How do you stop a car with a jammed accelerator?

[Ahmad]

Read here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8498257.stm

[Al Mawtu Qareeb]

Very informative. Sometimes i wonder what i'd do if i was driving in suburban streets and the brakes failed. Only solution i think of is to drive up the curb to slow the car down or hit something if all else fails. Better to hit a tree or pole etc instead of risking hitting and killing someone.

After reading the article i see i have a few more options. Alhumdulillah.

[Majestic_Islam]

This happened to me when I had my first car, the cruise control was on and the km's kept increasing - it was an auto car, and I chose the wrong action of switching the car off - Alhamdulillah it worked (but do not take the keys out of your ignition - as the steering wheel may go into lock!

Something similar happened with a porsche which I had, where the actual gear stick came off just as I was changing into 2nd/3rd gear - Alhamdulillah using the clutch (depressing it), and pulling to the left helped slow the car.

I guess the first was more of a 'frantic moment' event, inshaAllah it won't happen to anyone of you, as it can be quite testing.

Fi Amanillah

Abu Khadijah (Abu Hamza 'Umar)

[BintMuhammad]

I was thinking of getting my L's but now I change my mind :O I'm happy with my husband driving me around and take care of that accelerator jamming up LOL

[Abu Layla]

Most people would not even follow what's in that article if they read it 10 or 20 times. In the heat of the moment, your reaction would be different. I would obviously try pressing the brakes firmly first, but if it's revving really high, the only thing you'd do is burn out your brakes, and eventually get brake fade if it went on for long enough which means your brake pedal would go down to the floor and you wouldn't have any stopping power. Basically your brakes will heat up so much that the heat will transfer through all the metal parts until it gets into the brake fluid and boils your brake fluid causing it to lose it's hydraulic characteristic which equals no brakes. Next would be to turn the ignition off but not take the key out as Majestic_Islam said.

Putting it into neutral would actually come before switching ignition off as this would have a similar effect to switching it off except that if you have power steering, putting the car into neutral will still give you the ability to steer it easily. Whereas if you switched the car off your power steering would generally become useless and even become very hard to steer. You'll also realise that if you put it into neutral that the car will rev it's head off... let's hope it's a fuel injected car as they tend to have rev limiters as opposed to a carburettor engine that will rev until it valve bounces and craps itself because they don't have a rev limiter because it's not computer controlled. I guess when your life is on the line you wouldn't care about the motor blowing up but it's still $$$$ if you survive!

[caller]

abu laylas response is enough for me, im not gonna bother with the link

[Ahmad]

yep i knew the guys would be like "psshh, im a guy"

[saif]

Maybe you can just use your feet like Fred Flintstone.

[SadaqAllah]

How do you unstuck a jammed clutch?

[Abu Layla]

What do you mean by jammed clutch? Is it as though the pedal is pushed to the floor or as though it is not pushed at all?

[SadaqAllah]

When you put your foot down on the clutch to change gears the pedal stays down. It's on my friends car that I drove recently.

[Abu Layla]

It sounds as though he has either air in the hydraulic fluid system (the clutch fluid needs to have the air bled out of it), or the diaphragm on the pressure plate which is bolted onto the engine's flywheel, has crapped itself.