John Nielsen: Hi! I am John Nielsen with AAA Automotive. And today we are here to talk about unexpected driving emergencies. Now, there is a number of things that we are going to cover in this series, but in this particular segment we are going to talk about sudden unintended acceleration or a sticking throttle. Now, these are things that have been happening for years. They have been in the news a lot lately. But there is a couple of things that we should remember and prepare for, so that should it happen to us, we are going to know the exact steps to take, how to keep safe, and how to keep everyone in our car safe.

The first step is to stay calm. Panic is really just going to cause more trouble, so stay calm. The second step is to stay focused on the road. Keep your eyes looking forward. Keep aware of traffic, because failure to do that is most likely to lead to an accident.

The next step is to firmly apply the breaks. In most cases, this is going to slow your car down and allow you to move over to the emergency lane and turn your engine off. Should that fail, you are going to want to shift the car into neutral. Now, as soon as you shift the car to neutral, two things are going to happen. Your engine is going to start speeding up and making noise, but the car will start slowing down. Once again, keep aware of traffic and slowly move over to a safe area, where you can pull off of the road, turn your flashers on, and now, you are going to turn the engine off, without putting it back into gear. At no time should we shift that car back into reverse or drive. Now, to turn the car off, you can simply turn the key to the off position, or alternately, if it has a push button start, hold the button in, sometimes as much as 5 seconds to turn the engine off. Now, once the engine has been turned off, you can put it back in park, put the emergency break on. And finally, don't restart the engine, call for AAA, get assistance, have the car towed to a repair shop to diagnose and repair the problem. Sudden unintended acceleration is unlikely to occur, but if it does, you are now better prepared to take the proper steps to keep you and your passengers safe. And up next, Dr. Bill is going to talk to you about what to do in the event of a tire blowout.