The problem of over-acceleration isn't really new.

I had a 1958 Renault Dauphine that had a "choke cable" connection from the accelerator pedal to the carburator, and on a scenic drive in the wilder parts of New Hampshire in the dead of winter "she" saw a sign pointing to a "ski lift" and insisted "she" must see it, since "she" had never seen one.

When we got there, it was -- as I'd tried to convince her on the way up about 15 miles of ice-covered road with the profile of a snake after someone had stabbed it with an ice pick -- just a long rope looped over a couple of old wagon wheels on a slope about 100 feet long.

There were no skiers.

When we turned around, I'll confess to "gunning it" a bit, and the iced-up throttle cable stuck at "wide open."

On that particular car, you could turn the ignition off, but if you released the key it was spring loaded to where it locked the steering column, and there was no "ACC" position.

Since the Dauphine had an engine horsepower of about 3 FFPH^** I could fairly easily have just braked until I killed the engine, but I rode it down about a mile, using the brake to keep from blowing the engine, to a spot where the road was straight enough to turn it off with minimal requirement for dramatic steering responses.

After stopping, a liberal shot of WD40 and a hard yank on the throttle end of the cable made everything ok again.



^** For those not familiar with technical terminology:

        FFPH = flea-farts per hour.

John