Woman Loses Brakes in Rush Hour Traffic

May 31 -- Elizabeth Jordan was driving into the thick of rush hour traffic on Long Island when the gas pedal on her SUV got stuck and her vehicle revved ahead.

Jordan pressed the brakes, but nothing happened. Next, she wedged her foot under the gas pedal and tried to jimmy it upward. No dice. Frantically, the 25-year-old nursing student grabbed her cell phone and called 911.

"I'm on the LIE," Jordan said on the tape. "I've lost my brakes, and I can't stop."

Alarming at any time, those words were a real wake-up call at 8:30 Wednesday morning, coming from a motorist headed toward New York City, on the jam-packed Long Island Expressway, one of New York's busiest highways. And it was just the start of an eight-minute ride of terror, with Jordan forced to weave through traffic at speeds of up to 85 mph, as she tried to avoid a collision.

It even smelled bad, with the acrid scent of the 1994 Chevy Blazer's burning brakes drifting into her nostrils.

"I can smell my brakes going … The traffic is stopping," Jordan said. Her breath was coming quickly as she spoke into the phone.

"Don't breathe like that," the dispatcher, Denise Skewes, 51, said. "You're going to hyperventilate."

Out of the Fast Lane

At that point, the vehicle was reaching 85 miles per hour.

"I've had my emergency brake on, and I've tried to go into neutral," Jordan said. The car slowed to about 50 mph, but still wasn't stopping

"Should I try to put it into park?" she asked the dispatcher.

"I can't advise you on that, hon," Skewes responded.

But Skewes did advise Jordan to get out of the fast lane and on to the shoulder, out of traffic, if she could. If not, a crash seemed inevitable … a scene playing over and over in Jordan's mind.

"The traffic is stopped ahead again," Jordan said. "There are cars in front of me and I'm going to hit someone."

Bracing for the worst, the sound of metal against metal, the dispatcher got through to Highway Patrol Officer Edwin Hernandez, who was nearby, ironically writing up a speeding motorcyclist.