Stopping car with locked cruise control

i think i would have tried the handbrake Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before then like, or maybes gone on a bit of an off road adventure to slow me down, surely he past a few fields he could have drove round in cirles in till he ran out of petrol

love this line at the end
''Ford Australia has told Australia's Herald Sun newspaper that there is no link between the recall of 4.5 million Explorers in October and Mr Weir's incident.''
 
What I can't understand is why the key wouldn't turn?

Simple - Panic. Mind you, he managed to make a couple of phone calls whilst panicing. Braking hard seems to have been the obvious solution.

Over here he would now be charged with using a phone whilst driving.
 
How did it stick - I assume this was one of the earlier vacuum operated systems rather than a fully integrated one.

Why not just select (manual or auto) neutral, or turn off the key.

I think the driver was trying to avoid being charged with a motoring offence and the CC was a convenient work around
 
I think there are a lot of unanswered questions but I guess when you panic you stop thinking rationally.
 
Until your brakes burn out anyway.

Something similar happened to a BMW driver in the UK a few years ago. Well, it was worse actually. His BMW's accelerator got stuck and he was unable to disengage the gears (auto as well). Burned his brakes out, wound up crashing it.
 
Braking is one of the things that should automatically disengage cruise control.

So if it doesn't go off manually, nor when you stomp the brake pedal, you're in a little trouble.

One of the reasons I'm a little leary of autos.
 
Braking is one of the things that should automatically disengage cruise control.

So if it doesn't go off manually, nor when you stomp the brake pedal, you're in a little trouble.

One of the reasons I'm a little leary of autos.

I think that's what this whole thread is referring to, namely a CC that didn't disarm upon brake application.

No need to be scared of autos at all in my opinion. Just stick in into N and brake normally if things go really wrong. The engine will bounce off the rev limiter but at least you won't hit anything. You can of course always turn off the ignition key as well. Don;t take it out though, steering lock will engage.

i truth though, how often do such faults occur anyway.

I still think this driver is attempting to cover up a multitude of other driving offences.
 
The way I look at it is an automatic is more prone to problems than manuals, if you can't shift out of "D" when something goes wrong then you're in trouble.

Plus the need to keep the auto shifter in good nick - the one and only auto I've driven had an auto-shifter in terrible condition, such that a few times when attempting top accelerate it took a few seconds to drop down a cog, with making it none to smooth with the sudden acceleration.
 
You will be able to overcome the engine torque with the brakes. I've tried it in both automatic and manual cars and it is possible to bring the car to a halt.

It does take some serious pedal force (I'm a big bloke; weight and muscle power helps a bit of course - 20 odd years ago I broke the seat mountings in a knackered Metro whilst trying to stop it in more of a hurry than it wanted to stop) but in dire emergency I think even the frailest of elderly drivers would summon up the required strength to stop the car.

OK, after several applications you will indeed exhaust the servo's vacuum but I assume that having stopped without incident you wouldn't carry on driving the defective vehicle.

We are compounding things here. The brakes had not failed. The transmission selector had not failed. The key was not superglued in the ON position.

The situation we're discussing in this thread I think it's a poor excuse for some very bad driving to be honest.
 

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