Don't Forget The Basics, When Cars Go Bad

Sniff Petrol, put it like this:

"Initial reports of blithering idiocy emerged from the United States last year but these were thought to be isolated incidents caused by people who are so thick that if a floormat was touching their accelerator pedal would prefer to scream 'Aaaaaaargh' until they drove into a river rather than simply moving the mat backward with their foot. However, it now seems the monumental stupidity is more widespread and may cause some human beings to decide that the best course of action in the event of being in a car with a throttle that won't release is to telephone someone rather than to, for example, put the car into neutral and bring it to a halt using the brakes as normal."

It's called alert driving, what every driver should practice. Know what your car is doing, and what to do about it.

Let's call it what is it: unintelligent acceleration. All this fuss over Toyota's problems with cars accelerating out of control ignores one fundamental factor -- driver input -- that has received scant attention.

The plain fact is that regardless of whether certain Toyotas -- or plenty of other automakers' cars, for that matter -- have genuine mechanical or electronic problems with engine speed controls, they all have other systems that allow drivers to manage their vehicles perfectly well. One of these systems is called the brake and the other the transmission.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100415/OPINION03/4150380/1149/rss26#ixzz0ea6AoJC4