IT WAS a BMW with a top speed of 135mph, but the owner Kevin Nicolle never knew quite how fast that was until last Sunday, shortly after he discovered that his accelerator pedal was stuck to the floor.
In the 30 minutes that followed, Mr Nicolle sped through three counties, outran a fleet of police cars and finally careened on to a roundabout, shouting to a policewoman operator to call an ambulance because "I ain't surviving this."
Disaster struck as Mr Nicolle (25), was driving his pride and joy through the North Yorkshire dales along the A1, on his way home to Portsmouth in south west England. As he passed the village of Thirsk, he took his foot off the accelerator - but the car speeded up.
"The pedal was stuck to the floor," he said.
Mr Nicolle called the AA on his hands-free phone. They told him to call the police, who dispatched four fast cars and a helicopter. For a time the brakes held the 125 horsepower engine to 70mph. The policewoman on the end of the line said that they would attempt a "rolling stop": boxing in the car with police vehicles to gradually slow it down.
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