It has been in the news, but if anyone didn’t hear, last Septmber, a young man driving between Fargo and rural Minnesota had some car trouble. His Honda Pilot took on a mind of its own, speeding up to 113 mph, not letting him brake, and not allowing him to shut he car off. He was able to phone 911 as well as his mother while driving, and the Highway Patrol and county sheriff figured out how to stop him. A Deputy sped past him going 130 mph, stopped the patrol car in front of the Pilot, and instructed the young man to crash into the rear of the patrol car. He did, the vehicle stopped, and no one was injured.
The whole story is amazing, but what astounds me is that the driver was using his phone all through the ordeal. My phone is in my purse when I drive and is on silent so I can’t hear it or be tempted to answer it. My son has his phone set up so that it sends him calls and allows him to call while driving without taking his hands off the wheel. I imagine that is what the driver of the Pilot did, too. I don’t know if I would have had the presence of mind make the calls and drive and flip all the switches to try to turn the car off.
What would you have done? Is your phone connected to your car audio system? What is the fastest you have driven?
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Trail Baboon 
Probably put the car in neutral, then tried working the emergency brake. But EBs aren’t the same as they were back in the day when we had an actual brake lever to pull. Might not work today.
I sometimes connect my phone to the car. It is useful for hands-free calling. But I rarely make calls, and have only gotten a few over the past 9 years when we bought our first car with that capability.
Fastest I ever drove was about 90 mph on “the 10” near Palm Springs in a rented Chevy Corvette. I chickened out after about 5 seconds. I get nervous putting it up near 80 in my cars. Might have gone 90+ on the Autobahn or French Interstate system where there was no max speed limit (back in the 1990s anyway).
Chris in O-town
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No phone use while driving.
These last few days I’ve been driving in New York and Massachusetts. Far too often, my speed is ranging from zero to 85 on interstate highways. It’s nuts to be passed going 80+. White knuckles!
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Daughter just got back ftom Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Had a great time!
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Yikes! I hadn’t heard about this! Putting it in neutral that Chris mentioned – that seems like it would work, but maybe it wouldn’t go… and I’m not sure I’d have thought of it in that situation.
I don’t have my new phone hooked up to anything, and I’d rather keep it that way, but I see I should get someone to advise me about that.
90 is probably as fast as I’ve ever driven, on the interstate. I used to regularly go 80 through Nebraska, when driving home from California the couple of times I did that…
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My phone is connected to the car, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to use it.
I’m glad that sheriffs and highway patrol officers know what to do in these situations.
Recently someone my wife knows was driving when brakes failed. She managed to slow down, then turn into a curb to get stopped. That made me think about the situation and offer “If that happens to you, put the car into neutral.”
I recalled reading about a hero in a situation where, years ago, someone’s throttle got stuck, so she just laid onto the brakes and kept going until flames were coming out of the wheels. “Neutral” never occurred to her. The hero pulled a maneuver like the one in North Dakota.
Maybe, in an emergency situation, “neutral” wouldn’t occur to me, either. I like to imagine, though, that it would.
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In this case, neutral didn’t work because the car computer went rogue and wouldn’t let him put it into neutral. Reminds me of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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guilty
I drive and use my phone and pour my coffee and read messages and steer with my knees and I’m just way too comfortable in my car. I guess I spend so many hours a day and it feels like an extension of my limbs.
there is a magic button that you never notice next to your shifter that looks like a little slot that you would put your phone charger cord into and if you take your key or something like a key and stick it in there, it will allow you to shift even when the car is locked into drive or park or whatever I think I’d go for that option in this situation
The fastest I’ve ever driven a car is 130 fastest I’ve ever driven a motorcycle is 115 and I guess I’m just kind of that guy
The stories of my youth….
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tim, that doesn’t surprise any of us! 🙂
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I saw this on the news! Thank Goodness for long straight roads! I can’t think of any place around here that I could drive that fast, that long, without having to make a corner or anything.
I wondered too about shifting to neutral or turning off the car. but if you turn off the car the steering wheel locks… and yeah, the newer cars with a ‘knob’ shifter, are electronic and I could see that not working. Personally, I hate the knob… give me an old time lever / hand rest.
I’ve gone 80’s a few times. I was late for a meeting…as a kid I remember being in the backseat with my brothers friends and they hit 110. (Speaking of who taught us bad habits again).
We tease the county sherriff deputy who comes to our townboard meetings, “But if the light is red and there’s no one around…” He stops us with “What color is the light?”
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The roads are straight and flat in the Red River Valley.
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How scary! I heard about it on the news too, and I was imagining what I would do. I’m pretty hopeless, I guess. I wondered how much gas was left in the tank, how straight and flat the roads were, how late at night it was… I might just try to run out of gas if that was my only option. Probably not the wisest choice.
I do plug my phone in and use it to stream Radio Heartland or books or podcasts. I can answer it with my voice if it rings, or I can say, “Call Kamala Harris.” And it will make the call if I have the correct number in the phone. I’m sure it would work if you said, “Call 911!”
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I sure hope Honda gets that one figured out, now that I own a Civic!
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Ditto that hope. I have an Honda.Insight
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Well, I’m not quite a little old grandma who can’t see over the steering wheel, I’m pretty conservative when I drive. The opposite of tim. So the phone is always in the purse unless I have it hooked into and on my holder with GPS directions going somewhere. I may have gone 80 a few times if I was trying to pass somebody long stretch of straight road but I really don’t like to get above 70 or 75.
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I drive for fuel economy, so I’m usually driving around 55 on freeeways. Sometimes in heavy traffic that’s not a good option, since everyone else wants to go faster. So I push it up a bit. I don’t recall ever going faster than 70. Never been in that kind of hurry.
The phone does connect to the audio system in my latest car, but it’s not working right. If a call connects, I can hear the other person but they can’t hear me. It wouldn’t be helpful in a crisis.
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I don’t know what I would have done. Peed my pants, or worse, probably.
No phone connected to anything; most likely the phone isn’t even in my purse.
The fastest I’ve driven was 90 miles an hour in my Saab 900 Turbo. It was in Montana where you can literally drive for hours without seeing any traffic. I was trying to reach our camping spot in Glacier National Park before dark.
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