This Guy's Car Got Stuck at 125mph—for an Hour | Hacker News Reader

This Guy's Car Got Stuck at 125mph—for an Hour

theatlantic.com

10 pointsleknarf9 comments

I'm not entirely certain how this got dropped by the atlantic, but if you click through to the Guardian, it mentions that the car was "adapted for disabled drivers".

Assuming they mean some form of hand controls for gas & brakes, that's a pretty damn important detail they left out.

And to think, during an hour of high drama, the driver could have simply reached over, switched off the ignition key and ended the drama.

Well, the car might not let him do that. It's less clear why he can't just throw the car into neutral and let it coast to a stop. I guess that would mess the engine up pretty good (edit: I'm not actually sure that's true), but it still seems like the right move. I'd be curious to know why he didn't/couldn't do that.

or thrown it out of gear, or even used the handbrake to slow it a bit. Seems a bit ridiculous that nobody in the emergency services thought of any of these things ... something's not right.

From wikipedia:

> The Laguna featured a 'keyless' ignition system which, instead of a key, used a credit card style device to unlock the car and start the engine.

that might eliminate the first possibility: the car could be "clever" enough to not allow cutting the ignition while it's at speed. There's also mention of a model being shipped with a "proactive transmission", on which I can find this description:

> flick-shift, six-speed, proactive transmission

I suppose flick-shift might also be routed through the computer so you don't damage the machinery by attempting to put it into low gear or into park at speed ... or into neutral, I guess.

Are vehicles really being approved without mechanical failsafes?

The transmission sounds similar to the Steptronic or Tiptronic automatic transmissions. You can shift up and down all day long with the paddles, but you can't downshift into a gear that will redline the engine.

He could have thrown the "key" out of the window, the car likely would have shut down as soon as it was out of range. I found this out the hard way, taking a similarly equipped car for a test drive.

Sounds like all the cars systems were unable to be controlled mechanically. This is why I drive manual.

Also I feel like this would've ended tragically if it had happened before the age of ubiquitous cell-phones. Imagine being unable to call the police from your car in this situation. Very scary.

This is going to sound really obvious, but what about slowly applying the emergency brake?

Oh my, he did the right thing to call the police, though the car was not in control, he was in control.

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