Yeah,I saw that on the news the other day. Friggin' Darwin Award winner right there. :facepalm:
I'm not surprised the brakes weren't working...the pad compounds they use on cars like that are not worth a sh!t at 100mph...ride them for a few seconds at those speed and they'll be cooked. It's one thing to stop a car in an emergency situation from 80...but those brakes aren't meant to work against a engine running WOT at 100+mph. The car was a Lexus ES350...and those had decent power/acceleration so if the car was WOT, it wouldn't have taken much time to get to 120mph. ALSO- Remember that power brakes work off vacuum in the intake manifold. I'm sure many of you with boost/vac gauges will know, the as you increase throttle, vacuum is reduced. This reduction of vacuum i nthe brake cylinder assembly pretty much nulls the point of power brakes and makes pushing the pedal VERY difficult as anyone who has coasted a car will know after hitting the brakes a couple of times.
Also.. here is an interesting detail though. The car, being a new Lexus, uses a proximity key. Meaning, there is no actualy physical key to turn off. It's a card that the car detects it's withing xxft of the car and allows the car to be turned on with a push button starter once you open the door and get in.
So with that said, since it's a push button start/stop, it probably doesn't allow the car to be turned off unless the gear selector is in the "P" position..making it impossible to turn the car off while in Drive. Now, I don't know if it's possible or how easy it is to put the car in Park when motion. But still, they could have put the car in neutral to stop accelerating/scrub speed. Another possiblity is those stupid throttle-by-wire systems everyone uses these days. It might not have been a stuck floor mat at all, but rather a faulty computer/sensort that opened the throttle up. I've read a couple reports of Toyotas accelerating to high speeds unexpectedly..and not because the floor mat was stuck under the pedal.
http://world-news.newsvine.com/_news...crash#comments
Although the NHTSA says they didn't find anything, that many complaints dont' come out of nowhere..
http://wot.motortrend.com/6293208/re...sue/index.html
More people speaking about the problem can be found in the comments here..
http://www.topix.com/forum/autos/audi/TIUVQT6QDCKMIOCDK
Ahhh, the joys of over-complicated technology because people are too lazy to start a car by simply turning a key.