Oh I've seen cases like this before- and I did see the article, but I honestly wouldn't know. He did appear to say that he wasn't really intending to by the car ^_^; but I've done similar things (not like that, we didn't have teh internetz back then) on computers before.
It wouldn't be unlike how a so-called genius discovers a new law or an old school alchemist discovered a new element...by accident. But to draw upon a more relevant example, I recall a story of a friend who formatted his father's work computer HDD because he liked to see the pretty red and green lights flashing while the computer systematically erased every last part of his father's data. Personally, I remember trying to operate a computer on a 'monkey see monkey do' basis before I could read, write or comprehend language, with similar results (no I didn't kill any computers though).