“Honest, officer!”
One more person who couldn’t tell the difference between the brake pedal and the accelerator…
LOL… I find that when the brakes in a vehicle suddenly do not work it does indeed feel as though you picked up speed upon pressing the brake pedal to the floor when in reality you did not actually accelerate. A trick of the mind perhaps…and at that moment your mind is in overdrive, haha oh the stories I could tell on this topic!
However this issue does not look like the one I am relating to… Holy cow this is NO BUENO for sure. I hope no one was killed.
Luckily, no deaths, but 12 people were injured and several vehicles were wrecked as a result of that dump truck’s plunge onto the depressed roadway. That narrow, 70 year old, “highway” is essentially the only approach road to the Lincoln Tunnel, and the people who were delayed for hours by that accident numbered in the thousands.
Not too long ago, my former boss was driving a GMC Yukon from our fleet, and when he pressed the brake pedal, he heard a pop sound and the pedal sank to the floor. It was a blown brake line, and after it was fixed, it happened to him one more time before he had the entire brake system replaced.
I’m just saying that occasionally, these things do happen. Not in this case, which was obviously driver error, but they do sometimes happen.
pushing my son in a stroller yrs ago along a sidewalk on a city street. the building had a side entrance, single door. so the opening was 5’ wide? the parallel parked cars in a row. i went by a car and driver backed up to get out of his spot and floored it as he tried to go forward. he had wheel turned towards the building. jumped curb and his bumper hit the corner of the door opening. i would say about 6" from bumper end/corner? i bet i was 10’ away? i was pushing stroller so i did not feel like doing a superman and reaching into car. i know for a fact he would have cruised right down the sidewalk with a dozen folks walking behind me. he smoked his tire for about 30sec till a guy did reach in.
+1
However, I think it is fair to say that these incidents are more commonly the result of driver error than mechanical failure.
You may recall me mentioning the case of my friend’s Accord–in which I was a passenger–that was T-boned on the property of a Shell station, by a crazy woman driver who had already hit one car on US Route 1, and then jumped the curb and T-boned us as we were driving from the gas pump to the station exit.
I overheard her being interviewed by one of the responding officers, and she said, “The harder I pressed the brake, the faster the car went”. The cop softly muttered, “Yeah, that’s what happens when you can’t tell the difference between the gas and the brake”.
Her Lexus RX was examined by a qualified mechanic after the collision, and he found no problems whatsoever with her brake system.