And how many time had people mixed up the accelerator pedal with the brake? Or an older driver is backing out of a parking space and mows down a bunch of people after mistaking D for the letter R.
...which is why you should always reverse into a parking bay, and move out of it forwards.
Sorry, but that is one of my pet hates!
It wastes time, irritates everybody else who is trying to use the carpark, & is likely to cause "young drivers" to do antisocial things.
Us "older drivers" just sit there & grind our teeth!
But then, UK drivers always do strange things, like parking on the "wrong side " of the road (facing oncoming traffic).
They come to Australia, forget where they are, do that, & get a ticket!
As far as mixing up things, I must admit I
once did that with a Renault R25 "T bar" automatic which I had only owned for a day.
The scale under the "T bar" was different to all the others I had driven, in that all the positions were squashed up at one end.
The R25 tried to go forward, but I always apply the brake before I select reverse "just in case".
Idling engine versus four wheel disc brakes?-----no contest!
But mixing the brake & accelerator pedals? That is something only a very inexperienced driver would do.
Even if we lost half our marbles, us "old farts" have "body memory" -- the pedals are like a body extension.
What did happen quite a bit was with people changing from a manual to an auto car, back in the days when manufacturers liked to put a huge brake pedal on their automatics, to allow drivers to use "left foot braking".
You would see someone indicate a turn then come to a screeching halt.
Normal procedure with a "stick shift" when I learnt, was to change down a gear before turning, so the driver would press what felt like the clutch, while putting their hand down to where the gear stick
should be.----
SCREEECH!!!!