Five years ago, a woman driving a Kia Sorento SUV suddenly found that her gas pedal was stuck, sending her on a near-120 mph (193 km/h) rampage on Interstate 35 in Missouri.
You might remember this incident since we covered it shortly after it happened. Thankfully, the woman managed to release the gas pedal and put an end to her ordeal after a very scary 59 miles (94 km) in which even police cars struggled to keep up.
What you may not remember though is that the following year, National Geographic ran a whole segment about this incident, asking viewers what they would do had they found themselves in a similar situation.
As it turns out, choosing between A) Using the Emergency Brake, B) Jamming the car into Neutral and C) Turning off the engine can be somewhat difficult. You should first consider the type of car you’re driving. If it has a manual transmission, you can easily solve the problem even before you shift out of gear – just press down on the clutch and the car will stop accelerating.
In an automatic, you need to hope shifting it into Neutral will do the trick, since this might actually be your best option according to the report. However, that woman in the Sorento told reporters that she tried shifting out of drive and it didn’t work.
So let’s switch it up a bit and acknowledge the fact that using the emergency brake or turning off the engine might leave you even more vulnerable in terms of controlling the car, but also that shifting into Neutral might not work – for whatever reason. If that’s the case, finding a way to release the gas pedal should be your number one priority. Or should it?