Twice in several months I have had a very scary occurrence when accelerating to pass or merge on the highway, the accelerator stuck. In both cases I could feel that the pedal was stuck down and I could not "kick" it back to normal. Oddly, only when I put the car in neutral out of desperation did it release after a momentary spike in RPMs. Ordinarily I would think that this is a mechanical issue somewhere in the throttle linkage but it almost felt as if the cruise control was on, which it was not. If it was purely mechanical why would shifting to neutral release the pedal?

The car is a 1995 850 turbo wagon.

Any ideas about what my problem could be?

Thanks.