A few months after that article... NASA did some investigating and found tin whiskers in some faulty accelerator pedals. And interestingly enough, these pedals

A few months after that article... NASA did some investigating and found tin whiskers in some faulty accelerator pedals. And interestingly enough, these pedals would all test out fine. This particular one the complaint noted that she had to hit the brake to get the car to stop. So she did not end up crashing. So I'm inclined to believe her car really did take off suddenly. This presentation changed up my mind a bit about unintended acceleration in these cars. https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-NASA-GSFC-whisker-failure-app-sensor.pdf https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-NAS... I do believe that it could happen, but also I do believe that in most cases you should be able to slam on the brakes and stop the car.