<VV> Unintended acceleration

[Thesuperscribe at cs.com]

When that Audi incident came to light I scoffed at the poor gal, too. How 
could a car take off on its own? I saw her on 60 Minutes(?) and she said she knew 
the difference between the brake and accelerator pedals and swore she had her 
foot on the brake. I think she believed that, but I figured she had just made 
a tragic mistake that killed her little boy.

Then, a few years alater, I was driving a rental car (a Taurus) which 
suddenly began accelerating on its own. I was doing about about 55 on a two-lane 
highway in CC and the car began accelerating to 60, 65... I punched the Off button 
several times and it had no effect. There was no traffic ahead of me  so I 
wasn't in big trouble, and when I touched the brake pedal the CC disconnected 
and all was well. It didn't happen again with that car.

Later, on two or three different cars (all Fords, I think), it happened 
again. One was in town, at a boulevard speed, and it happened twice with that car. 
I therefore have concluded that such things ARE possible, whether or not it 
truly happened to that gal. 

Of course, we don't have such problems with our 'Vairs, ha ha. 

--Tom in Ohio

***

In a message dated 5/7/2008 10:07:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
virtualvairs-request at corvair.org writes: 
> Craig adds:
> The reason for the "foot on the brake" interlock was precisely to solve part
> of the Audi "unintended acceleration" issue, which turned out to be "foot on
> the wrong pedal".  You HAVE to have your foot on the "right" pedal in order
> for the car to start. Neutral safety switches don't do that. (Sure made
> Audis a great buy for about 10 years!)
> 
> Craig Nicol