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on the way home from a days ride

Frank Fusco said:
Charles, you make good points. I think my first reaction would be to take the vehicle out of gear then try to stop. Never thought about such a problem with a proximity fob. My son has a Tesla with a fob that does everything but unzip your fly when you need that done. I wonder what his emergency measures might be in such a situation.:dunno: I'll ask. My wife's Ford Focus has the accelerator pedal and brake so close together when I wear work boots I cannot raise my foot off the accelerator without catching it. I have to sorta twist and wiggle my foot off to brake. Not good.:eek:
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OK, I asked my son about the fob deal with his Tesla. But, he did say the next version of the Tesla/fob will unzip for him when needed. :eek: Anyhow, he said the run-away cases he has looked at most often involved the carpet catching the accelerator. I agreed. Then he said the all-electric Tesla is programmed so the accelerator and brake cannot be actuated at the same time. Meaning, if his accelerator should stick and he puts on the brake the go-power is automatically shut-off. Good feature. Being all-electric that would not be an inconvenience in normal driving as with a regular gas engine vehicle.
 
Frank,

Taking the car out of gear would be my absolute last resort. Without a load, an engine will increase to critical speed and could destroy itself, frequently adding a large fire and schrapnel to your problem.

When I was a teen I was in a service station one day when the gas pedal linkage of a car that they were servicing came apart. The engine revved to maximum, and before the mechanic reached the key to turn it off the flywheel broke, sending pieces of the flywheel up through the fire wall of the car and out through the garage roof. One piece went down and clipped the fuel line on the way by, which started a fire under the car, then it ricocheted around the garage hitting several things before stopping. I helped push the car outside, but it ended up next to the gas pumps (no one was steering). A pair of vise grips on the fuel line stopped the fire, but things got really exciting there for a while. I would never want to be inside a car when the flywheel broke from engine over speed. I don't like hand grenades either, as the result is very similar. Just turn the car ignition off the way you usually do and the car will come to a stop on it's own. Power brakes will not work as well with the engine off, but they will still work if you stand on them hard enough.

Charley
 
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Leo Voisine said:
Never happened with a horse and buggy.
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My Mother used to tell a story about a trip she and dad were taking from their house to my grandparents house back in the early '40's... I was still an infant in arms and my sister was just 2 years..... my dad used to take young green mules and break them to work plows and wagons... they were in a spring wagon going from Donie, TX to Freestone, Tx.. about 13 miles total., they had a pair of young mules hooked to the wagon with an older mule along side as a steady..... somewhere along the way, the young mules broke away from Dad's control... he couldn't rein them back, so he stood up in the wagon, took his long line and started whipping them to run... he ran them all the way from Donie to Freestone... by the time they got to Granddad's they were ready and glad to stop.... and were very docile on the way home.
 
Leo Voisine said:
Never happened with a horse and buggy.
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Ah one of the (?un?surprisingly) many stories about how I almost wasn't.

When my dad was a younster all of the haying on the farm was done with horses. Horse drawn haying equipment is a basically a unlimited number of ways that you can get maimed or killed including open gear boxes, exposed reciprocating cutter bars, numerous crush points, etc.. but the worst is probably the old fashioned dump rake. For those unfamiliar I've included a video below. Basically its a set of spring teeth on wheels that go up and down and can gather the flat mown hay into windrows and the windrows into stooks that are picked up with a buck rake and carried to the stackyard.

The problem with dump rakes is that you're sitting high up on a rather tenuous, slippery seat that tends to move around a fair bit. The seat is also in front of the row of long spring steel teeth. So when you fall off there is mostly one place to go and that's forward with those forward facing tines coming up right behind you.

