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I'd try to knock it into neutral. Wouldn't do the transmission much good at that speed, but that would at that point, be the least of your worries you'd think.
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I'd have said put it in neutral but it seems that driver tried that. He also tried pressing the START-STOP button and that did nothing - if it had an ignition key you'd turn the engine off.
I'd have tried the handbrake myself.... and reverse too if the box allowed it. Or switch the DSG into manual and change down the gears.
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I would have taken my foot off the accelerator.
Suicide.
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Do you think CG? Why do you reckon that?
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Why not use the footbrake, might blow the engine but surely that would stop the car
Can't see why coroner rejected suicide
totally weird one
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This was an Octavia so had a proper handbrake so he could have used footbrake and handbrake. The footbrake should have disengaged the CC.... We'll probably never know what if anything went wrong with the car.
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Because he made no attempt to brake, the accelerator was fully depressed, he made no attempt to make a controlled crash against the crash barrier or use the hand brake, despite being an experienced driver and no evidence was brought as to a mechanical failure.
Suicides often have a dramatic element. Why else do people travel milesto jump off Beachy Head rather than the local council tower block? Coroners are alwAys reluctant to give a suicide verdict for the sake of the family.
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>> Suicide
What makes you think that. If that was their intention, then (a) why call the emergency services and (b) there's cleaner/easier ways to achieve the same.
But could all of the ECU's prevent the car from being stopped or cruise control from being disabled? But wouldn't the CC try to maintain a set speed - so did he previously set it that fast?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 24 Nov 16 at 17:30
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My cruise control switches off when I brake. Perhaps he panicked?
I must admit mine remembers the last setting so when travelling at say 40 and switching it on, if previously set to 70 the car will accelerate until I reset it - I dislike the way that is set as I think it is dangerous.
Perhaps he had a mod done to the car, who knows what changes an unauthorised software change can to the ECU and functioning of other parts or perhaps the interlink between the brakes and cruise control failed so that stepping on the brakes didn't switch it off.
Re the brakes I guess that foot fully down on the brakes will slow and eventually stall the car I have never done that but I have had a BMW diesel that pulled forward when in a low gear and needed lots of brake effort or clutch to keep the speed down.
I suppose the car could have been nobbled? Did he have any enemies or a big life insurance policy?
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I call cobblers.
Or custard.
Or whoosh.
Or whatever it is that one says to indicate that we are not getting the true story. Wasn't it Toyota that had lots of problems with stuck throttles? Not so.
It's the Daily Mail, so it must be true.
tinyurl.com/o2fulc9
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>>Perhaps he panicked?
I'll go with that one.
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Suicide but hoping that phone calls to 999 would create enough fog for life insurance exclusion to be nullified?
Alternatively, nothing to do with cruise control. Diesel engine with overfilled sump running on engine oil.
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..which prevented it being put into neutral, the clutch being depressed, the brakes being used, the ignition being switched off, the cruise control being disengaged etc. etc. etc.
Hardly.
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I've no proof, but how many times have we heard of drivers with autos holding the accelerator pressed instead of the brake?
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Probably not suicide, but an attention seeking exercise that went badly wrong.
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Wasn't Toyota's issue caused by badly fitted mats?
The article mentions that the accelerator was fully pressed 5 seconds before the crash and then not pressed at all 1.5 seconds before and the car was going 25mph slower at the point of impact than 2 seconds earlier.....
All a bit odd to me - inclined to agree with CG's theory
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>> Wasn't Toyota's issue caused by badly fitted mats?
When I was taking the Club's Toyotas for sevice or recalls, the drivers mat was always in the boot on collection. They were not Toyota mats. I always left them there.
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Lost, Zero??
My thoughts exactly, I reckon he was looking for an excuse to cane it along the m-way, but got it out of shape.
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>> I must admit mine remembers the last setting so when travelling at say 40 and
>> switching it on, if previously set to 70 the car will accelerate until I reset
>> it - I dislike the way that is set as I think it is dangerous.
>>
Which car is that? Most are a two step process. My 2005 C Class it's just a single step, operated by a stalk, but you'd have to move the stalk to 'resume' rather than 'set'.
