Posted on 03/09/2010 8:43:14 AM PST by wrrock
Every single news agency has turned their attention to a car crash in California involving a Toyota Prius. The driver claimed the accelerator got stuck on a California freeway and Patrol offers had to slow them down. It's a story that makes an instant celebrity, and the media loves to hype it.
However:
Anyone that has driven a Prius knows that such a car has not the power to 'JUMP' forward no matter how quick and hard you press the gas pedal. Furthermore, the ability to accelerate in a Prius is so modest, not even the most paranoid driver would be startled by its speeding up.
Secondly, this driver not only had time to call the police after it "ran out of control" he managed to drive the car for another 20 minutes until the police showed up. How out of control could the car have been if he was driving on a busy highway for nearly half an hour?
Finally, contrary to the news report shown below, the CHP officer never helped the Prius slow down. The official CHP report says the officer's car never came in contact with the Prius until the two cars were stopped on the side of the road. So in other words, the driver of the Prius eventually came to a stop all by himself.
Once the car slowed to around 50 mph, Sikes turned off the car's engine and it rolled to a stop with the trooper's car in front of it. The two cars did not touch, police said.
SEE RUNAWAY MEDIA EXAMPLES...
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Agreed.
Sift to Neutral.
Why don’t people just take their car out of gear during unexpected acceleration?
Links please.
The article is shaded with bias.
The author claims the above, but omits some facts.
A Prius is a hybrid...it has a gas engine and a battery system for propulsion. If the computer decides to go to full power at once, it would direct full power from the batteries to the drive system. Electric vehicles can create a 'jump' effect because torque is immediate.
Toyota has a real problem on its hands.
He was on all the news programs this morning. I just don’t remember his name, but it would be easy to find.
Get a lottery ticket you got lucky.
toyota.com
That in itself says something. The media ignore anything they disapprove of. But they've all been all over Toyota's case. There are hundreds of road mishaps every day, but they have jumped on this one big time.
Obviously they have gotten their orders from the White House.
Who decided to put him on the Today Show? Would they do this if he had been driving a Government Motors car?
“Oh, I did not know that. I guess if there is no kill switch or something like that, one is screwed if the car accelerates like that.
On a Prius, you gotta do Ctrl-Alt-Delete, then bring up the Task Manager to kill the process... :0)
Yes, I’m kidding!”
That’s funny I don’t care who you are! :)
I saw the guy interviewed on TV, and he never said he tried shifting to neutral. In a Prius, that won’t even really hurt the engine, since the engine is run by the computer, not directly in response to the pedal. In neutral the computer will control the engine revolutions.
Once in neutral, the brakes would have easily stopped the car, and he could have turned it off.
On the other hand, I have floored my Prius and held the brakes, and the brakes will stop the car. What I haven’t done is seen if the brakes can do so when the car is going 90 mph — my guess is at that speed, the brakes heat up too much and lose their effectiveness before you are stopped.
I’m still wondering why this particular car went out of control. According to the interview, the guy had just gotten his car back from Toyota, who had told him he wasn’t covered by the recall. If true, that will be disturbing to them. Toyota was sending someone out to work on the car, so maybe they’ll have some information — the car hasn’t been moved since it stopped, so hopefully the data module has information about the acceleration itself.
I wouldn’t buy a Toyota now and I have owned two Camrys and my husband owned a Toyota Tacoma. They succeeded in scaring me. There obviously is a problem and Toyota doesn’t seem to know what it is. Apparently it isn’t the floor mats as they initially said.
In the Prius, it’s a button, and in circumstances where they don’t expect you to turn off the car, you have to hold the button for a few seconds. Also, this story suggests you have to be below 50mph to turn off the car. I’m not brave enough to try turning off my car over 50mph to test the theory.
I’m also not brave enough to hit the park button while moving, but I’ve been told it is ignored. I have put the car in neutral, but not at 90mph.
Top speed for a Prius is about 101 mph — the electric motor won’t turn any faster than that. The guy said he was up to 94 mph. I’ve had my prius over 90mph once or twice.
And a Prius CAN accelerate pretty quickly, not like a sports car but not so sluggish that it can’t scare you if you aren’t expecting it.
Generic White Male. They interviewed him on TV last night.
“The media are the “Government Motors” Car Company’s Propoganda Ministry.”
Correct!
The power steering and power brakes are certainly of some concern. THe big problem though is that if you turn the car off, it might lock the steering column.
This entire story is such nonsense! Why don’t these people shift into neutral? It is so very obvious! I had an Audi 5000 in 1980 that did this to me twice. I shifted into neutral and the engine was racing. It was very scary. I took it to the dealer and they fixed it. A few months later out came a slew of stories about the accelerator sticking. Audi insisted to the end that the drivers were pressing the wrong pedal...
Back to Toyota, a woman from Eagle was driving down to Denver and had her accelerator stick. She was going 90 on I-70. She got off the highway and crashed the car into a group of trees to stop it. Hello!!? She could have been killed and all she had to do was put it in neutral. Unbelievable!
Hussein’s cult.
Uh.. It's pretty clear it's being instigated by TOYOTA OWNERS or their SURVIVING RELATIVES.
Where did you get your info? Not snarky, just interested.
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