Here is a phone call of a man, sadly, just before his death. I will tell you it is haunting to listen to, so if you are sensitive, you might want to avoid it. But what is fascinating is the tone of voice of the caller. At first, he sounds amazingly calm considering the situation. The way he says, “Our accelerator is stuck” really strikes me. If I only heard that part of the call, I’d have no idea this guy had any fear. I don’t think he believed he was going to die at first. He was still hopeful they would get help. But at the very end, when he sees what is ahead of him, in the last seconds, he realizes it. It’s chilling and such a tragedy. In a way, I wish I didn’t listen to it because it is haunting, but I feel it is valuable to hear how real people respond in real tragedies, so we don’t falsely judge someone, say in a 911 call, in a story with a different outcome. Thanks, Rob, for the video link.

Read moreI drove a Honda that had the accelerator stick. It was an electronic failure, if you want my opinion. My parents scraped the car after it happened. I was backing out of my parents driveway, with them watching and waving goodbye. I was borrowing their car.

I put the car in reverse, never touched the gas pedal because I was on a hill, but the car accelerated and the engine roared. I panicked, naturally, as I was going backwards down a driveway and had to turn into a road where cars flew around a bend at 30 mph. Thankfully, no one was on the road or I might not be here today.

My mom tells the story that my eyes got wide as golf balls and she knew instantly I was in trouble, bu there was nothing they could do but watch in horror.

I tried the brakes. Nothing.

I reached for the emergency brake and pulled like hell. It did nothing! No hope!

I realized in that instant, I couldn’t go backwards down a winding residential street. I would die quickly. I was prepared to hit an object. I chose my neighbor’s house, before I got going too fast. I would speculate I was close to 25 mph at that time. But by sheer luck, before I did that, as I looked down heading backwards to my neighbor’s house wondering what I could do, in a last ditch effort, I saw the keys dangling, and I pulled them. Thank god, I have a brain that works in high stress environments!!

My parents car, with me and two precious creatures in it, came to a stop just inches away from our neighbors house.

I was terrified. It took me weeks to get over, though I did drive again right away. Today I don’t know that I would be able to do that.

My parents never drove that car again. They had it towed away with a big warning sign in the window: dangerous to drive. It had an engine that revved frequently while in neutral (common for Hondas of that era), and it had once before accelerated on me, but came back under control within seconds, with no explanation. I wrote it off as strange, told my family, but we all ignored it. I will never do that again.

This Toyota debacle scares the hell out of me, because I’ve been there. If you ever find yourself in this position, pull the keys out of the ignition. It saved me from injury and possibly even death.

Here is more about this story in the video above.