1. I may misremember, but I do seem to recall a case where the unintended acceleration happened in a Toyota as the person was parking, with the car accelerating into the wall in front of them. But, indeed, that may be misinformation, so I'll retract the statement.

However, this does not mean that people all had the time or ability to stop. Unintended acceleration can happen in many cases, such as in a case of highway driving where, as they try to brake, they notice that the throttle is held. If this happens as someone needs to perform an emergency maneuver, the braking distance will be greatly increased, and they might lose control over car as power is still transferred.

In most cases, it might be very easy to handle the situation when you're prepared, but when you have very little time to observe the problem and correct it, things are less likely to turn out well. You might not have enough time to realize "Ah! My car is not reducing throttle, so I must set the automatic transmission to Neutral!", let alone perform the action prior to collision.

2. The steering wheel lock is different from car to car. My current car (VW) engages the lock when the key is removed and the gear is in "STOP", but my previous cars engaged when the key was rotated counter-clockwise two clicks, making it easy to hit the lock instead of simply stopping the engine. Not being able to steer is quite a fatal thing - see the accidents caused when steering wheel locks were first introduced. Especially when the electric kind was introduced (Chevrolet?), which had problems with spontaneously engaging the lock. This caused people to crash as they were suddenly unable to exit, or enter a turn, with only a second or two to stop the car. On a highway, you ultimately end up crashing into the barrier if your steering wheel lock engages.

3. And how are such designs implemented, if I may ask? Oh, software? Right. Do I need to say more, or do I have to explain exactly why this makes the mechanism entirely untrustworthy?

4. Wrong - you really at least read a bit on diesel engines. First of all, modern diesel engines (That is, 2016 model cars) have two diesel pumps - a low-pressure, electric pump in the fuel tank, and a high-pressure (that is, 1-2000 bars) pump driven mechanically by the drive belt. The electric pump is needed to bring fuel up when starting the car, as cold diesel is difficult to pump, and the starter won't result in significant pumping pressure from the high-pressure pump. However, once started, the low-pressure pump is irrelevant to engine operation, providing only a slight pumping assistance. Killing the engine the "proper" way is done by not opening the injectors, causing the pumps to simply recirculate fuel.

However, this has nothing to do with diesel runaway. During runaway, the diesel engine is not running on diesel, but on engine-oil leaking into the cylinder, often through the air-intake. Modern diesel engines almost always have turbochargers, which leak engine oil into the intercooler once their sleeve bearing, through which engine oil is actively pumped to avoid metal-to-metal contact, have been worn down, increasing the gap between turbine axle and bearing. Once enough oil has built up in the intercooler (which acts as an oil reservoir in this case), you risk sucking it in - and as any diesel engine will happily run uncontrolled on engine oil, this causes engine runaway. This can of course also happen due to other leaks, such as piston or injector seals. The lack of control means you either get to engage a gear and minimize damage as you wait for engine oil to stop flowing into the intake, or if you cannot provide any load, wait for the engine to explode, leaving behind melted pistons in what is now an expensive paper-weight. Remember that a diesel engine ignites fuel with compression (with fuel injected normally injected a full compression to allow for slight ignition timing adjustments, hence the crazy fuel pressure), not spark.

While gasoline engines can also suck in engine oil, they have electric rather than mechanic ignition, and they cannot burn engine oil well enough to run on it anyway.

5. You still need to overpower the engine, even when slamming the brake with all your might. A small gasoline car is probably easy to kill, but a more torquey engine will take quite some effort to stop.

6. Brake failure impossible? What? Brake pipes can burst, caliber piston seals can leak, and regular brake disks seize.

The first two modes of failure usually happen when you apply brake pressure. The more you apply, the more likely that you will break your old brake lines and piston seals. In other words, if your brakes are going to fail this way, they're going to fail when you need them. The dual fluid system of modern cars mean that in some cases, you will get more than one braking attempt (an attempt being a press on the pedal of any kind), but not many, and not in all braking modes.

Brake seizing is of course a possibility, unless you drive around with carbon fiber brakes.

7. Going up to the parent comment - "I am from Brazil", talking about the car reputation there. Feel free to join the comments, but don't try to pretend we're talking about something else now. I don't particularly care about Americans and their poor taste in cars, or your incorrect information about them not driving diesel cars (although they are not nearly as popular as in the rest of the world). Of course, the original post was about American transmission statistics, which are quite unrelated to the engine type.

Do you have any more incorrect or just plain uninteresting comments to try to disprove my assertions, or shall we let it be? :)