A Car With A Mind of it's Own

[Joe Matt]

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/0...?tid=126&tid=1

Seems that poor old Hicham Dequiedt was driving on a highway when he tried to accelerate around a truck with cruse controll, when his car started to accelerate to over 120 mph on it's own. Stomping on the breaks did nothing and he finally got it to stop after traveling over 125 miles.

[evulish]

Spotted nearby was Herbie the Love Bug.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

You shouldn't disagree with me Michael.

[Jay H 237]

A Renault going 120mph?! Isn't that an oxymoron.

I wonder what prevented him from either shifting into neutral or depressing the clutch? If he did that stepping on the brakes would have been a lot more effective without them competing against the engine. Also with the engine still running, although racing wildly, he would still have power steering and brakes.

Well, at least he was able to stop before the toll booth. He could have given a whole new meaning to the term "Speed Pass"!

[Matt Attallah]

Same thing I thought about the clutch/neutral...

GM has also had the same 'complaints' but nothing has been proven...

(GM now owns Renault)

[Jack Jones]

What do you expect from a French vehicle? It's bound to runaway sooner or later.

[Jay H 237]

I went looking around and found another story about this. He claims that not only couldn't he slow down or shut the engine off, he also couldn't shift the automatic transmission into neutral.

Naturally a full inspection is being done on the car although they say it's highly unlikely he would have all these issues at once. They say the results should be available later this week. This could be interesting.

[Jay H 237]

The results are in. Renault's engineers couldn't find anything wrong. Renault is also asking a judge to have an independent inspection done on the vehicle also in case this becomes a court matter. Story located here.