A Scary Experience

This is the broken housing which caused the cruise control cable to get stuck while I was driving my mom's Ford Taurus on Wednesday while we were doing last-minute errands for Thanksgiving. I had been slowly accelerating to about 30-35 m.p.h. when the car just "took off" without me stepping on the gas pedal. I pressed on the brake pedal which slowed it a bit, but the car wouldn't stop. I was beginning to panic. I got the car to slow down enough to where I put it in neutral and then park and it came to a very abrupt stop, but the engine was really reving - it sounded like it was going to explode. I turned it off quickly and we both said "what the hell happened?" The gas pedal was not stuck, so we were not sure what had happened. I called both the Auto Club to get a tow truck and then my dad. He came down to wait for the tow truck with us and to see what the cause was. We waited for about 30 minutes and then he told us he would wait for the tow truck and that we should go finish our errands and he would call us when the car got to the repair shop. The above-photo shows what happened. The housing to the cruise control cable broke, causing the cable to get stuck. That is, in a nutshell, what happened. Our mechanic put the clamp on as a temporary fix to hold the cable to the housing, but it is now disconnected.

I am so thankful that this didn't happen while any of us were driving in traffic with cars in close proximity or on the freeway at 65 miles per hour - I don't know how the car could have ever been brought to a stop safely had that been the case. It is a very scary thought indeed. We were very, very thankful, to say the least.