It was a police chase with a difference. The car with a mind of its own hurtled down Victoria's Eastern Freeway yesterday, locked in cruise control, with police cars, lights on and sirens blaring, clearing a path for a fear-filled driver named Chase.
Chase Weir knew he was in trouble when he tried to take the Burke Road exit, near Kew, about 12.40pm and realised his Ford Explorer was still in cruise control. Things did not get any better for the next half-hour.
''That's when I realised I had a bit of a problem,'' he said.
The 22-year-old, recently arrived from Queensland, called a Ford service centre and asked why he could not turn the key off. He was told not to drive the car as it would be dangerous.
''I said, 'Well, that's kind of the problem, I'm actually in the car and can't stop it','' he told Fairfax radio.
With the traffic building and festive travellers out in force, Mr Weir must have wondered if he would see another Christmas.
He called 000 and a sergeant told him to try to turn off the ignition and put all his weight on the brake and put the car in neutral. ''When I did that the car slowed to 80km/h, but then the footbrake just became stiff, it wouldn't go any further. So it was like I had no brakes,'' he said.
The runaway Ford raced off the freeway at Frankston, tearing through the Cranbourne Road intersection on to the Moorooduc Highway. Vehicles were bumper to bumper and he swung over the road into oncoming traffic.
''That's pretty much when I thought, 'I'm dead'. There were just cars in every lane.''
The car eventually came to a halt just short of another car.
In 2007, Ford recalled more than 12 models in the US, built from 1992 to 2004, in response to owners' safety concerns about fires linked to the speed-control deactivation switch.
Ford Australia spokeswoman Sinead McAlary said today the car company had made contact with Mr Weir.
‘‘We are talking to Mr Weir this morning ... and we are trying to get access to his vehicle as we speak so we can investigate what might have happened. But until we have a look at the vehicle, it’s difficult to determine.’’
Ms McAlary said customers should not be concerned as Ford believed the incident was a ‘‘one-off’’.
‘‘It’s highly unusual and it was not something we have encountered before anywhere in the world. ...
‘‘We need to actually find out what happened during the incident. The brakes of Mr Weir’s car did stop his car at the end. The braking system of any vehicle are designed to stop the vehicle. They will override the engine and stop the vehicle if they are applied firmly enough. And that did happen with Mr Weir yesterday.
‘‘What we need to determine is why that happened at the end and what was different at the start of the incident and why it didn’t work then when they brakes were applied properly or whether something went wrong with the vehicle.’’
In October, Ford issued a further recall relating to a cruise control switch, which involved 4.5 million vehicles. It is the eighth recall for such a fault, with a total of 16 million Ford vehicles affected.
Ms McAlary said Mr Weir’s car was part of a recall 12 to 18 months ago, but that the two scenarios were not related at all.
‘‘We would presume that Mr Weir’s vehicle has held that recall work undertaken, but the two situations are completely separate. From what we know about what happened yesterday, it has no correlation with what the recall was required for in the US.’’
Professor John Price, former lecturer in automotive risk analysis at Monash University and consultant to the automotive industry, said he thought the incident was ‘‘extremely rare, otherwise we would have started hearing court cases about it by now’’.
‘‘I can assure you companies like Ford spend a lot of effort going through every possible safety event, and this would be one of them. Something has happened here that they didn’t pick up in all their safety testing,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think it’s a single failure. I think it’s a combinations of two or three rare failures.’’
Professor Price said the failure of the cruise control to disconnect is a safety question posed in the design of the vehicle, and the car companies design protections against it.
‘‘At least two very obvious protections, very obvious ones, are that it should disconnect when you brake or when you push a switch,’’ said Professor Price. ‘‘They have somehow failed in this case.’
with Glenda Kwek, Thomas Hunter
The Age
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