CLovis

This Guy's Car Got Stuck at 125mph—for an Hour

By Megan Garber

<time datetime="2013-02-13T13:49:53-05:00">Feb 13 2013, 1:49 PM ET</time> 136 A real-world screening of Speed ended with a small miracle of bureaucratic coordination.
It started with a trip to a supermarket. It ended with a high-speed chase, a frantic call to police, a highway-bound ballet, a border crossing, a ditch, and a guy who is very, very lucky to be alive.

Frank Lecerf, from his home in Pont-de-Metz, near the French city of Amiens, was making his weekly trip to the grocery store in his Renault Laguna. He was going 60 miles an hour when the car's speed dial jammed. Lecerf tried to brake. Instead of slowing, though, the car sped up -- with each tap on the brake leading to more acceleration. Eventually, the car reached a speed of 125 mph -- and then remained stuck there. For an hour.
Lecerf, frantic, called the police from his car -- and they sent an escort that The Guardian describes as "a platoon of police cars" to help him navigate a busy highway. (Lecerf stayed, appropriately, in the fast lane.) What resulted was a small miracle of technological coordination: Responding to emergency services' advance warnings, three different toll booths raised their barriers as Lecerf approached. A police convoy ensured that roads were kept clear for the speeding car. Fellow drivers, obligingly, got out of the way. Emergency services patched Lecerf through to a Renault engineer who tried -- though failed -- to help Lecerf get the speeding car to slow down.

"My life flashed before me," Lecerf later told Le Courrier Picard. "I just wanted it to stop."
Lecerf's general route was unexpectedly international, starting in France and ending in Belgium. (Google Maps)
Finally, it did. The goal everyone had been working for, coordinating for -- the speeding car running out of gas before its Newtonian nightmare ended in violence -- was achieved. Lecerf's car, finally out of fuel, came to rest in a ditch. He had driven from northern France and along the French coast up through Calais and Dunkirk, eventually crossing the border into Belgium. The little Renault had stopped, finally, in the town of Alveringem.

Before it did, though, Lecerf was stuck in his speeding car for an hour. (It's unclear what, exactly, went wrong with the machine -- though Lecerf's upcoming lawsuit against Renault should help to figure that out.) The man and his vehicle and his communal, ad hoc escort ended up traveling more than 100 miles together before they got their Hollywood ending -- an ending made possible not by individual heroics, but by collective effort.

neuronbob

Wait, hello, did he try shifting to neutral?

Something is wrong with this story.

Hapa DC5

Ban cars

UA6

wackjum

If you read this version of the news article, it says at the beginning that his Renault Laguna "is adapted for disabled drivers." So maybe he could not directly access the transmission.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...0kmh-car-chase

They were on the phone with a Renault engineer too.



This article is even more detailed: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-n...-frank-1708645

neuronbob

Ok, that's more helpful.

RPhilMan1

Looks like there are some turns and twisties along the route... I wonder how he managed to travel that entire distance at that fast of a speed.

fsttyms1

Time to ban the car

leedogg

Wow amazing coordination and work by the cops. I cant begin to imagine all the things they needed to keep ahead of.

Acura_Dude

Geez

Undying Dreams

iTrader: (3)

Mhm, stuck.

DanTL-S

Imagine the adrenaline going through his blood while all of this heart pounding madness was going on!

pmptx

Seems stupid not to just turn off the key on a straight and and let it coast to a stop. Even a specially adapted car has an ignition.

Or is that wayyyy to simplistic.

Like the lexus in CA and all the Prius, N to blow a motor or turn the key off at a reasonable point and coast down.

brian6speed

iTrader: (5)

Bureaucratic coordination huh. Good thing this happened in France and not the US.

Ban cars
Ban French
Ban renault
Ban handicapped drivers
Ban everything

Man I am hilarious

Hapa DC5

Ban Brian

oo7spy

Do they sell these across the pond?

imj0257

iTrader: (1)

wow...

subinf

Read wakjum's article. Actually tells what happened. Not the cherry picked version.

mmafighta

And people wonder why French are terrible at building cars.

asianspec

iTrader: (1)

*in Jeremy Clarkson's voice* POWAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!


Probably will be talked on Top Gear during the news