The other thing, which momentarily catches me out now and again, is there's no indication that cruise is in use so if you drive faster than the set speed and then slow down, it'll stop slowing once it gets to the set speed. But like I say, it's a momentary thing.
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Reminds me of a Jaguar fault years ago. One of the ways of disengsging the c/c was to touch the footbrake. The problem was a faulty microswitch on the brake pedal, so when the brake was applied the c/c, sensing the car was slowing down would accelerate the car. Very scary !
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>> Which car is that? Most are a two step process. My 2005 C Class it's
>> just a single step, operated by a stalk, but you'd have to move the stalk
>> to 'resume' rather than 'set'.
All the CC fitted cars I have driven have had two distinctly different ways of engaging CC. Set, the speed you are at. And resume, the speed in the CC memory.
My current car has a feature that I have not come across before, the clutch pedal has to be pressed for a few seconds to disengage the CC. This allows gear changes without having to re engage the CC. I have not got the cars book to hand at the moment but it specifies the exact number of seconds. It surprised me the first time I changed gear And the CC did not drop out.
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>>My current car has a feature that I have not come across before,
>> the clutch pedal has to be pressed for a few seconds to disengage the CC
>> This allows gear changes without having to re engage the CC.
>> I have not got the cars book to hand at the moment but it specifies the exact number of seconds
>>. It surprised me the first time I changed gear And the CC did not drop out.
>>
IIRC my sons Mk1 manual Focus with CC was the same.
It is logical to me. Cruising in top and arrive at a steep hill and there is not enough grunt so obviously change down. Rather defeats object if you have to keep re engaging CC on every downshift.
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The CC in my Golf stays engaged even through gearchanges but it is the first one I have had that does
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I was quite taken with the idea when I discovered the Volvo cc resume is dependent on the angle of the steering wheel. If you resume cc when you are heading straight, it beefiily gets itself going again. If however, you touch resume on a bend, or coming out of a roundabout, it doesn't. It keeps the same speed or a slight increase, until you are straight, then gets really going.
Nice touch that.
However, if you are running it in adaptive mode you very rarely use resume anyway, as it does all that stuff itself and you just steer.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Fri 25 Nov 16 at 12:35
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>> My current car has a feature that I have not come across before, the clutch
>> pedal has to be pressed for a few seconds to disengage the CC. This allows
>> gear changes without having to re engage the CC. I have not got the cars
>> book to hand at the moment but it specifies the exact number of seconds. It
>> surprised me the first time I changed gear And the CC did not drop out.
>>
Checked the book, CC instant disengage with the brake pedal, 5 second delay with the clutch pedal. The set, resume, speed limiters (can be auto linked to speed signs), and cancel buttons are on the right steering wheel spoke. I have not used the speed limiters but use CC a lot.
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>> Which car is that?
A Vauxhall Mokka. Switch CC on, move the dial up and it automatically jumps to the previous setting.
It also continues to work when changing gears. Previous cars that I have driven cancelled the cruise control when the clutch was depressed.
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>> >> Which car is that?
>>
2016 Honda Jazz.
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>> A Vauxhall Mokka. Switch CC on, move the dial up and it automatically jumps to
>> the previous setting.
So are you not aware that moving the dial downwards on the CC controls sets the speed you're currently doing?
i.e.
lower as just mentioned.
upper reverts to previous saved speed.
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>> So are you not aware that moving the dial downwards on the CC controls sets
>> the speed you're currently doing?
>>
>> i.e.
>> lower as just mentioned.
>> upper reverts to previous saved speed.
>>
As in "set" and "resume".
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Don't believe a word of it. (Save for the death.)
How coincidental that it happened on a completely empty motorway. How many motorways do you think are there where you can drive at 125mph for nearly ten minutes? None?
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>> How coincidental that it happened on a completely empty motorway. How many motorways do you
>> think are there where you can drive at 125mph for nearly ten minutes? None?
>>
If you can avoid the plods parked on the on slip roads, the M6 and M74 between Lancaster and Abington. Way more than ten minutes.:-)
I don't believe it either.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 25 Nov 16 at 16:27
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y. How many motorways do you
>> think are there where you can drive at 125mph for nearly ten minutes? None?
