Eeek!

This sort of thing just goes to show I was right never learning to drive ... that would be me!

I've heard the cruise control story in various forms quite a few times now. I thought it was one of those urban myths?

Well, this happened back in the 80's, nice to know that it went around a few times.
We all laughed about it back then, told the story more than a few times to more than a few people.
But it was our call, and it did really happen.
We had our share of bizzare happenings, but this was one of the funnier ones.!

I was told a story by nmt, about army manouvres in the dark dark forests of Germany some time back.

Nmt was driving an apc, at night, all lights off along some dark dark road in the dark dark woods when ... bam!!! ... what the hell was that?
I saw somebody, we just ran someone over!!!

They went back to look and found ... a lifesize cardboard cut out of Mickey Mouse!

One night, one of my so-workers pulled up behind a DM (disabled motorist).
The driver got out and asked the cop to call him a tow truck.
The cop called in for one and did some paperwork while waiting.
When the tow truck arrived, he backed up the Police Car but felt a bump like he ran something over as he did so.
Not knowing what he ran over, he put the car in drive, and again felt a bump.
He got out of the car to check only to find out that the driver of the disabled car had, for some unknown reason, decided to lay on the ground behind the Police Car and was run over...twice!
He suffered 2 broken legs but fortunately survived his injuries.
The unofficial motto of the Highway Patrol is...
"You can't make this stuff up!"

We have our share of idiot drivers in my area.

There are a lot of them confined to the 'provisional' licence category (three stage licencing system. Learner, Provisional, Full licence. Also colour coded) which are often (not always) the age 17-20 bracket, driving fast cars (WRX is a common one) at unsafe speeds (or without lights at night, in heavy rain). My region tops the annual deaths by a certain age range and licence type.

They tend to meet their ends in a zenlike state with local vegetation (be one with the tree) or the ultimate in man-machine interfacing. Mates in the highway patrol call them 'statistics'. On motorcycles they are simply called 'donors'.

I see it as a kind of social darwinian selection process.
If you survive the provisional licence period, then you obviously have the skills to keep living - until you come up against a pre-statistic coming the other way.

Geek fact. Local Police vehicles use an NCC code (my local Law Enforcement Command region) followed by a two digit car identifier. One of the local cars is NCC-17 (although he has had a magnetic '01' sticker attached at certain times, methinks a local copper is a geek).

timewizard wrote:Well, this happened back in the 80's, nice to know that it went around a few times.
We all laughed about it back then, told the story more than a few times to more than a few people.
But it was our call, and it did really happen.
We had our share of bizzare happenings, but this was one of the funnier ones.!

Well as it's true, is it also true that the car makers had to insert a clause in the instruction manuals that cruise control didn't actually drive the car by itself?


http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/cruise.asp