Are you TRAINED or untrained?
Recently the media has had a field day with the malfunctioning accelerator mechanism installed in some Toyota vehicles, and I was going to return the favor by bashing the media, but I decided to do a bit of research first. I was online, looking for an image of an emergency flasher button to insert in my post, and stumbled upon something a bit more interesting.
The italicized text is an excerpt from “Don’t Panic in the Drivers Seat”
“. . . we were sailing the Buick down the freeway when I got pinched behind a slow big rig. When the lane opened up I floored the accelerator and the engine went directly into warp drive. When I cleared the truck and let up on the gas nothing changed, we were still accelerating rapidly and the pedal was stuck on the floor.
It took me less than a second to realize this was a bad thing. I quickly pulled back into the right lane — no doubt to the consternation of the truck driver — flipped the transmission into neutral and slammed on the brakes as I crossed onto the small shoulder, with the engine over revving badly. I brought the big frigate to a stop and turned off the ignition.
This all transpired in just a few seconds, so quickly in fact that the people talking in the back seat didn’t know what had transpired. When I pulled off the road, one of them asked, “Do we have a flat?” Go here to read the whole post:
Stepping on the brakes IS NOT the answer to the stuck accelerator pedal problem. Disable the beast by shutting off the power source – TURN OFF the engine! And like the person in the quote above DON’T PANIC! Easy to say I know.
And this bit of advice is for CNN, highway patrol officers and the rest of the media as well: stop sensationalizing tragedy and dispense some useful information for a change. .
Here you go:
As soon as you think something is not right with your vehicle’s accelerator, put the transmission in neutral (that’s the “N” on the transmission display panel), then TURN OFF the ignition and turn on the emergency flashers (that’s the button with the red triangle on it). Yeh, I know the car will be hard to steer and the brakes will feel like they’re not working, but at least you won’t die or be seriously injured.
Avoid unnecessary distractions . . .
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