Some good advice here, now if I can only remember them.

I agree with JINGLE..... putting car in neutral and applying brake or PARKING brake slowly will also stop you. I have a friend who owns one of those cars that COULD accelerate on its own.... I had her practice shifting from DRIVE to NEUTRAL quite a few times while the car was moving until she was confident in doing so.... Lots of new cars don't have parking brakes like the older cars... Hopefully, she will NEVER have to use this new skill but in case she does-she is ready and will be calm....

Try the emergency brakes and try then to put it into neutral then turn it off. this way you won't be messing up the transmission. My Aunt threw hers into park and rolled it.

If you have power steering and shut motor off you might loose control, neutral will not do that. Glad your all right, sure is scary.

That should be the first step. Turning off the ignition causes you to lose power steering and power brakes...not good! I speak from experience.

Glad you are okay!


When I was a teenager (before computers were everywhere) my gas pedal stuck. I was coming home from babysitting and it was late and I did not want to pull over. I kept shifting to neutral before braking. I'm surprised the motor wasn't messed up from it. My Uncle fixed the gas pedal for me the next day. It never stuck again.

By the way, gas pedal overrides brake pedal so never use the emergency brake when the car is getting gas. Neutral keeps it from getting gas. I remember driving a rental car where I forgot to take the emergency brake off! I drove several miles, even on the freeway.

Remember to never use your left foot for the brake. In Drivers Ed they teach you that in an emergency you might panic and slam both feet on the petals left/brake, right/gas and the gas will override it.

OMG I'm glad you got it under control. I had my gas petal stick once too. Had to have it towed to the shop.

By any chance did you have the cruise control on? If you had it on before this happened, and you turned it off, the cruise control could have malfunctioned and was still engaged. This happened to us and we were pulling a trailer. Now we never ever use cruise control.

So glad you got it stopped - that sounds REALLY SCARY! Good luck on the fix!

We had a Cadillac that did that as well - it would rev up and get set to take off on its own - I had both feet on the brake peddle at an intersection when it first happened - turned out to be in the "computer" part of the brain of the car. Yes, turning off the ignition is great - - but remember that when you do, your power steering no longer works nor do your power brakes - so you need to take "strong physical command" until you can get it stopped.

Marysewfun