BMW gets stuck at 135mph on motorway.

[G.T]

This news is a few weeks old (I'm surprised it hasn't been posted yet after a decent search), but it caught my attention when I read it.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4796264.stm

A motorist drove for 60 miles at speeds of 135mph after the accelerator on his BMW car jammed and his brakes failed.

Kevin Nicolle, 26, was on the A1 near Thirsk in North Yorkshire when the car started to accelerate.

"I was in tears most of the time on the phone to the police - I really could see myself dying," he told the BBC.

He had to drive on the hard shoulder to avoid crashing but eventually lost control and hit a roundabout near Blyth, Notts, but escaped unhurt.peaking to BBC Five Live about the incident on 5 March Mr Nicolle said: "I was travelling down the motorway and I came to traffic in front of me.

"I took my foot off the accelerator because it's automatic - but I wasn't slowing down at all.

"I hit the brakes. They were braking ok, they were keeping me at about 70mph.

"So I phoned up the police after I called the AA and they said straight away 'stick your hazard lights on and headlights on - we've got a helicopter en route to you'."

Police patrol cars were also sent but struggled to catch up with the BMW 318.

'Survived accident'

Mr Nicolle said: "Then the brakes started burning out - I could see smoke coming from the brakes."

He tried to put the car into neutral but the gears were jammed.

Mr Nicolle was in constant contact with the police on a hands-free phone.

As he approached Blyth he saw a sign for a roundabout.

"There was a load of cars parked waiting to go onto the roundabout, so I went on the inside on the hard shoulder to try to get around it. "But doing that sort of speed there was no chance and I hit the roundabout head on.

"I remember the 999 lady saying 'he's crashed'.

"I survived the accident but I thought I was going to die in the fire."

But miraculously he walked away completely unhurt - and said he is now considering giving up driving for good.

Mr Nicolle said the police took the car away for tests and BMW said they would carry out a full investigation.

BMW's UK media relations manager, Duncan Forrester, said: "I would certainly like to reassure anybody driving any BMW that we see this as really nothing more than a freak accident.

"We have absolutely no record of anything such as this happening in the past, hence the reason why we want to take a close look at it."

The R reg car had 107,000 miles on the clock and had three months remaining on the MOT.

I bet it was bloody frightening...

Also, I'm amazed a 107,000 mile 318 even reached 135mph (if it were stock).

I'm glad he came out unharmed.

 

[skip0110]

No pictures of the accident?

Surprised he didn't crack a rotor--I guess BMWs have good brakes...

 

[Lee]

*Notes down to use as an excuse for later on in life.*

 

[Vonie]

Would scare me, that's for sure. Glad to see that he's ok.

Police patrol cars were also sent but struggled to catch up with the BMW 318.

That's kind of sad.

 

[skip0110]

What do they use for patrol cars mostly in the UK?

Here the regular patrol cars are RWD Crown Vics, although you see a FWD Impala once and a while. They used to be Caprices; the undercovers are usually Mustangs or Explorers...

 

[TB]

he is now considering giving up driving for good.

Screw that. Except for the ending, I'd just enjoy the ride.

*goes to change his post in the How Would You Prefer To Die? thread*

 

[Omnis]

Peugeot 206's.

He should've just smashed against the side of the shoulder, if there was a wall there. I would rather violently scrape to a stop than hit a roundabout at 70mph and potentially kill someone else.

 

[F1GTR]

Hang on, I've seen some BMW 5 series Police cars...but they're mostly Vauxhall Astras.

 

[Carl.]

How about just turning the engine off??

The mother of a guy I was with in high school had a similar issue, on the highway... she stuck the car in reverse. 👍 Problem solved (kinda).

 

[Omnis]

Problem Solved.



Gearbox gone.

 

[Duke]

This news is a few weeks old (I'm surprised it hasn't been posted yet after a decent search), but it caught my attention when I read it.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4796264.stm



I bet it was bloody frightening...

