Scary Driving

[Alex]

Back in 1995 I was driving a group of us up to some 24-hour bowling alley in Everett, Washington, at around 2 a.m. I accelerated to pass around some slow truck and the throttle stuck completely open.

Standing on the brakes I could barely slow the car down. I'm dodging other cars while trying to decide what my options were and how long I should wait to notify my friends of our impending death. Putting the car into neutral killed speed but with the throttle full open it sounded like the engine was going to explode. Eventually with a combination of standing on the brakes, application of the handbrake, and going in and out of neutral I got to a stop on the side of the road.

Another time driving a friend back late to the University of Washignton's Pack Research Forest out on some back mountain road in the Cascades with one dim headlight.

A third time we took a back road out of Death Valley and into the Central Valley, again at night, and went through about 30 miles of the densest fog I've ever been in. Literally 15 feet visibility over winding 1.5 lane mountain road.