‘I couldn’t even jump out – I was completely trapped inside the car’
A man says he was ”kidnapped” by his own runaway electric car – forcing him to dodge red lights and roundabouts and call police to ram it off the road.
Brian Morrison says his new fully electric car, an MG ZS EV, started driving itself – and he had to dial 999 from inside.
The 53-year-old had been heading home from work on Sunday when his brand-new vehicle – worth around £30k – decided to take control. To make matters worse, Brian says the brakes wouldn’t work.
Becoming stuck at 30mph, Brian says his MG suffered a ”catastrophic malfunction”, forcing him to call police for help.
Officer then made the runaway car stop itself by letting it slowly crash into their police van.
But, even after forcing the car to a halt, Brian says it tried to keep moving once police tried moving their vehicle.
A roadside repair mechanic later said they had “never seen” anything like the incident.
Brian, from Glasgow, Scotland, said that he was “lucky” that the incident had taken place just after 10pm when the roads were less busy.
Brian first realised something was wrong while approaching a roundabout. He tried to slow down, but he couldn’t.
“Then I heard a loud grinding noise that sounded like brake pads – but because it was such a new car I knew it couldn’t be a problem with them,” he recalled.
“I managed to get around roundabout going at about 30mph, and then had a long road ahead of me, so I assumed it would stop without me accelerating – but it didn’t.”
Brian suffers from mobility issues, “so I couldn’t even jump out – I was completely trapped inside the car going at 30mph.”
“It might not sound like it is very fast, but when you have no control over the speed and you’re completely stuck inside it’s terrifying.”
Brian initially called his wife in a panic to ask her to warn cars ahead of him that he could not stop.
After realising that he would soon have to navigate traffic lights and several roundabouts, and worried about crashing into pedestrians and pub-goers headed home, Brian called 999.
“The car was just running away on its own, there was nothing I could do,” he said.
Officers were dispatched to help Brian and engineers would put on the line to try and help him.
“It was the first time that the call handlers had experienced the issue, and they had no idea what to do,” Brian said.
Three police vehicles were sent to the scene and were positioned in front and behind Brian.
‘”I was 100% concentrating on my steering, so when a police van pulled up besides me and asked if I was Brian and if I was okay, I just yelled ‘no I’m not, I can’t stop’.”
Police initially tried having Brian throw his electronic key through their van window before driving off – but this failed to disengage the engine.
After that, they tried to get Brian to forcibly shut off the engine by pressing the power button three times, which also failed.
He was then asked to hold the power button for over two seconds, which also failed to halt the vehicle.
As a last resort, police decided to let Brian crash into the back of their van before he got into a more built up area.
Brian said: “Eventually I came up to a roundabout, which slowed the car down to about 15mph, and the Police van was waiting for me on the other side.
“I went into the back of the van while it was moving, before they put on the brakes to stop me.
”After that, a police officer jumped into my car and did something which seemed to keep the car still.
“After I got out though, they tried moving their van and the car kept going – so they had to sit with the van there for ages until the RAC got there.”
Brian says he still has “no idea what happened, but when the RAC got to me about three hours later he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check and there was pages of faults.”
Brian’s insurance say they are now investigating the incident which has left him questioning if he would drive another electric vehicle again.
“I don’t know if I’ll get another, frankly I’ve not even tried driving my wife’s car – it was a terrifying experience.”
A Police Scotland spokesperson confirmed officers were called to the A803, heading towards Kirkintilloch, around 1035pm on Sunday and “carried out a controlled halt with the aid of a police vehicle.”
The force said there was no damage to either vehicle.
MG Cars Europe is yet to comment on the incident.
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