Also, I'm amazed a 107,000 mile 318 even reached 135mph (if it were stock).

I'm glad he came out unharmed.

This story is total cack; I've seen it before. Either the guy is a complete idiot, or lying, or both.

 

[Keef]

Did he say anything about turning the engine off? That's what I would've done if nothing else worked. You can turn the ignition off while in drive, after all. Oh Carl got to it first.
Pretty much all modern automatic transmissions go into neutral atomatically when you shift into reverse while above a certain forward speed. Some of them stall the engine, with no other ill side effects. I have a friend who did that at about 90mph and the engine just shut off and the tranny went into neutral. It's similar to the abuse valve that prevents the transmission from downshifting into first at, say, 70 mph. It just wouldn't do anything in that particular case, it would stay in its current gear until the speed slowed ehough to allow a safe downshift. I'm positive his BMW had this feature, or something very similar. I'm also positive that he isn't very car-savvy if he couldn't find a way to stop the car quickly. Reach under the dash and rip at some wires if you have to-- you might catch the ignition wire. But I'm starting to think this story is bull.

 

[Duke]

Stand on the gas and the brakes at the same time in an ATX. What happens? The car revs to the stall speed of the torques convertor, and then the engine bogs and stalls. If it's a powerful RWD car, it maybe can overcome the rear brakes... but it won't overcome the front ones.

A 318i is not a powerful car. If the guy had just stamped his foot on the brakes like a panic stop, I guarantee the car would have stopped.

 

[Famine]

I'm glad he came out unharmed.

I'm not.

Every single aspect of his story is complete toss...

I was trying to slip the car into neutral but because the car was over-revving and red-lining I couldn't do it.

Yeah, sure. Redlining would blow your engine up at worst. Compare this to crashing at 135mph, fool. Also, you could have slipped it out of drive and into 2/1 so you'd get redlining AND engine braking before it blew. AND your brakes and handbrake.

I couldn't turn off the ignition because it would have disabled the power steering and made it even more dangerous.

Not with the key in position II it wouldn't have.

But the clincher?

There is no fault that could have contributed to his actions

What do they use for patrol cars mostly in the UK?

Normal beat cars are usually Ford Focus/Vauxhall Astra. Motorway pursuit cars are almost always Volvo V70s, capable of well over 155mph. Most motorway pursuits would be covered by a helicopter though.

 

[Master_Yoda]

What do they use for patrol cars mostly in the UK?

Here the regular patrol cars are RWD Crown Vics, although you see a FWD Impala once and a while. They used to be Caprices; the undercovers are usually Mustangs or Explorers...

OR White Crown Victorias. Basically, it's cars with a big V8 in it.

 

[Keef]

Those Crown Vics are faster than the numbers suggest, too. 235 hp and 290lb/ft my ass. American cops actually use their cars for other purposes than driving, too; I'm sure you've seen the battering ram videos. Try that with a Focus or Astra.

 

[skip0110]

Yeah, well the roads are a bit wider here than they are in the UK...

Also if officers were driving around in large fullsize cars there, I think it might be viewed as a waste of taxpayer's money.


keef: I totally agree. I want some of the magic Ford puts in those Crown Vics because they sure seem faster than civilian test numbers would indicate.

 

[exigeracer]

This story is total cack; I've seen it before. Either the guy is a complete idiot, or lying, or both.

Agreed. The gears jammed? Give me a friggin' break...

Famine: wouldn't the motor blow out after quite some time? I've seen videos of people reldining for excesses of 5 minutes and then it just dies.

 

[standard235]

Hahhahahaha. Hahhhahhahhah.

*wipes tear from eye* Ok, now how can ANYONE believe this bull crap?



Hahaha.... thanks for the laugh guys. Jeez, I love The Rumble Strip.

