An inquest heard that a driver who crashed into a park lorry, called 999 to say his car was stuck on cruise control, minutes before the accident. Kaushal Gandhi, 32, had made an emergency call to explain that his Skoda Octavia was stuck and won't stop accelerating on the M40 near Slough, as informed to the Beaconsfield Coroner's Court.
A recording of the phone call was also played for the coroner in which the call handler can heard asking Gandhi if he had tried using the handbrake. The inquest heard that an inspection of the vehicle showed there was no indication of an electronic systems problem in the five seconds before the crash. Martin Clatworthy, a vehicle data examiner and safety specialist for Volkswagen, said that in the five seconds before the crash, the vehicle was travelling at 116 mph. He added the accelerator pedal was fully depressed and there was no braking recorded. "There is no indicatgion that there was any error or problem with any of the electronic systems of the car in the five seconds leading up to the collision," he said.
Police collision investigator Andrew Evans said the faults Gandhi described in the call meant the Skoda would have had to have suffered a simultaneous mechanical and electronic failure, explaining that applying the handbrake could have saved Gandhi's life by forcing the car's rear wheels to lock up and turn it around so it skidded backwards. The Skoda crashed into a lorry parked in a lay-by after the M40 merged into the A40 shortly after 3am on February 2. Robert Hague, who witnessed the crash and phoned emergency, said the car was "almost completely embedded in the lorry" and the roof was "peeled back". Lorry driver Emma Parrot stated the impact of the collision was such, it threw her off her bunk.
Coroner at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, cited multiple injuries as the cause of Gandhi's death. Senior coroner Cripsin Butler said data analysis from the mangled car's airbag systems failed to provide evidence of the defects Gandhi was describing to the call handlers.
