alt title(s): ptitlesx1dgu5n04g 6
Action Movie Trope where the driver of a vehicle is shot/killed. Instantly, he suffers a muscle spasm that extends the driver's leg, pushing the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. Then instant rigor mortis sets in, keeping it there. Naturally, this causes the vehicle to accelerate to ludicrous speed, putting anyone in the way of this driving dead man at mortal risk.
In real life there is the
Dead Man Switch on some vehicles that acts as a
fail-safe if the operator is incapacitated. In cars and buses this fail-safe is that the accelerator pedal hinge is spring-loaded, so that it requires constant pressure to hold it down. No such luck in the TV-Verse. As far as this trope is concerned, getting into a car means
you've got one foot in the grave.
Related to
Runaway Train.
Examples:
Film
- The truck driver in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Justified examples: The pilot in Raiders and the tank driver in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. These are a little different, since in both cases they involve a hand-operated throttle and the driver falling on top of it.
- The Subway in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The fact that there is no preventive measure for such a thing here makes Big Blue's speech about public transportation being the safest way to travel, slightly comical.
- The subway train in the film Speed. The opposite effect of a real deadman's switch, which would stop the train.
- Inverted when the original bus driver gets shot. Not only doesn't he die, but they have to get a new driver in the seat and keep her from going below 50 (and Keanu hasn't told 'em there's a bomb on the bus yet).
- Coke, the El Train driver in The French Connection.
- Variant occurs in the movie Agent for HARM (featured on MST3K) where Agent Chance shoots the driver, the car continues to drive... Into the ocean. A henchmen jumps into the passenger seat but doesn't make any attempt to drive, the dead guy just keeps it going.
- Live And Let Die. James Bond's driver gets shot with a dart that causes exactly this reaction. Of course, it presumably was a kind of poison with specific plot-related symptoms.
- Happens to the limo driver during the Florida Keys action sequence in True Lies.
Live Action TV
- A space example of this happens to Racetrack in Battlestar Galactica.
- House frequently approaches this trope, although the characters usually have become unconscious or lost muscle control. In season 2, for example, two consecutive episodes ("Need to Know" and "Distractions") started with the main patient driving a vehicle and dramatically hitting the accelerator at a key moment from their illnesses.
- Psych pulls this once with the victim being gassed to death. Luckily, the car is on a dynamometer and is literally going nowhere fast.
Real Life
- A tragic real-life example occurred at the 1977 South African Grand Prix where driver Tom Pryce was killed instantly in a collision with a track marshal and his car continued on driverless for a whole straight before crashing.
- A rather creepy example occurred with a private jet in 1999, killing champion golfer Payne Stewart. Payne and his entourage were flying from Florida to Texas when the jet's cabin pressure failed, either suffocating or leaving them unconscious. The jet then continued in a straight line until running out of fuel over South Dakota, about 1000 miles off course.
- The driver of a commuter train in Australia suffered an apparent heart attack and died. He didn't fall out of his seat, and was heavy enough that the weight of his leg kept enough pressure on the pedal which controlled the dead-man's switch to prevent it from tripping, causing the train to go out of control and crash.
- Note that trains these days usually have a dead man's switch that has to be toggled periodically. Falling unconscious on one doesn't work.
Video Games
Western Animation
- Samurai Jack Episode 7: Jack and the Three Blind Archers. The archers take out a tank with a robot driver, who collapses onto the control causing the tank to rampage and shoot at the other robots.
