I really did mean consider turning the engine of as a possibility before aiming for something to crash into. i.e. after going into neutral, trying the brakes etc. But before ringing the police ;) Also, you could turn the engine off and on again. Wouldn't have helped me, but then my car didn't even know what a computer was. A quick reboot of the car's computers might have sorted it.

Seeing as you're sitting calmly at a computer and you still didn't consider turning the damn engine off as a possibility before aiming for something to crash into, it kind of begs the question as to why you think people panicking in a runaway car at 100 mph would be more cogent than they were. I once had my car start to accelerate without my foot on the pedal (due to a build up of grease around the wire next to the engine), where I tried clearing the problem by hitting the accelerator a few times (which made it much worse), before going out of gear (hitting about 7000 revs and heading towards damaging the engine), then finally resolving it by turning the engine off and coasting to a stop without power steering. Believe me, you panic like f*ck and if I hadn't been on a quiet, straight country road I could have been in a heap of trouble. Still, having enough time to call the police, I agree they weren't the smartest tools in the box.