ABOVE: An excerpt of Chase Weir's Triple-0 call.

MORE AUDIO:

• Listen: Longer version of 000 phonecall
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MEX COOPER, THOMAS HUNTER, PETER GREGORY, PAUL MILLAR:

Police have released a recording of the triple-0 call from terrified motorist Chase Weir as his four-wheel-drive raced along a freeway with its cruise control stuck.

"Oh my God, oh my God, I'm going to die," the 22-year-old Melbourne man tells Sergeant Marnie Goldsmith, believing he was about to smash into oncoming traffic.

Mr Weir initially sounds afraid but calm as says, "I can't stop my car".
       
He explains he is travelling at 100km/hr but when he applies the brakes can only slow the vehicle to 80km/hr.

Sergeant Goldsmith urges him not to panic but when her advice to pull into the emergency lane of the Eastern Freeway and turn off the engine fails, Mr Weir’s voice becomes increasingly anxious.

"Just listen Chase, it's nothing to freak about, you're on the freeway, its a long freeway," she says.

But as Mr Weir passes Burwood Highway he tells her Sergeant Goldsmith he is about to die.

"Holy shit, oh f---," he says.

"I just went on to the wrong side of the wrong ... the f----- traffic."

Mr Weir begins to laugh deliriously with fear as Sergeant Goldsmith tells him to lean on the brake and the handbrake as hard as he can before the vehicle finally stops.

He had hurtled down the freeway for half an hour, unable to halt the four-wheel-drive vehicle, after his cruise control became locked yesterday afternoon.

Earlier today, Mr Weir  told reporters how Sergeant Goldsmith had guided him over the phone during his ordeal.

Sergeant Goldsmith said Mr Weir did everything he physically could to stop the car.

When asked how she thought the incident might end, Sergeant Goldsmith said 'well, it went bad for a while, but it ended good. That's how you have to look at it'.

She said she was talking to Mr Weir and letting him know that he was in a bad situation, but telling him of plans that were being made to help him.

Sergeant Goldsmith said she initially she thought the call made by Mr Weir might have been a hoax, but she soon realised after receiving other messages that it was real.

She said she kept talking to him honestly and tried to keep him calm.

"I told him that I understand that you might be panicking…I said I’ll tell you when it’s time to panic and we're not there yet."

Sergeant Goldsmith said Mr Weir had called for assurance and direction and he did not need to hear that she was panicking.

"All of the police involved probably had the same feeling that it probably wasn’t going to end well, because we didn't know how to stop the vehicle," she said.

She said Mr Weir should be commended because he did everything he was asked to do while driving the vehicle.

Ford has denied any link between product recalls and Mr Weir's terrifying freeway ordeal, describing his Ford Explorer's cruise-control malfunction as a "one-off" and "highly unusual" incident.

Ford Australia spokeswoman Sinead McAlary said Mr Weir’s car was part of a recall 12 to 18 months ago, but the two scenarios were not related.

She said Ford had made contact with Mr Weir to examine the vehicle and determine what happened.

"It's highly unusual and it was not something we have encountered before anywhere in the world," Ms McAlary said.

"We need to actually find out what happened during the incident. The brakes of Mr Weir’s car did stop his car at the end.

"The braking system of any vehicle are designed to stop the vehicle. They will override the engine and stop the vehicle if they are applied firmly enough. And that did happen with Mr Weir yesterday.

"What we need to determine is  why that happened at the end and what was different at the start of the incident and why it didn't work then when they brakes were applied properly or whether something went wrong with the vehicle."

Professor John Price, former lecturer in automotive risk analysis at Monash University and consultant to the automotive industry, said he thought the incident was "extremely rare, otherwise we would have started hearing court cases about it by now".

"I can assure you companies like Ford spend a lot of effort going through every possible safety event, and this would be one of them. Something has happened here that they didn’t pick up in all their safety testing," he said.

"I don't think it's a single failure. I think it's a combination of two or three rare failures."

Professor Price said the failure of the cruise control to disconnect is a safety question posed in the design of the vehicle, and the car companies design protections against it.

"At least two very obvious protections, very obvious ones, are that it should disconnect when you brake or when you push a switch," said Professor Price. "They have somehow failed in this case."

'I thought I was going to die'

UPDATE: A man miraculously escapes serious injury after his car gets stuck on cruise control on the Eastern Freeway. The shocked man details his unbelievable story to 3AW Drive's Peter Maher from hospital.

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