OT: "Mixed up the brake and accelerator"?!?

That's precisely what instinct is for, to save yourself. It's quite simple - if something goes bad after you started doing X, you automatically stop doing X.

I don't need time, the subconscious is way faster than the conscious.

It's even simpler, you only have two choices.

Yet happens frequently in the USA, I wonder why.

Strange, I drive better when drunk. As does my friend who managed to get home and park very neatly, without even a recollection of having done so.

ROFL!

That explains it.

I was once asked for a lift to the next town. I apologized and said I was going in the other direction. When I mentioned it to the person I was driving to only 100 yards away, I was told the guy was constantly forgetting where he lived, and his house was actually two down from where he'd spoken to me. I found him and took him back home. Apparently he does it twice a week, and usually ends up asking in the local pub for the lend of a fiver to get a bus fare "home" - the next town was where he lived 20 years ago. We really need to find a cure for loss of memory.

ROTFPMSL!

I'm 5 foot 9. And I have never had a perceived variation with pedals. Maybe you just lack spatial awareness.

When your car goes 10 times faster instead of 10 times slower, even a 90 year old would notice.

I've never driven anything like the speed limit. A competant driver picks his own speed depending on weather, traffic levels, number of pedestrians, etc.

Everybody does that here, of any age. I wonder how they past their tests.

My parents drive as they always have. Slowly.

A feeble excuse from god botherer that doesn't understand reality.

Er.... no. Autos are easier as they only have two pedals instead of three. Do you also mix up your fridge and your washing machine? So complicated with two appliances isn't it? They're both the same colour! So easy to put your dirty clothes in the fridge and wonder why they don't get clean....

And people tell me I should buy new cars so they work more reliably....

I don't find that awkward at all. And it's much closer than moving past two columns of gears. In R left of 1 boxes, I have to move 1 position left instead of 3.

Why would you freeze when you're panicking? Panic should cause you to take action, not just sit there and somehow think doing nothing will help. Would you see a lion running towards you and just sit down?

You must have a very slow brain if you take that long to make a decision.

If you want a depressing movie, try 'Leisure Seeker' with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. She has cancer, he has dementia and they're taking a last road trip in a '75 Winnebago.

It is different than a motorcycle when a novice startled by the unexpected acceleration tries to hang on for dear life inadvertently twisting the throttle further. Rinse and repeat until an immovable object is encountered.

It's not as obvious but I think something like that happens in those cases. The driver has the impulse to slam on the brakes but the foot is still on the accelerator.

Of course if the driver is hollering something in Arabic at the time...

Interesting. Can you explain what it did?

"The clutch was necessary any time the gear lever was moved between Low/High, or Reverse. A fluid coupling was attached to the flywheel, and a conventional clutch was mounted in tandem. "

In stop and go traffic the fluid coupling would allow you to stop without using the clutch but there had to be some way to break the torque to go between ranges.

It was a primitive approach when other manufacturers were developing designs based on planetary gear sets. It was a long time before AT's became as efficient and trouble free as manuals.

That's not a pre-selector gearbox, though. It is similar to what Rover used on the P4 much later on. Except that they used a servo controlled clutch to allow you to change between low and high ratio. So no action, other than moving the lever, needed by the driver.

One of the first true autos was available very shortly afterwards. Rolls Royce used it for the next near 20 years, so must have been reliable enough.

That doesn't surprise me. My Honda CRV had a column shift (ack!) It actually had all the gears in one line. It was very very easy to shift two gears at once by mistake. Stupidest design ever. That coupled with the engine valves being overly soft so they melted after a professional conversion to LPG, and the ABS sensors costing £165 whereas a Golf is £15, and the 4WD system only engaging when it decided it needed it, which was 2 seconds after the wheels started slipping, so you were now buried deep in mud, I will never ever ever buy a Honda piece of s**te again.

In the UK I don't think the above picture ever happens. Reverse is always always on the left. Who the f*ck would think that reverse should exist next to the highest forward gear?! Totally and utterly illogical.

Definitely not and I never said it was.

This was a manual with all the gears inline? I've seen automatics with column shift where all the positions are inline - but then they are in a floor-mounted selector lever.

Our CRV, like my wife's previous Civic, has the gear lever coming out of the dashboard rather than the floor. It still moves in the same way: forwards/backwards rather than up/down. It looks slightly odd, but it's very convenient.

It's rare that our CRV engages the rear wheel drive - or at least it's rare that the relevant dashboard light comes on to tell you it's done so. But then we've not had much snow since we've had the car. The only time I saw the light come on was when I had to pull onto a verge to let an oncoming car past on a very narrow road, and then accelerated away afterwards. Normally that doesn't put the light one, but this time it did.

Illogical but it used to be almost universal. My mum's Morris Minor and my dad's Hillman Hunter had reverse to the right of the 3/4 plane against a strong spring - ie like the above diagram but without the 5/6 plane. The first car I remember with reverse in "an unusual position" (ie to the left of first) was someone's Vauxhall Viva HB. I think putting it to the left of first started when 5-speed gearboxes became more common in the 70s. But evidently not 100% of the time, as our Honda shows. I'm sure I've driven other fairly recent cars with it like that.

I agree that putting reverse next to first is a more logical place.