Speed Holes Make the Car Go Faster

Some time ago – several years – I heard a news report about a woman whose car suddenly sped up on the highway and she called 911 from her cellphone; after emergency services were able to stop the car (I forget how), the police said it was good that she'd called 911 because if they'd tried to wave her over and she didn't respond they'd have shot her to get her to stop. I wondered at the time why she didn't put the car into neutral.

This came to me again when I heard about the fatal Toyota crash and all of the complaints about sticking gas pedals and now Toyota's recall and fix. I again wondered why people didn't just shift into neutral, but I was starting to think that it must not be possible to do that at speed because, with such a widespread problem, you'd think it would be widely mentioned as an emergency procedure if it were possible.

Then this morning on the news I heard that Consumer Reports recommended exactly that, and in fact has done so since October. I'm not at all into the mechanics of cars; in fact car problems scare the daylights out of me. But the idea of shifting into neutral in that situation managed to occur to me, and it seems so simple, that I wonder at the lack of publicity it has received.