Now most of the horses my folks (and even more my grandpa) used were at best fresh off of the range and sometimes should have been left there. One day my dad was driving the dump rake with a team of half broke range horses and they decided the distant hills looked like a good place to be in a short period of time and took off running. He had dropped the reins and was hanging on with both hands which worked right up until he hit the first big hummock (this was on a reclaimed swamp meadow) at which point he was pitched forward off of the seat. Luckily on the way down he was able to grab a hold of the tongue and was clinging to that for dear life with his grip becoming a bit more precarious every time they'd hit a big bump.

Up ahead was a long row of trees on the left which if they went that way would have ended in a tangled mass of broken equipment and smashed horseflesh. On the right was a rather deep dry ditch which would have yielded similar, if perhaps more aerial results. In between was a narrow strip of land that went on a ways then opened up into another swampier field. Dad was eyeballing the situation and debating whether or not to take his chances with the tines bouncing along behind him, as he tells it he was starting to look for large hummocks ahead and figuring if they were looking to hit one he was going to roll off and hope the rake bounced high enough to miss him. Somewhat amazingly though the team stayed straight on and missed both obstacles (whether it was luck or the horses were actually smart enough to figure that out is debatable). After they shot the gap the team got bogged down a bit in the swamp and dad was able to disentangle himself from the tongue and regain control of the situation. They had to bring in another team and a long set of rope to pull the rake out but the field was stacked up by the end of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo_PxozsSCk
 
I am the third of six kids my Dad was a maintenance electrician and mom was a seamstress so there was no such thing as an allowance. If i wanted something i had to find money to buy it.this didn't bother me cause I always found was the normal stuff like delivering papers and mowing lawns but I was always looking for ways to earn more money. There was a Mexican restaurant not far from the house, "Casa Sofia". I kept bugging the owner a gringo married to a Latina to hire me as a buss boy/ dish washer but I was still not old enough. Back then if you were 15 1/2 you could get a work permit and there for allowed to work so many hours a week.I was still to young to get the permit but I was persistent. the owner had a cart parked out by the street with the name of the Restaurant on it and decided that he would hire me to sit in the cart and wave at the traffic dressed as a Mexican (he paid me cash under the table so all was good). I had a vest, sombrero fake side burns handle bar mustache and a bandolero with a pistol. That was fine for a while but the owner decided to get more bang for the buck he went out and got a real burro, The the donkeys name was Dusty and he could be real cranky to say the least. My job now was to go to a field where the Donkey was on a long rope staked into the ground where he would graze. I would put the bridle on him and lead him back to the cart and hitch him up. Then I would drive around the area or if there was a lot of traffic just park him next to the street to provide advertising for the restaurant. sound like a neat job for a young teenager but believe me it was not as easy as it sound turn out Dusty was spooked very easy and after a long hot day became very hard to handle. On one day after I un hitched him and was going to lead him back to the field he decided that was not what he wanted to do. He picked up his head and started to run the opposite direction right toward traffic on a very busy street. I had the bridle in my hands and was holding on for dear life trying to get him to stop. Finally just before he ran into the street I reached up with both hand and grabbed his ears and was able to pull his head down and stop him. I literally had my shoulder under his head and was lifting myself off the ground while pulling on his ears. After that any time he acted up all i had to do was grab a hand full of ear and he would settle down. I don't know if that is the proper way to treat a donkey but it worked for me. MY mom used to laugh when I would come home all covered with dust after working with the stubborn Donkey. I guess there's a lesson there someplace. My youngest sister has picture that she promised to send me.
 
Don, there's an old cowboy trick for subduing a bad horse called "earing them down" where you'd twist thier ears to get thier attention.

The best reference I can find (in less than 5 minutes) is from this book:
https://books.google.com/books?id=u...QgZMAA#v=onepage&q=earring down horse&f=false

Now horses ears are a bit smaller than a donkey and one of the characteristics of a bad horse (if you but into it) is pin ears which are even smaller so they're a bit harder to get ahold of. The old time approach to deal with that problem was you'd wrap your arms around his neck and get ahold with your teeth (I've never done this way, nor seen it done and the details were relayed to me by my dad who may have told the occasional tall one so YMMV). Generally after the first go around you could just give him a little skin pinch and he'd go along (this I have verified).

