Yesterday, my wife she was driving her aunt’s Motabilty car, a Ford C-Max diesel automatic. When she returned to the car with her aunt, she had great difficulty manoeuvring out of a parking space due to other vehicles parking very close and the fact that the car’s engine was running erratically. Because her aunt has very limited mobility, my wife decided to drive her home. A short while later, as she reached a ‘give way’ sign, she took her foot off the accelerator and the car immediately accelerated violently across the junction and hit another vehicle coming from her right. The C-Max is a total write off.

I am concerned about the performance of the car. It was exactly one year old. With the aunt and uncle now more or less housebound, the car only ever got used for occasional short trips and had not been run for many weeks prior to the crash. In fact, since new, it had only covered around 300 miles. I am concerned that a problem may have arisen due to the very limited use of this vehicle on short trips only. Is there anything, in your opinion that could have caused the car to accelerate in the way it did?