" instead of "manual" in your second last sentence.

[Terralthra]

"A runaway car" meaning "no brakes" is different from "a runaway car" meaning "stuck accelerator pedal." The former can be slowed and stopped by downshifting. The latter can generally not. In a manual, if your accelerator is stuck, putting the car in neutral will keep you from accelerating any more and let you stop, but the engine will quickly red-line and seize. In a manual, the interlocks will prevent you from downshifting to 2 or 1. They'll let you take it out of overdrive (incidentally increasing your RPM and putting more strain on your engine), but not any further, and almost certainly not to neutral.

I think you mean "automatic" instead of "manual" in your second last sentence.

Whoops. You are quite correct, that's what I meant.

[Magis]

In modern (actually, even in pretty old) electronically controlled automatic transmissions, you can select whatever gear you want but the computer won't execute the shift unless it won't overrev the engine.

So downshift in an automatic just won't cut it.

[Phantasee]

I believe they will downshift out of overdrive, so in a common 4 speed it'll go into 3 right away. It won't slow down in a case of uncontrolled acceleration so it won't hit 2 or 1, though.

[TheFeniX]

In modern (actually, even in pretty old) electronically controlled automatic transmissions, you can select whatever gear you want but the computer won't execute the shift unless it won't overrev the engine.

Someone check me on this, but I don't think it's mechanically possible for an automatic to shift into such a low gear at speed. At highway speeds, the wheels are actually turning the transmission which is why automatics are always towed by the power wheels. You can damage the engine, even if the car is in neutral while being towed (this is also why I like mechanical transfer cases on 4x4s, I can physically disengage the transmission from the drive-shaft). It has something to do with the way the transmission itself is built because it doesn't actually have individual gears like a manual does. Without some form of interlock, you could throw the transmission into reverse which would be.... bad, to say the least.

The problem with power steering is that if you lose engine power, the hydraulics & stuff that make it work will make the steering wheel harder to turn than if the vehicle had no power steering in the first place. In other words, lose power and the power steering mechanism works against you. It's actually not too bad as long as the car's moving at a decent speed, but if you haven't practiced it it's another thing that can catch you unaware and screw you over in an emergency situation.

I think you're overestimating how much you need to turn the wheel to drive down the highway. I had my power-steering blow out in my Chevy 2500. Driving down the highway wasn't really any harder than normal because you only need about 3 degree of turn to change lanes. 10 degrees would be an extremely sharp lane change. However, sweeping lefts were annoying (about 180 degrees) and right turns were fucking brutal (almost 360 degrees).

Now, trucks tend to have wider steering wheels than cars, but I was easily able to drift my old 1993 Chevy Cavalier across 3 lanes of traffic on US59 after the engine died. Luckily, the blinkers worked and the average asshole Houston drivers were on vacation (other drivers backed off and let me across).