>>
The M54 springs to mind. Very quiet especially at night.
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In early morning or late night, you can do sustained 100+ MPH easily in stretches of A1(M). 4 lanes and few cars. In fact only thing prevented me from doing that speed is fear of plods hidden or gantry cameras (I don't travel there regularly).
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>> In early morning or late night, ... easily in stretches of A1(M)
Best time is around midnight, when all spare patrols are dealing with town centre incidents. We sometimes use that road around midnight, at a ton you're likely to be the slowest thing on it.
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M180 as well, even during the day you could easily ton it. I think it even goes to four lanes at some point. Never seen it remotely busy even on a Friday afternoon.
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It's certainly possible to put a DSG into neutral while driving, I've done it. But that is not a mechanical link, so basically if the software either has a bug or is deliberately designed not to implement the shift to neutral under a condition that applied at the time, then perhaps it would just stay in gear with clutch engaged.
But there's a lot going on here. The implication is that the cruise would not disengage either on the cancel switch or by depressing the brake pedal. Furthermore, it did not merely lock in the set speed but increased it (assuming the driver had not set it at 119mph).
Possible I suppose that the pedal was stuck (or a bit of the linkage between pedal and the position sensor), and that the acceleration was nothing to do with cruise. That would explain why cruise would not "disengage". But it would not explain why the gearbox would not shift into neutral.
Unless there was more than one problem, it would probably have to be software.
Or wetware...I can think of a reason why someone might want to make suicide look like an accident; but there must be easier ways of doing it.
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He must have thought it was the easiest way.At that speed hitting a object you wouldn't have time to react or feel pain.The lights are out.
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According to other reports he was decapitated.
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Well the report to linked to above said the roof was peeled back. So you could assume major head trauma from that.
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attention seeker.
i once had a throttle cable snap while on the m1. automatic nissan, the revs go to max ., and your soon flying wondering what to do. did manage to get into service station and bring it to a controlled stop. exciting times. managed to fix cable with electric cable connector and got home
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Happened to me once, driving a rover and the throttle cable snapped, tje engine just dropped back to idle. Luckily I wasn't overtaking anyone, managed to drive it into a grass verge with no damage.
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I also had a throttle cable snap (the fitting on the end of it actually) on an Audi 80 on the M1. Not dramatic at all, it just dropped to tickover. I parked it on a police sit up. The police came along before the breakdown wagon, and told me I should not be there. I said it seemed safer than the hard shoulder, they agreed and went off.
I have also had a throttle stick on a 4.2 litre XJ6 automatic that I had just repossessed, under full acceleration on entering a roundabout. Fortunately the ignition key was in the same place as the one on the Golf I had at the time, and I managed to switch if off just before I left the roundabout at a tangent. More excitement than I needed.
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Reminds me of when I was showing orf to a nephew in my Dolomite Sprint automatic - floored the throttle and it got stuck at full shout. Quite scary for a few moments. Nephew shoved it into N and I turned the ignition orf.
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also had it happen on a metro, only this time i was stationery, and in the passenger seat, i said to the driver, take your foot off the gas. replied i a'nt touching it
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I agree with others, suicide without nullifying life insurance or some kind of Munchausan's indication.
Last edited by: Shiny on Sun 27 Nov 16 at 19:37
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>> If it does happen, what is the best strategy in an auto?
Turn the engine off with the ignition key and stop in a safe and orderly manner?
What's the matter with people? Are they all morons except me?
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>>Turn the engine off with the ignition key
For some reason the world appears to want a push-button to start/stop cars these days.
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>> For some reason the world appears to want a push-button to start/stop cars these days.
I quite like the old push button (or pull knob) starters; the ones that directly energise the solenoid.
The modern ones do no such thing; they just tell the car that the button has been pressed, and the car then does whatever it has been programmed to do. One would hope that, if the injun is already running, a press of the button would always stop it. It certainly doesn't work the other way round - the last one I tried did nothing until I had the seat belt on and my foot on the brake, which took me some time to work out.
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>> >> For some reason the world appears to want a push-button to start/stop cars these days.
