Bizzare Fatal Accident Involving a '65 GTO

Had to be the brakes... my high school car was a 65 goat. One day when I was coming home I hit the brakes and nothing... to the floor the pedal went. Luckily I was pulling into the yard and had plenty of room. When I checked under the hood the clutch linkage had rubbed against the brake line and rubbed a hole. And since 65 GTOs have single reservoir master cylinders I had no brakes.

 

i asked my wife what she would do if the throttle stuck in her car, she said she would not know what to do i gess a lot of people would not know what to do. i have driven old junker cars for a long time, i know what to do.

 

I went through that with my Mom and sister 3 weeks ago. I explained to shut the key (most newer cars won't go all the way off, locking the steering, without extra effort), and neutral it, letting the motor blow up if needed. My Mom was under the assumption, shutting the key off would catapult her through the windshield. I showed her in my car what happens when shutting off the key at speed. I'm really glad I covered that with them, not knowing Mom's fear of killing the ignition

 

I had the trans mount in my old 64 Fairlane come loose once. Engine rocked to the drivers side kinking the accellerator linkage wide open against the firewall. I tossed it in neutral then turned it off. I was 16 at the time. Never ever thought about jumping out of it.

 

My Mom, RIP, lived her whole life under the misconception that if you put on the emergency brake in a car whilst it's in motion the car will instantly flip over. Moms are great.

 

I'm thinking it couldn't have been the throttle. especially if it stuck wide open. WOT in a GTO gets you up to speed very quickly. jumping out would not be an option.

sad situation no matter what the cause was.

on the subject of throttles sticking. Audi or Volvo (??) had some lawsuits about throttles sticking and cars driving through garages and such. the people said they had the brakes on but the car wouldn't stop.

the car company took an example of the "defective" model out to a test track, took it up to 100 MPH and were able to stop the car with the brakes while keeping the gas pedal to the floor.

this fact didn't stop the lawsuits.

 

100MPH, AND the throttle stuck to the floor? And they got the car to stop? I'm gonna have to try that today. See what ya started?

 

alot of you guys are presuming the car was running. I don't think so. Article said he was parked but still in it when it started moving but they also let you guys know he was parked on a steep hill. If they didn't say anything about the steep hill then i would believe it was running but that explains why it moved.

My presumption on it is he missed park when he shut the car off and it started rolling right away and picked up speed as it was going down hill and decide to jump out when it got going at a certain rate.

Just wonder where it would have ended up if it didn't hit the train.

 

What a bizzare sequence of events.

 

That's what it sounds like to me. Project car, no brakes, no driveshaft, maybe even no steering. I have a dented quarter on my 55 because she got away from me pushing it by myself in and out of the driveway.

 

This happend about 20 miles from me. Local Pittsburgh TV stations covered it. According to their reports he drove the car home from OHIO.
He and his family have been in the auto repair business for years. It seems that if the car was unsafe to drive that he would have trailered it back instead of driving.
Strange side note he is the 4th person killed this year near that section of railroad tracks this year. (Mother and 4yr old son killed crossing tracks, 16yr old boy hit by train while riding bicycle along tracks)
Sad event it must be hard on his family at this time of year.

 

I'm with fuzz and repo on this one. My old truck has a habit of not wanting to shift into park easily. I'm not too concerned because she's parked waiting for a new trans and driveshaft. We also discovered that if you bounce around on the rear bumper it'll slip into reverse and roll off the driveway. I'll take waiting for money and parts over that feeling you have after doing something stupid, wrecking something, or killng yourself anyday.

 

I just come across this post and I have a similar problem with my 64 Catalina. I don't know if it's a design flaw or not, but I've heard of some others that have had this problem.

I've adjusted and greased all the linkages on mine and it still has a tendency to stick... especially on harder pulls, like when taking off. I've always been quick to throw it in neutral when it does it and it usually kicks the linkage back.

The guy I bought it off of told me that when he got it and was loading it, the rear brake was dragging and when he tried to pull it on the trailer the throttle stuck and snapped the motor mount. He thought fast enough to shut the engine down before it hit his friend that was helping him.

