DOH....., I can never have anything nice. Options

[bloodMoney]

So as two of you know, I was startled awake by the wifey yesterday cause she missed her bus for work. She told me that it was snowing outside and that I needed to get up and start and clean off Abby so that I could drive her to the train station for work. Without even thinking, I hit the button to start the car and several seconds later, I hear it.

BOOM.

Yes she was in gear when I started her and she took off down the block. She got about 50 feet before pushing a Jeep Liberty halfway down the block. Eventually, Abby got under the rear end of the jeep and pushed it out of the way and stopped about 300 feet away from my house, at the end of the block. Now I'm in the process of picking up parts to piece together my once perfect Abby..... *facepalm*











The moral of the story? Always keep good parking brakes on the car and try not to leave it in gear......

~Chris

This post has been edited by bloodMoney: Dec 23, 2009 - 7:29 PM

[bloodMoney]

For those that I haven't spoken with on chat, I'm not some dumb young kid, I just want to make that perfectly clear. Being a 25 year old Mechanical Engineering student, I have a decent share of experience in the world. I understand that its not a risk that some of you would take, but I know how anal I am about my cars, which leads me to take care of them despite what 'risky' equipment I may have on it.

That being said, there were circumstances that morning that led to this mistake. Accidents happen. I am EXTREMELY grateful that there was no loss or injury to life and limb, no damage to the other car involved and no real extensive damage to my Abby. The circumstances of the morning are very rare considering my living situation while I'm in school. So I'm not terribly concerned with this type of situation arising again.

schmooot and flyinglizard:

I appreciate the comments and your concerns are well noted. I understand the risk of injury associated with having a remote start on a car with a manual transmission. I have had them on ALL my cars over the last 6 years, so I'm no stranger to them.

[BloodyStupidDave...]

For those that I haven't spoken with on chat, I'm not some dumb young kid, I just want to make that perfectly clear. Being a 25 year old Mechanical Engineering student, I have a decent share of experience in the world. I understand that its not a risk that some of you would take, but I know how anal I am about my cars, which leads me to take care of them despite what 'risky' equipment I may have on it.

That being said, there were circumstances that morning that led to this mistake. Accidents happen. I am EXTREMELY grateful that there was no loss or injury to life and limb, no damage to the other car involved and no real extensive damage to my Abby. The circumstances of the morning are very rare considering my living situation while I'm in school. So I'm not terribly concerned with this type of situation arising again.

You may not be some dumb young kid but I don't think you are being particularly responsible. Hopefully you are already aware that if an accident happens once there is a good chance it will happen again.

As a mechanical engineering student you have probably already or soon will do a module on human error and failsafe systems. For instance, if you've looked at any airplane crash case studies, you'll know that nearly every fatal 'plane crash in the last 40 years was caused by a chain of 5 or 6 different events which individually were fairly unlikely - taken together, the chances of them all happeining are astronomical. Yet they did happen, the 'plane did crash and people did die.

Put it this way - the accident has happened once. If it were to happen again and someone were to get hurt next time and then the police learn about this accident, what do you think the police and courts would do? Is it even worth the risk?

I'm not necessarily suggesting you remove the mod functionality. But clearly the specific implementation you have at the moment has either been installed in such a way as to bypass the safety systems or the safety systems are not present at all (as others have suggested, maybe this kit was intended for an automatic). Find and fit a system that is intended for manual-drive cars and that has the proper failsafe systems designed in. Until then, disable your existing mod. Please. I really don't want to log on at some future date and learn that this mod has caused another accident (or even to learn that such an accident happens after you sold the car).

This post has been edited by BloodyStupidDavey: Dec 25, 2009 - 8:05 AM