what's wrong with this picture?

[Andrew Buc]

** Reply to message from Brett Dikeman <brett at cloud9.net> on Fri, 19 Mar 2004
21:32:03 -0500

> a)switch off the ignition(now there's a shocker)
> b)put the car in neutral or park(yet again, what a foreign concept)
> c)hit the damn brakes(in almost any car, the brakes are far more 
> 'powerful' than the engine)
> d)hmm, drive over people or crash into a wall/telephone pole.  Now 
> there's a tough choice in what to steer for

At some point in the '60s, Tom McCahill (I think he wrote for _Mechanix
Illustrated_) wrote about a young woman who had her gas pedal stick and jumped
out of the car while it was doing 70. Miraculously, she wasn't seriously hurt,
and the car somehow came to rest in a field w/o doing serious damage to anyone
or anything.

The woman was later asked why she hadn't turned off the ignition. She said
she'd been afraid that the car would stop so abruptly that she'd go thru the
windshield. (Presumably she wasn't buckled up, but that's another discussion.
This may have been before seat belts were mandated.) McCahill concluded that
any driver education she'd gotten, if any, left something to be desired. I
think he had a point.