A friend of mine told me that she recently rented a VW Caddy automatic. She had to pass through some narrow gates so she stopped the car, put it in neutral and pull the handbrake on and got out of the car to fold back the wing mirrors to pass through the gateway. As she was getting back into the car, with her right foot still on the ground, the car pulled away and went through the gateway trapping her ankle between the door and the cill, badly cutting and scraping it. The hire company is charging £350 for repairs to the door but she is adamant that the vehicle malfunctioned in some way. One thing is for certain, she could not have had a foot on the accelerator is that was outside the car at the time of the incident.

She is an experienced driver and rents cars frequently although she doesn't own one as she now lives in London but has done in the past. She is a levelheaded woman, not given to panics or other maladies and I have to say I do believe her description of the event.

The rental company say they checked the car over and confide nothing wrong so she's resigned to paying for the damage but I'm wondering if you can offer any explanation for the event if it really did happen as she says it did?

Before I close but I'd say thank you for an entertaining and informative column. I found it very useful on many occasions especially when dealing with the problems occurring on older cars, which I find far more interesting than those letters asking advice on which new one to buy, usually with a budget that is 10 times more than I've ever spent on a car in my life!

Richard Maycock.