Pushing and holding the button in any car for more than about 3 seconds will force an engine shutdown. Don't try it on the motorway because
(a) you'll lose power steering if electrically driven
(b) your headlights might go out if you do it at night
(c) you won't be able to start the engine again without pulling over to the hard shoulder
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That would have been a long 3 seconds in the 4.2 XJ6 with the throttle stuck full open on the roundabout, c. 1984. Chuffin' heck. It was scary enough turning the ignition off instantly with the key, by the time I got my hand to it.
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How does engine know that you are on the hard shoulder??
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>> How does engine know that you are on the hard shoulder??
>>
Car needs to be stationary with foot on brake to restart. You could try it in lane 3 if you wanted, doubt the car will know or care.
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>> The modern ones do no such thing; they just tell the car that the button
>> has been pressed, and the car then does whatever it has been programmed to do.
In my wife's 2015 VW, you're doing the same thing with the key. Get in, twist the key to and let go - it does nothing for a few seconds while the glow plugs warm up, then it spins the starter and the engine bursts into life.
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>> it does nothing for a few seconds while the glow plugs warm up, then it spins the starter and the engine bursts into life.
A few seconds? I thought modern diesels were pretty much just turn the key and go, just like a petrol engine these days.
I've only ever seen the glowplug light on my Astra briefly flash on and go out again. Similarly with the new Ford and Citroen vans at work.
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>> A few seconds? I thought modern diesels were pretty much just turn the key and
>> go, just like a petrol engine these days.
>>
>> I've only ever seen the glowplug light on my Astra briefly flash on and go
>> out again. Similarly with the new Ford and Citroen vans at work.
>>
I take it you do not live well above sea level north of Watford. :-)
it is a crisp morning with a clear blue sky and no wind here, oh, and -3C.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 5 Dec 16 at 08:27
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>> it is a crisp morning with a clear blue sky and no wind here, oh, and -3C.
-6°C the other morning. GP light still only briefly came on.
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First indication of a failing battery in a diesel.
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Battery is fine. It's just got super efficient quick warm up plugs.
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I was referring to Bill Payer's post where he said the glow plug light stayed on for several seconds.
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200m ASL in Lanark, -5 this morning. 307 1.6 HDI started, as usual, immediately with no wait. I'm not even sure it's GOT a glowplug light; certainly never seen it! The one on the Xantia HDi used to flick on briefly when it was cold - although it did stay on for about 10s in 2010 when it was near -20 at home....!!
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>> I've only ever seen the glowplug light on my Astra briefly flash on and go
>> out again. Similarly with the new Ford and Citroen vans at work.
That's because it goes off the moment you turn the key to the point you reach the starter motor.
Every time you start that poor engine you are denying it the few moments it needs to warm up its engine.
Next time, when the engine is cold, more the key to the position where the GP lights come on and hold it there until they go out.
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I always pause for the light to go out which can take 3 or 4 seconds in the Outlander when it is sub zero.
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>> Every time you start that poor engine you are denying it the few moments it needs to warm up its engine.
The glowplugs are just there to induce combustion, not to warm up the engine. The engine warms up after it is running.
>> Next time, when the engine is cold, more the key to the position where the
>> GP lights come on and hold it there until they go out.
Try reading my post properly! I do wait for the light to go out before starting the engine.
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Now back on petrol power I do not miss the diesel faf of glow plugs, DPFs, missfuel possibilities etc.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 5 Dec 16 at 13:27
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>>
>> A few seconds? I thought modern diesels were pretty much just turn the key and
>> go, just like a petrol engine these days.
>>
>> I've only ever seen the glowplug light on my Astra briefly flash on and go
>> out again. Similarly with the new Ford and Citroen vans at work.
>>
Perhaps I'm imagining it, but I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that some cars start the glow plugs, subject to external temperature, when the car is unlocked, thereby reducing/eliminating the wait?
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My old Perkins Prima engined Maestro would continue to provide current to the glow plugs for some tens of seconds after starting on cold days.
At night I could see the headlights brighten when the plugs switched off.
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Sticking Cruise Control - how - Runfer D'Hills
