British driver Kevin Nicolle, 26, was lucky to survive after traveling for 60 miles at speeds of 135mph after the accelerator on his BMW 318i jammed and his brakes failed. “I took my foot off the accelerator because it’s automatic – but I wasn’t slowing down at all,” he said. “I hit the brakes. They were braking ok, they were keeping me at about 70mph.” He then phoned police and explained the situation, but patrol cars struggled to locate and catch up to the car. “Then the brakes started burning out – I could see smoke coming from the brakes,” Mr. Nicolle said. He tried to put the car into neutral but the gears were locked. “I remember the 999 lady saying ‘he’s crashed’,” recalls Nicolle. Miraculously, he walked away completely unhurt. He now says he’s giving up driving for good. BMW U.K. is investigating the incident.
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03/13, 9:00 AM
posted by:
Chris
Umm, how about putting the car in neutral and shutting it off?
03/13, 9:21 AM
posted by:
Madcapp
That’s gotta be a fraud, like chris said…I’ve never seen a car that can’t be shifted into neutral from drive, and if all else fails, you could just shut it off for a few seconds, and then turn the key enough to unlock the steering column as you coast to a stop.
03/13, 10:06 AM
posted by:
Icheb
“They were braking ok, they were keeping me at about 70mph.”
That should be proof enough for anyone that this is fake. Brakes are always stronger than the car’s capability to accelerate, so how is it possible that he could only decelerate to about 70mph?
I call guys like these attention-whores
.
03/13, 10:11 AM
posted by:
Jim in LA
what are the chances of an accelerator cable failure, complete braking system failure, automatic shifting failure and an ignition failure, all at once?
pretty slim. this guy’s trying to get his picture into one of those awful british murdoch-owned tabloids. probably worked, too.
03/13, 10:14 AM
posted by:
Monkeybars
Chris, did you read it? Apparently he couldn’t shift into neutral. And Jim, the brakes didn’t fail, not until he had been on them for 30 minutes.
As per turning the car off, well some people are just dumb. Yeah, I’m calling it a fake too. But hey, maybe this will teach more people to drive standard.
03/13, 11:23 AM
posted by:
nikivee
Total BS. I guess he couldn’t turn off the ignition?
. BS.
03/13, 1:04 PM
posted by:
Joel A
WTF? Makes no sense. This some sort of smear campaign against BMW?
03/13, 1:50 PM
posted by:
Tim G
Maybe he couldn’t keep up with the payments and figured BMW would buy it off of him just to shut him up. That’s not insurance fraud, is it?
03/13, 1:55 PM
posted by:
Chris G
Has anybody considered: what are the chances of a 318i going 135 mph? Even the E90 318i not available in the US has a Vmax of 130 mph. But that’s minor. He could have been going downhill. Also, if there’s no traffic around, 70 mph might be slow enough to slowly pull the emergency brake and skid the car to a halt. And I’m with #4. I find it hard to believe that all those systems could go wrong at once.
03/13, 11:53 PM
posted by:
Olaf Fermum
This is a fake. The same story appeared in the US press a couple of months ago – and was revealed as a fraud.
03/14, 12:45 AM
posted by:
The Drain
my Firefly did that sometimes…i simply shut it off when it does. what an idiot.
in regards to it being fake, i think i saw it posted on teh BBC site…lol.