 

I believe energy suspension makes a replacement mount to solve the binding issue, you can get it in black and it's urethane. I know they have a good universal one with the interlock plates built in also.

 

Geez, Should we all have a giant red STOP button in the middle of the dash?!

 

He should have shut it off, shifted it into nuetral or nailed the parking break

 

Usually someone being killed on the tracks is because of their own idiocy, and there's a lot of idiots out there.


Until there's an answer from the investigation, you're not going to know what happened, but a broken motor mount seems plausible. My '60 Pontiac broke both motor mounts when I was driving it, first one then later the other. It got so if the motor lifted I'd just blip the key off, then back on again, like I was adjusting the radio or something. Even if you can't get to the key, you could throw it into neutral and jam on the brakes. Bailing out is the last thing you do, unless the car's about to go off a cliff or something. Especially if you're around people, you don't want the fucking car to careen through a playground or something after you jump out. At least if you're in it, you can pick what to run into to try to stop you.

I didn't think '65 still used that mount, though, eventually they went to a horizontal through-bolt mount that while it could wear out, if it broke it would only move so far out of place and stop.

 

It's easy to speculate from afar as to what happened, and many plausible explanations have been put forth, but it would probably be wise to just wait for the results of the investigation. Here in GA, the Georgia State Patrol has regional teams of investigators with specialized training in accident reconstruction who work all fatal accidents, doesn't matter whether it's on a municipal side street or an Interstate highway, or whether the cause is plainly obvious or a mystery. These guys are really good at what they do. I'm sure PA and other states have something comparable. Could be a combination of factors, perhaps a mechanical failure compounded by driver error. I don't know, don't have enough info to draw a conclusion.

 

Man, PLEASE - PLEASE stop driving that car until you fix this problem. Your pushing a time bomb around unsuspecting people. If it sticks and you know about it, how you gonna feel if you kill somebody else? If you don't care about other people, then how you gonna feel when you go to prison when the lawyers discover you had foreknowledge of the defect? Enough unpredictable stuff happens when your on the road but damn, if you know your unsafe FIX IT!

Terry

 

Something like that happened to me once in a 68 Nova...throttle linkage got bound up with spark plug wires and pulled the throttle down. I shut it off and pulled over. Scares you thats for sure.

 

x2 on what TerryO said. If you know your throttle has a tendency to get stuck, don't drive it until it's fixed.

 

Sad story
Single bail M/Cs make me cringe too brake upgrade is usually the first thing I do.

I had the bolt that connects the brake pedal to the master cylinder rod come off once I threadlock it and or use a cotter pin

 

This whole thing makes me wonder if maybe it was running fine, but he saw a train too late and decide to make a jump for it.

 

All the adjustment in the world isn't going to help if the motor's lifting up and jamming it, replace the motor mounts, it's not that hard, I did mine with the motor in the car.

 

I already put new motor mounts on it after I bought the car since it had a broken one anyway. It still does it. I can't just quit driving it since it's the only car I have to drive right now. I can handle it just fine, I know when it sticks and I've always got my hand at the shift lever when I take off so I can run it to neutral right quick if I need to. The only time it does it is when I take off...

I'm not one of those that floors it every time I take off either so it's not getting stuck wide open

I also don't let anyone else drive it.

I am going to try and fix it this spring though.

 

Something has to be moving around to make it jam like that. The '64 I tore apart had a pretty involved deal on the firewall for the gas pedal, but it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with a little later Pontiac cable style gas pedal.

 

Sad story indeed.

Lots of speculation on this thread, but when I read it, I thought to myself..."Perhaps the car wasn't running. He shut it off, and it started rolling, while still in it. No power brakes, no power steering. Maybe a brake line got rubbed through. Poor fellow didn't have much time to react, and seeing an oncoming train, bailed. "

Granted, I know nothing of the situation, but if I was careening down a hill, with a car that was out of control, and I quickly tried everything I could to get it to stop, running or not, AND there was a TRAIN crossing my path, I'd bail too.

RIP fella. RIP.

 

Well, clearly the wooden planter is what killed him, says right in the article.

 

Very sad indeed

 

I did not know that there was any feeling after killing yourself!