Sounds like you independently invented the same technique :D.

I also can't imagine many animals more lug headed than a donkey.
 
Since Dad broke mules when he was younger, he used the "gittum by the ear" trick many times.

He also found that a snubbing post worked sometimes... he had one mule that would dance around the post and out from under his harness... Dad never liked his harness in the dirt... he was trying to harness the mule once and he kept dancing out of the way... after 3 or 4 tries, Dad's temper gave way and he reached up and broke the snubbing post off and clubbed the mule between the ears... sat him on his haunches and harnessed him before he could get up.... after that the mule stood for the harness. Mules are really smart, but you do need to get their attention.
 
Charles Lent said:
Frank,

Taking the car out of gear would be my absolute last resort. Without a load, an engine will increase to critical speed and could destroy itself, frequently adding a large fire and schrapnel to your problem. ...
Charley
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Modern cars have rev limiters built into the engine control computers. They'll rev to the limit, then shut down, rev again, shut down, rev again...
 
Leo Voisine said:
Never happened with a horse and buggy.
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On the contrary, I saw Wilfred Toner's horse jump a page wire fence one winter, sleigh and all, and take off across a potato field. Wasn't much left of the sleigh after about half a mile. Wilfred couldn't find the ignition key. :rofl:
It was a wild minute, but no injuries to horse or bystanders.
 
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Peter Rideout said:
On the contrary, I saw Wilfred Toner's horse jump a page wire fence one winter, sleigh and all, and take off across a potato field. Wasn't much left of the sleigh after about half a mile. Wilfred couldn't find the ignition key. :rofl:
It was a wild minute, but no injuries to horse or bystanders.
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Ah, here's another one.

I guess I was about 12 or 13 and we had a new workhorse (Percheron) gelding dad was breaking to drive. He had been doing pretty good and dad had taken him out to the haystack about 100yds behind the house to get a load of hay on a stone boat. The stone boat was basically two logs about 12" across and 10' long bevelled underneath on the front end with a 2x6 deck bolted to the top (there were some cross beams as well, but the point it is was decent sized and fairly heavy). I'm not quite sure what happened but we heard dad hollering "Whoa Whoa" followed by a bunch of invectives and then CRASH. Figuring the worst me and mom both ran over the hill to see what happened.

The gelding was standing out in the field about half way back to the house calmly grazing and dad was walking towards him. The only damage we could see was the top board on the stackyard gate at about 5'6" was busted in half. Apparently that gelding had cleared the gate stone boat and all, with the stone boat just barely clipping the top of the gate on the way by.

Never underestimate the power of 2000lbs of horseflesh standing 16 hands high.
 
Ryan Mooney said:
Ah, here's another one.

I guess I was about 12 or 13 and we had a new workhorse (Percheron) gelding dad was breaking to drive. He had been doing pretty good and dad had taken him out to the haystack about 100yds behind the house to get a load of hay on a stone boat. The stone boat was basically two logs about 12" across and 10' long bevelled underneath on the front end with a 2x6 deck bolted to the top (there were some cross beams as well, but the point it is was decent sized and fairly heavy). I'm not quite sure what happened but we heard dad hollering "Whoa Whoa" followed by a bunch of invectives and then CRASH. Figuring the worst me and mom both ran over the hill to see what happened.

The gelding was standing out in the field about half way back to the house calmly grazing and dad was walking towards him. The only damage we could see was the top board on the stackyard gate at about 5'6" was busted in half. Apparently that gelding had cleared the gate stone boat and all, with the stone boat just barely clipping the top of the gate on the way by.

Never underestimate the power of 2000lbs of horseflesh standing 16 hands high.
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Oh to see a video of that!
I'm picturing the gelding stretched right out approaching the gate and the stone boat just touching down once in a while!
 
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