DVW posted a thread about inspecting your race car - it could save you.. Check this video out. Good analogy in hindsight....

Autotopia Crash

The throttle's sticking
I'm having to ride the brakes

They were sort of given two warnings but chose to ignore them.

This is scary. I've been in similar situation.

He should have turn the ignition off right away, too bad he didn't
I had a similar experience years ago when I forgot to reattach a spark plug wire holder on my old max wedge car(1963 Plymouth Belvedere sedan) driver side carb and it ended up getting stuck under the throttle linkage making the motor stay at around 3500 RPM in low gear after showing off driving into the yard at work, I went through chain link fence and scratched up some of the trim around the windshield and broke off the "426" emblem off the hood
I got lucky that it didn't do any other damage to the car or me or at work

Jamming it in reverse would have made for a violent and messy slow down but likely would have helped substantially. Easy to say from the ouch.

Looking at the video again i don't know that I could get one of those junk shifters in reverse during a stressful moment, I hate those things!

The brakes would have been fine if the throttle sticking issue would have been fixed.

Those look like the Dynalite's I have on my drag car from way back in the day. Nice and light but don't try to stop in a hurry.They were never intended for street use with those rotors IIRC.

Watching him face plant the metal dash brought back bad memories for me when I was a kid, was riding in a 70s Dodge van and the driver wasn't paying attention, rearended someone and my friend face planted the steel dash....Knocked out all his front teeth on the top and bottom. Wasn't pretty.

Hi Performance car

Low performance driver

Bad outcome.

Just click the thing OFF. Instead of grabbing the shifter, hit the kill/key/whatever to shut it down.

This kind of thing is not that uncommon. He had a TV show there to film his new car, he didn't want to stop and ask them for time to fix the car. I've seen guys get out on the racetrack with obvious and dangerous problems because they didn't want to miss that round. Or guys get in a car to drive to work because they don't want to be late or miss a day and they know the car is unsafe and don't have time to fix it right now.
Several years back there was a farmer around here hauling a load of silage in an old 2-ton flatbed. He plowed through a red light and wiped out a family. There were a half a dozen empty cans of brake fluid in the cab. He had been trying to pour it into the master cylinder under the floor every time he needed brakes because it was leaking out so fast.

It's all the same line of thinking. I'll be okay this one time, I'll fix it after. Similar to people getting hurt at work. Most of the time they say"I knew I shouldn't have done that".

There are so many things in life that we do that can't be undone. We need to do a good job of thinking ahead of what the consequences could be of careless behavior.

I had something similar happen where the damn wire harness for the lean burn somehow made its way to jamb the throttle open. I turned the ignition off immediately after realizing the brakes were not going to stop the car. It was an interesting few seconds navigating a twisting winding mountain road to say the least.

A comedy of errors with an inevitable conclusion. Dont know anything about the guy or shop he represents narrating the video but the fact he knew about a sticking throttle and still agreed to the shoot/drive says volumes to me.

His "Won't go to the track because he might wreck it" did not age well.

Good thing they had those nice belts on.

Car gave them plenty of warning signs that they just ignore. Can't fix stupid.

I didn't bother watching the whole sh!t-show... saw & heard enough before seeing it all play out in agonizing detail

as i always like to say, "it ain't the speed that does you in, it's the sudden stop that does it every time !"

that's it !

I saw a guy in a better get loose around 80’ out and he got out, then nailed the gas again. I thought it looked like a bad deal right then for some reason, just struck me funny how it looked. The throttle hung open and it being a pro level like blower car, it ran out the back end of the eight full blast and was doing at least 175 when it plowed the oak tress well beyond the shut off.

Every one of us in my group that day thought shutting it down was the most obvious thing to do, but not being in the heat of the moment I don’t know if it would’ve occurred to do that. I think you have to have that in your mind as a reflex when you strap in or you will end up with a helicopter ride or worse.

The ihra pro stock driver I knew personally was with us that day. He said he never got back in when a run went to crap like that. His family ran the car themselves and as more of a hobby, it wasn’t worth it to push things to the absolute edge.

Cliff notes? Pushrod fell out? Brakes just didn't work right? Billy Bob designed the system? Couldn't get it bled? Looked like a lawn sprinkler when he pushed the pedal?

Oh my. I have had a few run away muscle cars over the years and two things need to happen - 1) click it off! and 2) put it in f'ing neutral man! Not a whole lot of self preservation going on with either of those gentlemen.

Always wear your safety belt!!! The passenger was probably picking red PPG chips out of his teeth after that.


I find it funny that they say it was a brake problem when the car was clearly under power. Is the driver an experienced racer?

I wondered about that too, but I haven't seen a definitive explanation. He did a follow-up video where he took questions from the audience, and he talked about it maybe being the brakes being over heated (from riding them) and boiling the brake fluid.

When I watched the crash video, it seems like the driver has his foot go to the floor when he's hitting the brakes.. not just unresponsive brakes that took more effort that usual. I think that's why the boiling brake fluid explanation makes sense to me.