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You're driving down the highway and suddenly your
car starts accelerating on its own. Knuckles white, going from 60
to 90 miles an hour in a couple of seconds, you do what comes
naturally - hit the brakes. But what if the car keeps going?


      There are options: Put the car in neutral, or in park, or switch
off the ignition. But experts say those choices would be almost
impossible for most drivers to consider when they're in a panic,
because frightened people often can't remember even simple steps to
protect themselves. That - coupled with increasingly complicated
gadgetry - makes cars a dangerous place to be when you're facing an
unexpected situation.


      "You're stamping on the brakes and your attention is going to
be focused on where you're going and steering. There's no cognitive
space left to think of alternatives," said Dr. Boadie Dunlop, a
psychiatrist and director of the Mood and Anxiety Program at Emory
University. "To do something that's not natural, such as turning
off the engine, is just not going to come to mind."


      Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it is recalling about 437,000
Prius and other hybrid vehicles worldwide to fix a problem with
brakes that are momentarily unresponsive in certain driving
conditions.


      That follows the automaker's recent recall of 5 million vehicles
because of reports of unintended acceleration, and it's changing
the gas pedals to prevent floor mats from jamming them. But
complaints about unwanted acceleration in Toyota vehicles go back
at least to 2003, according to U.S. government filings.


      The issue gained new urgency last August, when a high-speed
crash near San Diego killed an off-duty California highway patrol
officer and three family members. The officer's loaner Lexus ES350
reached speeds of more than 120 mph, struck an SUV, launched off an
embankment, rolled several times and burst into flames. The family
frantically called 911 from the car, telling the dispatcher the
pedal was stuck and they couldn't stop.


      It's not known what exact steps the officer took in that case,
but Dunlop said in such a situation, the brain can't handle all the
information it's getting.


      "When people are in an intensely fearful situation, their
ability to problem-solve is greatly diminished," he said.

      Venkat Thannir had his own brush with panic a few months ago.
The 48-year-old college instructor from South Carolina was pulling
his 2010 Toyota Camry out of a Burger King parking lot when it sped
up without warning. He panicked for several seconds before pushing
hard on the brake pedal and stopping the car.


      "The vehicle was out of control," he said. "If I was not in a
parking lot, it could have been a whole different story."

      Thannir never figured out exactly what happened, but believes
the pedal was defective, since he considers himself a safe driver.
He got the gas pedal repaired last Saturday, and says he feels safe
driving the vehicle for now.

      Drivers have an array of safety features, including push-button
stop in some cars. But the lack of standardization for those
features further hinders peoples' ability to react to unexpected
situations, since they vary from vehicle to vehicle, according to
Paul Green, a research professor at the University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute.

      Consumer Reports has criticized Toyota for the push-button
ignition in Toyota and Lexus vehicles, which requires drivers to
hold down the button for three seconds to turn off the vehicle in
an emergency. Drivers of Cadillacs, Nissans and Infinitis can shut
off the engines by pushing the button more than once.


      "The design solution is to make them all work the same way,"
Green said.


      Green said there's also been little research into the way safety
features are laid out in the car. Is it easy to reach down and put
the car in neutral? Should neutral be in a different order on the
shifter so it's faster or easier to act? With push buttons, he
said, one of the biggest concerns was whether children would be
able to reach over and press them, not whether they were intuitive
for drivers to use in an emergency.

      Green said vehicles are getting so complex that the extent to
which drivers can understand their cars is diminishing. In one
recent analysis, the institute projected that the owner's manual
and navigation manual for a luxury vehicle will grow to 1,000 pages
over the next decade.


      "Can you conceive of a person reading all this stuff and
remembering all of it?" he said.


      In the meantime, prepare yourself. Peter Norton, an associate
professor of psychology at the University of Houston, said drivers
should sit in their cars and go over the steps they could take in
an unexpected situation. It's the same reason military personnel
practice simulated battles or flight attendants repeat safety
instructions on every flight.


      "It's most helpful for a person, when you do go into panic
mode, to resort to a natural tendency," he said.


      "If you practice something over and over, that will be the
thing that happens."

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You're driving down the highway and suddenly your
car starts accelerating on its own. Knuckles white, going from 60
to 90 miles an hour in a couple of seconds, you do what comes
naturally - hit the brakes. But what if the car keeps going?


Drivers, cars are ill-equipped when panic sets in

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