This is Russ, as I sat in the hospital for a couple days, I replayed everything in my head hundreds of times, things that I should have noticed as a warning, and what I could have done differently.

I’ve seen lots of comments so I’ll address a few of them, not being defensive at all.

In a normal car throttle sticking at 2200 RPM’s is not the end of the world, in my car that’s 900 ft/lbs of torque. I should have realized the load that was putting on the brakes. Didn’t cross my mind at the time. FYI: It had double springs on the throttle.

In a normal car, I could have pulled emergency brake, I even got a quote at Good Guy’s Del Mar for an electronic e-brake & bigger brakes. Hindsight’s 20-20, I was just gonna trailer it to a few shows & not drive it much till I could do that.

Why didn’t I downshift? Car had a B&M ratchet shifter, once I shifted up thru the gears you can’t downshift till you put it in park. So much going on in those last few seconds, forgot to downshift it after putting it in park, but it was probably too late to have had a big reduction in speed.

As far as I know, driver of van was not seriously injured. Beauty of a modern car with crumple zones, self tightening seat belts & air bags.

Car had liability coverage but no collision, I was still in the process of getting stated value insurance.