RickB
Yoda
Offline
There was a bad accident on I-90 westbound just before the Sunset Way offramp this morning.
It looked to me like the car had a stuck wide open throttle (WOT).
I saw brake lights ahead in all lanes, then I saw the car everyone was slowing down for was going real fast across all lanes bouncing off the side embankments until it went off the road on the north side. It ended a couple hundred feet into the woods and it was on it's side and facing the wrong way so it flipped at least once.
A lot of cars stopped, I did too. We made our way through the blackberry bushes to the car.
There was one person in the car, the driver, and he was semi-conscious.
One of the responders sounded like he had EMT training so everyone let him talk to the driver.
I looked around the area for anyone who might have been thrown out of the car and asked the guy to see if the driver had been alone.
Troopers and a fire truck showed up, there wasn't anything more I could do so after checking with a Trooper I made my way back to my Midget and went on my way.
People have to think about what to do when in that situation.
You can put the transmission in neutral. Just let the engine race, better to blow up an engine than to die in a crash and possibly kill others.
If you put the transmission into neutral and pull off the road then you can turn the key off.
Turning the key off in most newer cars locks the steering wheel so you don't want to do that until you are parked.
Everyone should practice this.
The car that I saw this morning was a new looking Kia sedan.
It doesn't only happen to Toyotas.
Also be aware of what to do if the brakes or steering fail.
People take newer cars for granted, anything made in the past ten years just seems so dependable, so when something like this happens it's a big surprise.
We who drive these LBC's probably have our wits about us more than most - anyone here have brakes fail or have a WOT incident in a British car? I know I have had both within the past year. These things are survivable but like any emergency you will do what you have been trained to do - if you haven't at least thought about what to do then you won't have any idea when it happens.
I will be training my wife and kids on what to do if the car fails in these ways - starting today after work. I actually already started by sending them this information in an email so they can be thinking about it.
It looked to me like the car had a stuck wide open throttle (WOT).
I saw brake lights ahead in all lanes, then I saw the car everyone was slowing down for was going real fast across all lanes bouncing off the side embankments until it went off the road on the north side. It ended a couple hundred feet into the woods and it was on it's side and facing the wrong way so it flipped at least once.
A lot of cars stopped, I did too. We made our way through the blackberry bushes to the car.
There was one person in the car, the driver, and he was semi-conscious.
One of the responders sounded like he had EMT training so everyone let him talk to the driver.
I looked around the area for anyone who might have been thrown out of the car and asked the guy to see if the driver had been alone.
Troopers and a fire truck showed up, there wasn't anything more I could do so after checking with a Trooper I made my way back to my Midget and went on my way.
People have to think about what to do when in that situation.
You can put the transmission in neutral. Just let the engine race, better to blow up an engine than to die in a crash and possibly kill others.
If you put the transmission into neutral and pull off the road then you can turn the key off.
Turning the key off in most newer cars locks the steering wheel so you don't want to do that until you are parked.
Everyone should practice this.
The car that I saw this morning was a new looking Kia sedan.
It doesn't only happen to Toyotas.
Also be aware of what to do if the brakes or steering fail.
People take newer cars for granted, anything made in the past ten years just seems so dependable, so when something like this happens it's a big surprise.
We who drive these LBC's probably have our wits about us more than most - anyone here have brakes fail or have a WOT incident in a British car? I know I have had both within the past year. These things are survivable but like any emergency you will do what you have been trained to do - if you haven't at least thought about what to do then you won't have any idea when it happens.
I will be training my wife and kids on what to do if the car fails in these ways - starting today after work. I actually already started by sending them this information in an email so they can be thinking about it.