How a woman survived behind the wheel of a runaway car

Shortly after midday, student nurse Sylesia Gethers, 21, filled up the tank of her burgundy 1986 Volkswagen Jetta at a self-service petrol station. Then she headed back on to the motorway that runs from Maine to Florida.

An attractive woman with cropped black hair, Sylesia would soon begin her final year at nursing school. She was paying her way there by working full time for a nursing agency. For now, however, her mind was on the few pleasant days she would spend with family in her hometown. On this Sunday, last August 29, she had been on the road since 6am.

Suddenly she had a strange sensation that the car had switched on to automatic cruise control—even though the Jetta lacked that feature. She lifted her foot off the accelerator, but the car kept going at 65 mph.

Alarmed, Sylesia slammed on the brake and steered towards the hard shoulder. Glancing down, she saw the accelerator stuck halfway to the floor. With her right toe she brought it all the way up, and slowed to a stop.

She got out of the car and lifted the bonnet. Nothing seemed amiss. She closed it, puzzled. Sylesia had bought the four-door Jetta, her first car, eight months earlier. It had needed work on the brakes and routine maintenance, but otherwise seemed fine.

Back inside, she reached for her mobile phone and rang the police. "The accelerator on my car is sticking," she told an operator. "I don't know whether it's safe to drive."

Within minutes a police car pulled up behind her. Officer James Gregory got her to try out the car on the hard shoulder. The accelerator didn't stick. But Gregory cautioned that there could be rust in the accelerator cable, and it might need lubrication. He gave her directions to a petrol station, and followed her until she gave him a thumbs-up signal. The car continued to operate perfectly. Sylesia decided to get the cable oiled the next time she stopped for petrol.

Thirty miles on, Sylesia noticed the speedometer needle had inched up to 65, though her foot was barely touching the accelerator. Oh, my God, she thought. The car's doing it again!

She tapped the pedal, hoping to free it, but the car only accelerated more. She wedged her toe under the pedal, but this time it did not budge. Flinging her sunglasses aside, she pressed hard on the brake.

The car slowed, and Sylesia eased off the brake. In response, the Jetta surged ahead at more than 75 mph. Weaving from lane to lane to avoid other cars, she kept pumping the brake. But it became rock-hard under her foot. She yanked the handbrake, but it had no effect either.

Racing down the outside lane, Sylesia tried to push her automatic shift out of drive into neutral. It was jammed.

Never had she driven this fast. She was beginning to panic. Then her chest burned, and she felt the tightening in her throat of an oncoming asthma attack. I need my inhaler!

Her handbag, where she kept her inhaler, had fallen on the passenger floor, out of reach. She felt dizzy, on the verge of passing out. A migraine throbbed in her head.

Turn the engine of Sylesia's fingers strained at the key. Come on! Come on! It wouldn't move.

Again, Sylesia pushed at the gear stick. It slipped into neutral, then jumped back to drive. She tried again. The lever stayed in neutral, but to her horror, the speedometer needle climbed above 90.

Hot tears clouded Sylesia's vision. Breathing deeply, she held her asthma in check. She heard the angry blare of horns when she abruptly changed lanes. People think I'm mad. Then she caught a fleeting glimpse of two children in a minivan, and a new tremor went through her. She prayed she wouldn't hurt anyone.

Steering with her left hand, Sylesia groped with her right until she found the mobile phone. She rang the police, then wedged the phone between her chin and left shoulder.

Ray Dixon, 50, was midway through a quiet Sunday shift when the frantic call came in at 1.26pm.

"Help me! I'm on the motorway. My car won't stop. It keeps going faster and faster. I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Where are you now?"

The caller said she had just passed a service area that Dixon knew was eight miles north-east of his location. In four years with the emergency services, he had never encountered a situation like this.

"Turn the ignition off."

"I can't!"

Dixon told her to put the car in neutral and pound on the brakes, but all he heard was a half-screamed "Nothing works!"

At a nearby console, another operator hit a button. "We have a runaway car on the motorway," he reported to the Highway Patrol.

Sylesia saw the speedometer needle pass 100. Cars blocked both lanes ahead. She honked the horn and flashed her lights, but was bearing down on them too fast for the drivers in front to react. At the last moment she swerved right to the eight-foot-wide hard shoulder and roared clear.

To her left, the central reservation was thick with trees in some areas, but mostly it was an open sloped strip about 30 feet wide. To her right, the ground dropped sharply away at the edge of the hard shoulder. If she drove off the tarmac either to her left or right, her car would flip into the air.

Dixon spoke again, his voice purposely flat and unemotional to avoid adding to her panic. "Keep your cool," he told her. "Take your foot and hit the accelerator really hard."

Sylesia felt a trace of downward give in the accelerator, but it didn't spring back up.\

"How much petrol have you got left?" Dixon asked.

"Half a tank."

Thundering down the motorway, dodging traffic, Sylesia reported a speed of 110 mph. Then Dixon heard a scream.

The left lane was blocked by a line of cars, and ahead of Sylesia in the right lane were two huge articulated lorries, one following the other, fewer than 100 feet apart.

Throwing the phone on to the seat, Sylesia swung right, on to the hard shoulder. As she drew alongside the first juggernaut, the Jetta's right bumper was only inches from a guard- rail. She kept her eyes locked on the road. If I look at the lorry, I'm dead.

Halfway past the lorry, a deafening roar in her ears, she felt her heart jump. Up ahead was a car parked on the hard shoulder, with a man standing by it.

