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A Car With A Mind Of Its Own
mindriot writes "When Hicham Dequiedt, driving on a highway between Vierzon and Riom in central France in his Renault Vel Satis this Sunday, was overtaking a truck, his car began accelerating to 120 mph on its own, apparently due to a defect in the cruise control system. Stomping on the brakes proved pointless and, having a magnetic card for a car key, he could not cut the ignition. After calling the police from his cell phone who then attempted to clear the streets of any danger to him, in what he described as the most fearful event of his life, he raced down the highway for another hour before finally managing to stop the car. Read about the incident here or, in more detail, in this article by the German 'Spiegel' (translation). The case is still under investigation. Are we putting too much trust in the increasing number of electronic systems that our lives depend upon?"
That rotten fish smell is coming from michael's ass from whence this story was pulled to be put on the front page of Slashdot. This means that the driver was most likely inept and couldn't figure out what to do as other posters have already suggested. I agree that it's nearly impossible that a catastrophic "failure" to slow down was anything but the driver's fault in this case.
Remember people, michael likes to post stories which are sensationalist, and he typically never verifies anything, preferring instead to add some fuel to the fire of speculation and sensationalism with his additional quips that are usually tagged on to the story headline. I can't ignore his stories because then I'm out of the loop when trolls make fun of them later in the week, but that's about all they're good for anymore.