Re[2]: Extracting "haed"

[cobram@channel1.com (Cobram)]

 "Todd Candey" <tcandey@usr.com> illuminates:
 
 TC> I wonder how many new cars - regardless of mfg - would suffer 
 TC> unintended acceleration if those saftey locks were removed today.
 TC> 
 TC> todd. 

   Which reminds me....

   When I was working as a pump jockey while in High School,
   a few years before the "unintended acceleration" episodes, how
   many years I won't say....
   
   I personally witnessed 6 incidents of the drivers leaving cars
   at the pump with a passenger inside. When I was finished pumping,
   the drivers hadn't returned (bathroom, coke machine etc.) and
   seeing other vehicles waiting for a fill up, would put the 
   cars in Drive, "just a few feet, to make some room for the
   car behind", and, as those on this list probably know, once
   you get going...Park won't engage.  Nobody ever got hurt,
   but we had two go across two lanes of a very busy frontage
   road and fall in the concrete drainage ditch. Coincidence or not, 
   of the six incidents I witnessed, 4 or them were Volvos. 
   
   The absolute most impressive of these was a Fiat (could of been an
   Alfa), (older Italian cars had a "cruise control" cable, that was 
   nothing more than a cable going directly to the accelerator on the 
   carb) The passenger in the car put the car in Drive, and
   when it didn't move, he pulled the "cruise control", which made
   the car go to full throttle. It shot across the gas station, over
   the concrete curb and slammed into some dumpsters. The passenger
   jumped out of the car and left it there spinning and smoking the
   tires. The way the car hit the dumpster let it's rear end swivel 
   back and forth, so you couldn't really approach the car to do
   anything. After a while the tires go so hot one blew off the
   rim and the other shredded sending tire shrapnel flying. The 
   wheels then started shooting impressive sparks out the back,
   looked kinda like an horizontal Apollo mission.  The rear fenders
   were smoking like Renault Le Car fenders with a bad cat, when
   the fire dept. showed up and hosed it down. 

   The other car was an old mustang.  The common factor in all
   of these was that the shifter was a console shifter, accesable
   by the passenger.  If I learned one thing, it was never to
   underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

   BCNU

... Two most common elements in the universe: Hydrogen & Stupidity.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12