Inappropriate use of Cruise Control – I wonder how many of these “runwaway car” stories started with Cruise Control. I’ve confused myself several times and could see how others could have done the same thing.
Let’s say you’re driving down a local highway with a 40 MPH speed limit, and set the cruise control around 40 mph… You enter a freeway and get up to speed and use the gas pedal to speed up to 60 mph, and forget that you engaged the cruise control.
Half an hour later, you go down an exit ramp and as the speed slows to 40 mph (without touching the brakes yet), the cruise control kicks in and your react “WTF?”…. the acceleration as you’re intending to slow not only confuses you but might cause you to run out of stopping room even if you hit the brakes (and cause the cruise control to disengage). If you react wrongly, and stomp on the gas instead of the brake, there you go…
