Taken From: The Atlantic
Date Published: February 13th, 2013
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| Frank's route - Starting in Northern France and ending in Belgium. |
Summary: "It all started with my routine drive to the supermarket" said Frank Lecerf. Frank Lecerf, from his home in Pont-de-Metz, near the French city of Amiens, was making his weekly trip to the supermarket. He was going around 60 miles an hour, which is 100 kilometers an hour, when the car's speed dial jammed. He tried to break, but instead of slowing down; the car accelerated every time. The car eventually hit a peak of 125 mph, which is 200 kph. That's around double the speed you would normally travel on the highway. He traveled at the same consistent speed for one whole hour. Frank frantically called the police from his car, and they brought in an escort of police cars to help him navigate and move other cars away. Through good coordination and communication three toll booths raised their barriers as Frank approached. The police ensured the highway as kept clear of the speeding car. The police put Frank and a Renault engineer who tried, but failed to help Frank slow the speeding car down. After bearing an hour of blazing fast speed, the car had finally started to run out of gas. His car finally ran out of fuel and came to a rest. Frank, had driven from northern France, and ended up crossing the border, and into Belgium.
Opinion: I think it's terrible the man had to endure so much a life threatening situation and go through it for an hour. I think it's great that people coordinated together to make sure the man was alive. He was very, lucky to be alive, and it was a collective effort from everybody. The man had driven a total of 125 miles, crossing a border into another country. It is still unclear what happened to the car to cause such an accident, but the man has an upcoming lawsuit against Renault. I am happy the man is alive, and I hope this raises awareness, so this doesn't happen again in the future.
I agree with your opinion after reading this article. This man did face a very terriying moment in his life where he could have possibly lost his life. The fact that this man had driven 125 mph, for approximately an hour consistently, was extremely mind blowing to hear. Having driven across the border into another country traveling 125 mph is a very scary thing. I believe that not only does this man receive credit for cooperating well with the police and acting calmly, but also to the police, who communicated to the toll booths in order to cause minimal damage. I hope that the engineers quickly work on to figure out what went wrong and prevent this situation from occuring again.
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