Posted on 03/23/2010 4:55:09 PM PDT by Kaslin
For three days, James Sikes held America's highest honor: victim. The nation had been transfixed by his almost half-hour-long 94-mph horror ride in his runaway Toyota Prius. He burned his brakes right down to the metal, unable to even slow the vehicle. Only his prescience in calling 911, followed by a highway patrol officer providing assistance, saved his life.
Then my article "Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax" at Forbes.com brought it crashing down. But lest you get false impressions from that title, the real hoaxter wasn't Jim Sikes, but the media. Red flags about his story were popping up from the start. Yet the entire Fourth Estate systematically ignored them. Here were some of the biggest.
1. After Sikes stopped, the assisting officer observed that the accelerator was in the proper position. Why would stopping make it pop back up? It was probably gremlins; still, somebody should have asked Sikes about it. Nobody did.
2. Sikes repeatedly says he stood on the brakes but couldn't even slow the vehicle. Yet Car and Driver had recently tested three cars at full throttle at 100 mph and brought them all to a full stop, including a 540-horsepower Mustang. The 2008 Prius only has 110 anemic ponies under the hood. (After my story broke, a leaked congressional memo revealed that tests on Sikes' car showed that, as they were designed to do, when the brakes on Sikes' car were applied, the engine automatically slowed.)
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
www.toyotasimulator.com
LMAO !
Just like the “balloon boy” hoax, it stunk from the moment it started.
The government will only back off Toyota when their factories become unionized.
Yeah, but I don’t blame Toyota if they shut the factories down here and move somewhere else
How long before this guy is given a job by Obama to help sell the bill he just signed?
His orchestration neatly fit a conceptual template, so the media marketed the tidy little product.
Instead of QUESTIONING, the media now sees it’s job as providing data that undergird people’s established belief system —this makes the world comfortable and familiar to the audience. In this way, they have to think and worry less.
That’s why products are marketed by celebrities —this way the seem familiar already, and the buyer is spared the “trouble” of thinking.
In this way, Obama is great, and Rush is rude, hates people, and will be disgustingly fat in perpetuity.
Class dismissed.
I have experienced a real runaway car, accelerator pedal caught in the floor mat, but it was only a second or two before I killed the ignition.
It is how competition works when the Government is one of the competitors.
California is filled with shyster grifters like Sikes. They don't have the intellectual skills to afford to live here, but their lack of morals makes up for that - they play everyone for sympathy, freebies, whatever.
I call them the Beach Bolsheviks.
As in, "somebody's gotta subsidize me to live on the beach!"
Toyota builds great vehicles. Occasionally they have problems.
So do all the other guys.
Right now they are running 0% APR offers. It's a great time to buy a Toyota.
Disclaimer: I don't own a toyota, or work for them. Just see a scam when it's obvious. And Toyota is definitely being scammed.
Jerks like Sikes are what turned this state into the grubby craphole it is right now, instead of the Golden State that it was.
American journalism is a complete joke. They are nothing but shills and cheerleaders for the looney left. They firmly believe that there mission on Earth requires that they lie to advance the leftist cause. In this case, the cause is a conspiracy between the Obama Administration and the UAW to destroy non-union Toyota. This is a cause that stikes to the very heart of American Journalism. They will gladly do their bit.
Behavior like this is why the press have become a laughingstock.
BTTT
Can the media whores follow Obama’s BC scam with the same zeal???
“I’ve not been following this story closely but on my trip the past couple of days I rented a VW “bug.” (Didn’t like it, but it was an opportunity to try it.) Was very startled a couple of times when the car seemed to lurch forward on me, but once I’d unintenionally let off the brake and the other somehow got my foot on both pedals (I usually drive a stick but those are hard to rent in North America, if you even can).
I have experienced a real runaway car, accelerator pedal caught in the floor mat, but it was only a second or two before I killed the ignition.”
We all remember the whole “unintended acceleration” problem with Audis in the 1980’s, right? You might also recall that it was eventually chalked up to driver error. I owned an ‘82 Audi Coupe for a few years. The throttle and brake pedals are close enough that you can easily hit both with one foot.
My experience with a “sticky” throttle is limited to my ‘91 Miata. Over time, the accelerator can cut a hole in the carpet and hang up in that hole. I “fixed” this by enlarging the hole. :)
And the black box said he hit the gas and the brakes 250 times in the last recording.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/22/business/main6323252.shtml
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