A driver who was trapped in a car travelling at 125mph with a jammed accelerator and no brakes said: ‘It was as if my life was flashing before me’.

Disabled Frank Lecerf, 36, had been driving to a local hypermarket when his specially-adapted Renault Laguna developed the nightmare fault.

Suddenly the car began accelerating on its own as he drove sedately along a 60mph dual carriageway close to his home in Pont-de-Metz, near Amiens, in northern France. Without any pressure on the accelerator at all, the Laguna started to increase in speed, and Mr Lecerf could do nothing about it. Eventually, the car reached a speed of 125 mph — and then remained stuck there. For about an hour.

‘I just wanted it to stop,’ he said, explaining how he called the police, who put him through to a Renault engineer who tried to guide him to a stop, but failed. The trail of cars sped across France for 150 miles – miraculously avoiding a serious accident – like a scene from the Hollywood blockbuster Speed.

The car kept going across the border into Belgium before finally running out of petrol and plunged into a ditch at Alveringem.

His lawyer said he would file a legal complaint over ‘endangerment of a person’s life’.