 

[Jay]

Wow that story smells very fishy, Throttle stuck? Gears stuck? What about the ignition? Thats right they didn't meantion that, maybe it was stuck too and like Duke said if he stood on the brakes hard they should have overcome the 318i engine

 

[Delirious]

I've seen footage of some people taking a 2nd gen RX-7 and red-lining it in neutral for 9-10 minutes...then POP...RPMs died and bottom of the car caught fire whilst white smoke was coming from the engine...

Then again, a 2 cylinder rotary compared to an inline-6...*shrug* and the RX-7 was parked whilst in neutral, not moving.

 

[Duke]

1) The BMW has an electronically controlled automatic transmission, which I'm sure is programmed not to downshift when it would overrev. However, having that electronic control prevent you from shifting to neutral is total cack, because it would lead you to precisely this situation. I suppose it never occurred to BMW engineers that that might be a small safety hazard... riiiiiiiight.

2) If the throttle was stuck and the gear selector was in N, the engine would just rattle off the rev limiter until he realized what a total idiot he was and turned it off - or ran out of gas, whichever came first.

3) Ever driven a car with a broken power steering belt? Not fun, but not difficult, either - certainly not enough to prevent you from, say, changing lanes to the shoulder while you drifted to a stop. It's not like you can't turn the wheel at all; it's just harder to crank.

 

[ND4SPD]

I've seen footage of some people taking a 2nd gen RX-7 and red-lining it in neutral for 9-10 minutes...then POP...RPMs died and bottom of the car caught fire whilst white smoke was coming from the engine...

Then again, a 2 cylinder rotary compared to an inline-6...*shrug* and the RX-7 was parked whilst in neutral, not moving.

*Cough, Rotaries have no cylinders *cough.

That story sure does sound fishy but you never know with some people these days, they can be completely oblivious to how a car works. I betcha this person is the kind of guy who simply stairs at a flat tire completely lost on the side of the highway when there's a spare in the trunk.

 

[G.T]

Ahh well, reading your posts I don't believe it any more.

I did think that how could the engine overcome the breaks with such little power it has, but I didn't take too much notice to be honest.

I did think you could turn the engine off too, but I wasn't sure if it was possible if you were accelerating at full throttle.

What do they use for patrol cars mostly in the UK?

Here we usualy get T5 V70s and other BMW Estates that could have kept up with the car easily. On the other hand, we also get Fiestas and 307s/206s which would struggle and probably what was there at the time of the incident.

 

[ferrari_chris]

I think this story is true as it was on our news channel a few weeks back. They had an interview with the guy and the Police officers. Well the major facts, not sure about his justifications though...

The whole time I was thinking, "TURN THE KEY!"

Even my mum suggested it!

Anyway, the story is for real and the guy is a moron. He deserves to crash if after 70 miles he can't figure out something basic like that... I'm just glad no-one else was hurt by his inablilty to think and react under pressure.

 

[Duke]

Oh, the basic physical fact that the idiot drove at a high rate of speed for a long time and crashed in a roundabout is almost certainly true.

It's his backstory and his insistence that he couldn't do anything that's a load of bull pucks.

 

[DQuaN]

There was a similar story in the UK a few years ago about a truck driver that did the same thing. He was escorted for miles by loads of police cars and eventually crashed into a grassy verge.

It turned out that he had ADHD and he staged the whole thing to get attention.

 

[Famine]

Yeah - that was on the M1. As he started to run out of motorway and reach London, he steered it into the Armco and ground it to a stop.

 

[Small_Fryz]

Pretty crazy!

Ive had things like that happen to me on a motorbike, once i just jumped off as i was heading for a shed , and other times i was able to hit the kill switch 👍.

I imagine it would be scary for a bit in a car until you calm down and then think about what to do.

 

[Omnis]

Yeah, well the roads are a bit wider here than they are in the UK...

Also if officers were driving around in large fullsize cars there, I think it might be viewed as a waste of taxpayer's money.


keef: I totally agree. I want some of the magic Ford puts in those Crown Vics because they sure seem faster than civilian test numbers would indicate.

I think my uncle's cruiser was supercharged.