[StanislavPetrov]

As Michael Hastings well knows.

>Hastings, an acclaimed war correspondent and vocal critic of government mass surveillance, died in the early hours of Tuesday, June 18, 2013, when his Mercedes C250 Coupe apparently lost control and burst into flames before slamming into a palm tree.

>Witnesses to the accident, which occurred around 4:25am in the leafy Hancock Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles, said the car appeared to be travelling at top speed and was creating “sparks and flames” before it went off the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzWHZngfONo

[jessaustin]

If one has that sort of enemy, one should drive a manual transmission.

[perl4ever]

It has been argued that pretty much all cars have brakes that are more powerful than the engine, and thus there ought to be no way for a car to truly run away.

On the other hand, it has been claimed, and seems reasonable, that in some cases, applying the brakes moderately against a car running at full throttle leads them to overheat and fail, and then there's no way to stop.

I feel like a manual transmission could be a safety device in another way - if you can pass the threshold of shifting for yourself, it may limit how impaired, by drugs/alcohol or dementia etc, you can be while still driving.