She would not have time to pass the second lorry. She swung back between the juggernauts, conscious of the blare of a horn and the hiss of air brakes from the lorry behind her. Then her car hurtled straight for the lorry in front. The left lane was still blocked by cars.

Her eye was caught by a passing blur. The man beside the stopped car! Immediately she swerved right, back on to the hard shoulder, and passed the second lorry. Then she steered back on to the main carriageway, still honking her horn.

Sylesia felt panic overwhelming her. I'm dead. I know I'm dead.

"Hello, sir," she said into the phone. "Can you take this number please?" Her closest friend, Gail Jackson, a nurse, was the chief executor of her will, and Sylesia wanted her called if she died. She gave Dixon the number, then was struck by a greater fear. What if I kill others? Please, God, let it be me and nobody else.

"Calm down, you're doing well," Dixon said, just before the Jetta passed out of his range. He knew that state police had been warned further south on the motorway. It was 1.45pm.

Sergeant Frankie Moody, 44, saw the blur of a Jetta blowing past him, weaving a hair-raising path through an obstacle course of vehicles. That's her!

Pedal to the floor, Moody roared after her in his big Chevrolet. Passing the Jetta on the right, he swung into the left lane in front of it and accelerated, lights flashing and siren wailing to warn traffic out of the lane. Then the lanes jammed up, and Moody led the Jetta on to the hard shoulder.

Sylesia cringed as roadside debris hit her windscreen, starting a hairline crack. She craned forwards for a clear view. Then she began gaining on the saloon. "There's a police car in front and I'm going to hit him," she yelled towards the phone. "Tell him to get out of the way."

In the same instant, Moody saw a vehicle pull on to the hard shoulder. Pushing on his brakes, the policeman braced himself for the crash of the Jetta into the back of his cruiser.

Instead, he watched in awe as Sylesia cut left, came within a few feet of another car and cut left again. Now in the left lane, hard on the bumper of yet another car, Sylesia dodged left again. With two wheels on the tarmac, two on the grass verge, she pulled ahead of the car and swung back on to the motorway.

"It's all right," she shouted into the phone. "I got round him. I didn't hit anybody." The petrol gauge was hovering above empty. Just hang on, she told herself, feeling the first glimmer of hope. You can make it.

Sergeant Larry Davis, a 25-year veteran of the Highway Patrol, saw the Jetta draw abreast of a 40-mile marker, then dart right to the hard shoulder, shoot by two lorries and turn back on to the motorway. She's a magnificent driver, he thought. But he knew that a heavy flow of traffic from half a dozen roads always congested the road up ahead.

Racing south at 110 mph, Davis flew to the left of two 18-wheelers. Sylesia swerved to the hard shoulder between the guard-rail and the lorries. Pounding back on to the motorway, she rushed towards a third truck. The hard shoulder was blocked ahead, so Davis squeezed left to give her room. He had all four wheels on the slanted embankment, driving atilt at 105 mph, when the Jetta shot past.

For a second Sylesia's long forward view was blocked by a rise in the road. Then she crossed over it and stiffened with fright.

A patrol car in front was forging into a thicket of traffic, and his brake lights glowed. Sylesia thumped helplessly on her brakes.

She could not pull right. An unbroken line of cars blocked that lane. She was trapped in the left lane behind the policeman. To her left, the grassy verge was treeless and steep. If I turn in, I'm dead. Then, eyes fixed on the bumper of the police car, she thought, If I hit him, he'll explode.

She veered left, putting two wheels on the rough verge. Sylesia felt the car lurch and the wheel spin in her hands. Then she closed her eyes.

The Jetta shot down the west slope of the embankment, hit the bottom, then soared up the east bank and went airborne into the motorway's northbound traffic lanes. One patrol car clocked the take-off at 97.7 mph.

Ten feet in the air, the Jetta went into a belly-roll, then crashed upside down on to a pick-up truck heading north at 65 mph. Bouncing off the truck, the car took another roll in the air and landed wheels down, skidding into the oncoming traffic. A white Cadillac, brakes squealing, struck the Jetta on the left back bumper and sent it spinning anticlockwise for 20 feet. Then the Jetta finally came to a stop, its engine silent.

Sylesia opened her eyes. She felt sick, an acute pain in her stomach, but was able to move. She heard running feet. Then at her open window, she saw a face. "Who did I kill?" she asked in a small voice.

"You didn't kill anybody," the officer said quietly. Sylesia gently rested her forehead on his hand on the door.

It was 2.30pm, 64 minutes since Sylesia Gethers had telephoned Ray Dixon. She had travelled 114 miles.

Sylesia was treated for cuts at a nearby hospital, and discharged. Miraculously, the driver of the pick-up truck, Tommy Lee Wooten, 54, suffered only some neck pain. His six-year-old grand-daughter Rhiannon was unhurt. Wooten's wife Jo Antoinette, 51, suffered cuts and bruises to her face and a broken toe. Five young men in the Cadillac escaped serious injury.

After a cousin had picked Sylesia up and driven her home, she collapsed into a deep sleep until early morning. Then, in a dream, she was back inside the car, flipping over and over. She woke gasping for breath, and turned her eyes to sunlight streaking through the familiar window. Her heart leaped with joy. I'm alive!

A mechanical inspection carried out on Sylesia Gethers's car revealed a loose bolt in the transmission. It had caused the gearshift malfunction and blocked the return of the accelerator, holding it down.