honda fresh car

Driver – s last moments recorded in nine hundred ninety nine call as he tells operator car – s cruise control – stuck – at 119mph

Driver’s last moments recorded in nine hundred ninety nine call as he tells operator car’s cruise control ‘stuck’ at 119mph

A driver dialled nine hundred ninety nine as his out-of-control car hurtled along a motorway at more than 110mph and said that the cruise control was stuck open and he could not stop, an inquest heard.

An operator heard company director Kaushal Gandhi being killed as his car crashed into the back of a stationary lorry during the eight-minute emergency call.

A recording of the 32-year-old’s call to police was played to a coroner, who heard he struggled at the controls of his white Skoda Octavia as it reached speeds of 119mph on the M40 before the fatal influence.

Mr Gandhi had told the emergency call handler that the cruise control had stuck open and he was accelerating out of control.

The inquest heard the car had a button to begin and stop the engine instead of an ignition key and as Mr Gandhi shoved it, the engine kept escalating to high revs.

T he coroner was told the car was eventually brought to a halt when it careered off the motorway and into a lay-by where the flat-bed lorry was parked.

Emergency services who arrived at the scene soon after the crash found Mr Gandhi’s bod in the wreckage. The car was embedded under the lorry up to the back wheels.

The inquest in Beaconsfield, Bucks, heard the motorist told police his car was driving itself as it reached 119mph two seconds before the collision with the stationary 18-tonne lorry.

Mr Gandhi’s eight-and-a-half minute nine hundred ninety nine call was played to the inquest. The coroner heard the Skoda hit the three-axle HGV with such force that its rear axle was shoved to the front of the trailer. The Skoda was found with its roof peeled off up to its rear wheels.

Senior coroner Crispin Butler said that data analysis from the car’s airbag systems failed to provide evidence of the defects Mr Gandhi, from Harrow, London, was describing to the police moments before his death.

The inquest heard Mr Gandhi, the director of Rehncy Shaheem Chartered Accountants, in Greenford, west London, told the masculine police call handler: “My car is not coming out of the cruise control.

“I have just passed the exit of the M40 towards Slough. It is not letting me stop. It [the speedometer] shows 70mph, but I think I am going much quicker than this.”

The call handler from Thames Valley Police asked: “Can you slow to a stop by braking? Can you attempt to control the car’s speed using your gears?”

“I am attempting. It is not stopping at neutral,” said Mr Gandhi, before a faint beep could be heard as he attempted turning off his engine by pressing the start-stop button.

“I have kept pressing the button, but all it makes is a noise,” he said. “My speed is enhancing. I think what has happened was I attempted to switch the mode on the car, because I was on the sports mode. I pressed a button to come onto the normal mode and then it is not permitting me to do anything.”

T he driver, whom the inquest heard was a car enthusiast and a “meticulous” driver, asked the call handler if a lane could be closed ahead of him as he approached a junction with the A40 at Denham, Bucks.

“It is just gone 77mph right now,” he said. The call handler was then heard asking if he had attempted pulling on the handbrake.

“I haven’t attempted it (using the handbrake) because at this speed I am not sure what will happen. I am in the middle lane right now, there is no traffic. Do you want me to attempt the handbrake?”

The call handler, who was then seeking advice from a colleague, got no response to a question and the crash then happened.

The coroner heard that the phone connection was lost moments after Mr Gandhi was heard telling: “I am just going to check that, one 2nd. “

The call handler was then heard to say: “Are you still there? Hello, operator, I’ve lost the line.”

T he coroner was told that a retired firefighter driving an Ocado HGV on the opposite side of the road recalled to police how the white Skoda crashed into the truck six hundred yards after the M40 merged into the A40 Western Avenue shortly after 3am.

Robert Hague, the witness, said: “Just a millisecond after it whooshed past me, I heard a bang.”

Mr Hague called the emergency services instantly after he used the A40 junction’s motorway to go back to the scene.

He told the inquest: “The car was almost totally embedded in the lorry, the roof of the car was peeled back. The car had knocked the rear axle of the lorry a long way forward into the front axle.”

Martin Clatworthy, a vehicle data examiner and safety specialist for Volkswagen, the makers of the Skoda, told the inquest that the airbag systems gave the speed, steering, accelerator pedal position and braking of the Skoda in the five seconds before the crash.

The inquest heard that the main car part that recorded the data was demolished in the collision, but it had fed the information to the vehicle’s airbag system.

That data exposed the Skoda was travelling at 116mph with the accelerator pedal fully depressed five seconds before the crash.

No braking was recorded, but there was evidence of puny steering left and right as dashcam footage from Mr Hague’s HGV demonstrated the car veering from the middle lane into nearside lane, where the motorway merged with A40.

The car continued to accelerate and hit a top speed of 119mph with the accelerator pedal pressed two-thirds of the way down, two seconds before the influence at 94mph when it was fully off, the inquest heard.

Mr Clatworthy said: “There is no indication 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.”

P olice collision investigator Andrew Evans said Mr Gandhi’s account of his vehicle’s positions during his call to police was backed up by movie footage taken by Highways England cameras of his car on the M40.

Mr Evans, who said there were no skid marks near the lay-by, added that the faults Mr Gandhi described meant that the Skoda would have had to have suffered a simultaneous mechanical and electronic failure.

He said: “We would have to have had an electronic failure earlier and also a mechanical failure of the clutch as well.

“If you are in sixth gear and you need to knock it into neutral at those speeds, you should be able to do that without using the clutch.”

He explained that applying the handbrake could have saved Mr Gandhi’s life by forcing the car’s rear wheels to lock up and turn it around so it skidded rearwards.

The coroner ruled out any suggestion that that Mr Gandhi, of Harrow, Middlesex, had deliberately taken his own life.

Mr Gandhi, who was born in Mumbai, India, had many interests including archery, sky diving and had recently got back in touch with an ex-girlfriend in India after his marriage ended in February 2015.

“This was not a matter that caused Kaushal any concerns,” said Gatinder Kaur, a friend and work colleague. “He was on top of the world, he had everything to live for.”

She added: “He kept his car immaculately spotless, it was one of his passions. He was a good driver and he did not mention the car had any problems. I know Kaushal would not drink and drive, he was meticulous about this.”

The coroner said a post-mortem examination at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford gave the cause of death as numerous injuries. A toxicology report demonstrated no substances that would affect Mr Gandhi’s driving in his blood at the time.

T he crash happened near junction one of the M40 in Buckinghamshire

Concluding the inquest, Mr Butler recorded a narrative verdict.

He said: “Shortly after three hundred hours on February two 2016 the Skoda Octavia motor car being driven by Mr Gandhi was in collision with a Scania truck which was parked for the night in a lay-by on the eastbound carriageway of the A40 Western Avenue, approximately six hundred metres east of the M40 junction 1. Mr Gandhi died instantly.

“Two seconds prior to the influence the Skoda had reached a speed of one hundred ninety two km/h (119 mph) based on analysis of data retrieved from the vehicle’s airbag deployment system.

“At the time off the influence the speed of the vehicle was one hundred fifty two km/h (94 mph). The accelerator pedal is recorded as having been depressed fully, five seconds prior to the influence but not depressed at all at 1.Five seconds prior to the influence. The steering input data indicates petite deviations left and right during the last five seconds.

“In the eight-and-a-half minute period prior to the collision Mr Gandhi had been engaged in a phone conversation with Thames Valley Police.”

He added: “The vehicle was badly bruised in the collision but subsequent extensive investigations have not exposed any evidence of the faults described by Mr Gandhi.”

Related movie:

---