The six of us left Las Vegas the next morning to drive back to Las Cruces. I was at the wheel as we went down a mountain road in northern Arizona. We were going sixty-five miles an hour when the accelerator pedal suddenly jammed. The steep downhill and the wide-open throttle were too much for the brakes. The car sped up to eighty miles an hour and the turns in the road became unmanageable. With little time to think and my foot pressing as hard as I could on the brakes, I also set the emergency brake, downshifted so the engine would help slow the car, and cut off power by turning off the
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...and even more-so to think of flying off a mountainside because your accelerator was mysteriously stuck. Yeesh.
