Toyota hybrid runaway story a hoax?

Michael Fumento writes at Forbes.com that the out of control Toyota Prius story is likely a hoax. Prius owner James Sikes may have pulled off a scam complete with a 911 call to cops when he claimed his car's gas pedal was stuck, and he was accelerating faster than 90 miles an hour.

It got far more dramatic, though. The California Highway Patrol responded and "To get the runaway car to stop, they actually had to put their patrol car in front of the Prius and step on the brakes." During over 20 harrowing minutes, according to NBC's report, Sikes "did everything he could to try to slow down that Prius." Others said, "Radio traffic indicated the driver was unable to turn off the engine or shift the car into neutral."

In fact, almost none of this was true. Virtually every aspect of Sikes's story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he'd tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he'd pull such a stunt, beyond the all-American desire to have 15 minutes of fame (recall the "Balloon Boy Hoax" from October) and the aching need to be perceived as a victim.

The British Army took delivery of fifty Toyota Prius early this month. The cars will be used by the White Fleet, which is the Army’s non-combat corps of administrators and officers. Sources say that they did test the Prius with a 30mm canon on it, but that the recoil crumpled the car’s roof, so the plan to field them as ultra-efficient combat vehicles was scrapped. ;o)

I have had a couple of clunker cars in my life, and every one of them had a gas pedal that sometimes had to be pulled by hand back to idle! Purely a mechanical thing, like you I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the linkage and its lubrication.

What these people are describing is different it seems to me. When the pedal would stick the car would not slow down when you let off the accelerator. But it would not speed up and try to run faster. I would have problems with unintended continuing at the same speed, but never with unintended acceleration!

This is really a tough one. Only a test pilot or maybe a fighter pilot would tend to have the skills to override the pure panic of sudden, unexpected, rapid acceleration in traffic! And maybe a race car driver.

Imagine the confusion of having it happen and not being able to figure out what was going on. I suppose it’s possible some electronic glitch could cause something untoward with the speed, but off hand I can’t think of anything.

My money would be on the floor mat, that happened to me in 1990 in my stick shift Honda Accord. Took me a bit to figure out what had happened and then a second or two to reach down and get the mat out of the way.

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