Cruse Control and interesting information that can save your life

[Pete Masterson]

At 3:44 AM +0000 1/4/06, Jon wrote:
>NEVER KNEW THIS BEFORE.
> I wonder how many people know about this?
>
> A 36 year old female had an accident several weeks
> ago and totaled her car.

I hope we can avoid spreading urban legends through the list. It's
usually best to check these out before passing them on. You can get
the full story about this story at this link:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp

Snopes.com indicates that the danger is, essentially, true --- but
the circumstances described are probably incorrect. When a vehicle
hydroplanes, it does not "fly" and it doesn't "gain speed" ... (these
are impossible under laws of physics). It does, however, lose
effective directional control and the action of typical cruise
control devices can interfere with the necessary immediate reactions
required to bring the vehicle back under control. Here's an excerpt
from the linked article:

Origins: We began seeing this cautionary tale turn up in inboxes in
November 2002. Although these accounts are probably "real" in the
sense that they indeed reflect someone's attempt to describe an
automotive mishap that actually happened to him, the explanation
about a hydroplaning car's suddenly accelerating and "taking off like
a rocket" due to the use of cruise control is a garbled one probably
reflecting the author's misunderstanding of what had occurred.

Nonetheless, the warning inherent to the tale - don't engage your
vehicle's cruise control on slippery or wet roads is - well worth
heeding. Snow, ice, slush, or even rain can cause wheel-spin and loss
of control, situations to which drivers must react quickly. Although
cruise control can generally be cut off by the driver's simply
tapping the brake pedal, the extra reaction time required for a
motorist relying upon cruise control to recognize the danger of the
situation when his wheels begins to spin or slide on a slippery
surface, bring his foot up off the floor to the brake pedal, and
disengage the cruise control can be crucial (especially for drivers
lured into a hazardous level of inattentiveness on long, flat
stretches of road).

--
Pete Masterson -- pete@...
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