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A terrified driver told police his car was stuck on cruise control at 119 mph in a desperate 999 call moments before he was decapitated as he slammed into the back of a lorry, an inquest has heard.

Kaushal Gandhi's panicked pleas for help were recorded in a harrowing eight-minute call, made from the wheel of his out-of-control Skoda Octavia on the M40 motorway and played today at the inquest into his death.

The horrific moment of impact was heard by the call handler as the 32-year-old motorist was killed instantly in the crash , Buckinghamshire Coroner's Court was told.

Company director Mr Gandhi struggled to control his speeding car as it accelerated before colliding with a lorry parked at the side of the road.

Moments earlier he had told the Thames Valley Police call handler that could not switch off the cruise control or stop his car.

But investigators who examined the wreckage of the Skoda found no evidence of any malfunction.

(Image: PA)

The modern car's engine screaming at high revs as Mr Gandhi frantically pushed the engine ignition button during the ride of terror in the minutes before his death, the inquest heard.

The coroner heard the car was finally brought to a sickening halt when it slewed off the motorway and into the lay-by where the flat-bed lorry was parked.

Emergency services who arrived at the scene soon after the crash found Mr Gandhi's headless body in the wreckage.

Almost the whole car was embedded under the lorry, with only its back wheels emerging and its roof torn off.

The white Skoda hit the huge three-axle HGV with such force that its rear axle was pushed to the front of the trailer.

The car was found with its roof peeled off up to its rear wheels.

In Mr Gandhi's horrific eight-and-a-half-minute 999 call, the inquest in Beaconsfield heard him desperately telling police his car was driving itself as it reached 119mph two seconds before the collision with the stationary 18-tonne lorry.

Senior coroner Cripsin Butler said data analysis from the mangled car's airbag systems failed to provide evidence of the defects that Mr Gandhi, from Harrow, north-west London, was describing to the police call-taker moments before his death.

The inquest heard the popular director of Rehncy Shaheem Chartered Accountants in Greenford, west London, told the man: "My car is not coming out of the cruise control.

"I have just passed the exit of the M40 towards Slough. It is not letting me stop. It shows 70mph but I think I am going much faster than this."

The call handler asked: "Can you slow to a stop by braking? Can you try to control the car's speed using your gears?"

"I am trying. It is not stopping at neutral," replied Mr Gandhi, adding: "I have kept pressing the button but all it makes is a noise.

"My speed is increasing. I think what has happened was I tried to change the mode on the car, because I was on the sports mode. I pressed a button to come onto the normal mode and then it is not allowing me to do anything."

(Image: Google Streetview)

The desperate driver, who the inquest heard was a car enthusiast and a "meticulous" driver, asked the call handler if a lane could be closed ahead of him as he approached a junction with the A40 at Denham, Buckinghamshire.

"It is just gone 77mph right now," he said.

The call taker was then heard asking if he had tried pulling on the handbrake.

Mr Gandhi replied: "I haven't tried it because at this speed I am not sure what will happen. I am in the middle lane right now, there is no traffic. Do you want me to try the hand brake?"

The call handler asked the advice of a colleague but got no response from Mr Gandhi as his Skoda ploughed into the back of the lorry.

The coroner heard the phone connection was lost moments after Mr Gandhi was heard saying: "I am just going to check that, one second..."

The call handler was then heard to say: "Are you still there? Hello, operator, I've lost the line."

A retired firefighter passing on the opposite side of the road heard the Skoda crashing into the lorry at 3am about 600 yards after the M40 merged into the A40.

Robert Hague said: "Just a millisecond after it whooshed past me, I heard a bang."

Mr Hague called 999 and turned around to head to the scene.

He told the inquest: "The car was almost completely embedded in the lorry, the roof of the car was peeled back. The car had knocked the rear axle of the lorry a long way forward into the front axle.

"I felt sure this would have taken the car driver's head off."

(Image: Alamy)

Emma Parrott, the driver of the lorry hit by Mr Gandhi's car, said she knew instantly upon seeing the wreckage that he had died.

She had been sleeping in the Scania 420 R-series HGV near to where her next assignment started at 8.30am.

She told the inquest: "I was thrown forward from my bunk into the back of the driver's seat.

"I realised immediately that anyone in the white car was unlikely to have survived."

Martin Clatworthy, a vehicle data examiner and safety specialist for Volkswagen, who manufacture Skoda cars, investigated the speed, steering, accelerator pedal position and braking of the Skoda in the five seconds before the crash.

The inquest heard that the main car part that recorded the data was destroyed in the collision but it had fed the information to the vehicle's airbag system.

That data revealed the Skoda was travelling at 116mph with the accelerator pedal fully depressed five seconds before the crash.

No braking was recorded but there was evidence of small steering left and right as dashcam footage from Mr Hague's HGV showed the car veering from the middle lane into nearside lane, where the motorway merged with A40.

The Skoda continued to accelerate and hit a top speed of 119mph, with the accelerator pedal pressed two-thirds of the way down, two seconds before the impact.

The car hit the lorry at 94mph, with the accelerator fully off.

Mr Clatworthy said: "There is no indication that there was any error or problem with any of the electronic systems of the car in the five seconds leading up to the collision."

Police collision investigator Andrew Evans said Mr Gandhi's account of his car's positions during his call to police was backed up by video footage taken by Highways England cameras on the M40.

Mr Evans, who said there were no skid marks near the lay-by, added the faults Mr Gandhi described meant the Skoda could only have happened if there had been a simultaneous mechanical and electronic failure.

He said: "We would have to have had an electronic failure earlier and also a mechanical failure of the clutch as well.

"If you are in sixth gear and you need to knock it into neutral at those speeds, you should be able to do that without using the clutch."

He explained that applying the handbrake could have saved Mr Gandhi's life by forcing the car's rear wheels to lock up and turn it around so it skidded backwards.

The coroner ruled out any suggestion that Mr Gandhi, had deliberately killed himself suicide.

Mr Gandhi, who was born in Mumbai, India, and had interested including archery and sky-diving, had recently got back in touch with an ex-girlfriend in India after his marriage ended in February 2015.

A post-mortem examination at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford gave Mr Gandhi's cause of death as multiple injuries.

Toxicology tests found no substances that would have affected Mr Gandhi's driving.

Concluding the inquest, Mr Butler recorded a narrative verdict.

He added: "The vehicle was badly damaged in the collision but subsequent extensive investigations have not revealed any evidence of the faults described by Mr Gandhi."