There actually was one posted that could get you into an accident that would be no fault of your own, Someone posted that their 6spd was popping out of 1st gear while accelerating from a stop.

Now if you were taking off at a light and had someone do the same very closely behind you, and your car suddenly decelerated because it popped out of first. One would assume that a driver behind you could hit you if he/she didn't react in time.

Now if that happened, I surely would be supporting you wholeheartedly.

And no, I don't own DC stock and I'm not a defense atty. I agree with you that they are amiss for not securing the shifter properly and to be honest with you, had you been driving down the road in traffic and suddenly while shifting, the **** popped off, distracted you, made you miss a shift resulting in an accident, I would probably say you have a valid point.

But to me (in my humble opion) the facts surrounding your mishap seem to be 90% driver error... (I thought it was a woman driving the car, a neighbor and you were helping her get info from this forum, now if I read correctly, you were driving ?) Anyway, neither here, nor there.

It harkens back to the 80's when there was a rash of lawsuits against one of the major US automakers claiming both sudden acceleration and automatic transmissions suddenly popping into drive by themselves. Turned out that nearly all cases were determined to be driver error, ie. stepping on the gas instead of the brake and or not engaging the shift lever completely into park.

I will be honest with you, when I first took delivery of the Crossfire,, it took me a couple of weeks to get used to the sensitivity of the accellerator pedal when I was in 1st-2nd and reverse. This is a torquey little car and the slightest push on the accelerator in low gears wil make it jump like a rabbit !!!

So I can see where you could have gotten into trouble if the car was fully in gear and you accidently pushed the accelerator instead of the brake and clutch... It probably would have lunged backwards because the reverse gear is so low...

But the key point here is "Instead of pushing the clutch and break". I know I would be embarrassed to admit that too. And I would be pissed as hell if I were in your shoes, but I would lick my wounds, pay the $500 deductable on my insurance, *****-out the Chrysler Dealer for not prepping the car properly and let my insurance company fight with whomever they want, to recoup their losses...

Lastly, I have searched the TSB's and this sight as well, and the only gear shift **** issue I have run across was how to get it off, to change it... 2300 members loosely equates to 10% of the cars sold. And to compare your mercedes to the crossfire is good since they are both manufactured and assembled in Germany, incase you weren't aware...

I'm still confused as to who's car it is and who was driving, you, or your female neighbor ???