ShareThisThe head-on collision was devastating, midday Monday, at the intersection of California's Interstate 8 and the information highway.
Miraculously, there appeared to be only one fatality -- the mind-bogglingly impervious arrogance and intransigence of the Toyota car family. Yet, frankly, it is far from certain that the victim will have the decency to remain dead.
Here's how it happened:
-- VEHICLE 1: At 10 a.m. Monday, at their North American headquarters in Torrance, Calif., Toyota execs ventured out on the information highway. "An elaborate news conference," The Washington Post called Toyota's Web cast, "aimed at refuting research that suggests electronics may be at the heart of runaway acceleration problems that have led the automaker to recall more than 6 million vehicles."
-- VEHICLE 2: At 1:30 p.m., just an hour down the road, realtor James Sikes got into his blue 2008 Toyota Prius and headed along the twisting Interstate 8, toward his home in Jacumba, Calif. He stepped on the gas to pass a slow car. The accelerator stuck, Sikes said. His Prius raced to 94 miles per hour. "It just stuck there," said Sikes. "...It just kept speeding up."
Back at Toyota, execs had choreographed a high-tech performance aimed at discrediting an experiment that Southern Illinois University engineering professor David Gilbert had shared with Congress and ABC News, showing Toyota's runaway acceleration problems could be caused by electrical malfunction. "Completely unrealistic," said Toyota spokesperson Mike Michaels.
Completely terrifying was the reality Sikes was trapped in on I-8 as reporters were writing up the news of Toyota's tale. Steering frantically with one hand, Sikes reached down to pull up the gas pedal -- it wouldn't budge. Sikes said no floor mat was trapping it. The brake wouldn't stop the car. Toyota hadn't used technology available on other cars where pressing the brake automatically disengages the gas pedal.
Toyota's experts had just explained that something like Sikes' midday nightmare couldn't happen because of electronic malfunction. "I know, from the evidence of our test results, that there is nothing pointing to sudden acceleration caused from the electronics," Kristen Tabar, a Toyota general manager of electronics systems, assured in a website video. "...We do have multiple redundant fail-safes in the system."
That same day, all those fail-safes failed Sikes. One explanation, offered by Professor Gilbert: A short-circuit could occur when a driver pressed the gas pedal. Gilbert created a short-circuit situation by tapping some Toyota engine wires and applying a small voltage. It caused a sudden acceleration undetected by engine computers; no error message was sent to turn off the engine.
Back at Toyota, refuting the professor raced to the edge of ridicule. Toyota brought in competitors' cars and engineers showed Gilbert's rewiring produced similar problems on them. (Never mind this didn't disprove that a short-circuit could trigger sudden acceleration.) Corporate glee was full throttle; an outside engineer, hired by Toyota, quipped: "We could rewire this building and cause it to go into flames."
Toyota's mirth never caught up with Sikes' runaway Prius -- but luckily, a California Highway Patrol car did. Officer Todd Niebert told Sikes over the loudspeaker to engage the brake and emergency brake simultaneously. Sikes literally stood on the brake, just as they reached an uphill stretch. The Prius slowed, the patrol car got in front. Bumper-to-bumper, all braked to a stop. Ahead was a steep downhill. Sikes' Prius could not have survived it going 90.
Despite reports of 3,000 incidents of unintended Toyota acceleration since 1999 -- 151 in Priuses -- Toyota infamously maintained it has never seen a car with evidence of an electrical problem. Perhaps until now.
No sooner had their exculpatory media extravaganza ended, than Toyota learned of Sikes' unpleasantness. Toyota dispatched engineers to see -- firsthand, at last -- evidence that life for Toyota customers can suddenly become hell-on-wheels.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
COLUMN
Not a very impartial article.
Not a very impartial article. And why has the writer done nothing to confirm Sikes' story? Which frankly looks like bs to me.
And no, the police car and the Prius were never in contact at all. Sikes claims he actually stopped by using the parking brake and then turning off the motor as the car slowed. And for some bizarre reason he ignored the 911 operators repeated instruction to just shift it into neutral.
The guys bankrupt and owes $21k on the car. Easy way to get out of a lease.
Schram should stick to political analysis. Michael Fumento did a better job with this story.
terrible reporting
This article exploits the layman's lack of knowledge of car electronics to make it seem like malfunctions (such as a short) could cause this phenomenot. The problem with your claims is you don't know anything about Prius'acceleration characteristics. for starters, Prius' 50-80 mph time is quite slow, giving even the most inept driver ample time to deal with sudden unintended acceleration. I'm not talking a turbocharged Shelby Mustang here... this is a grandma-car!. It takes at least 15 seconds! so assuming the actual claim is accurate (the prius did suffer genuine sudden unintended acceleration), the user has plenty of time to remedy the problem (15 seconds in a car is enough time to react, if its not, you shouldn't even be driving).
secondly, a short circuit leaves evidence: overloaded shorts will leave some evidence, even at the microscopic level, yet preliminary investigations have already shown no such evidence exists...
have you ever thought to critically analyze the claims of Jim Sikes? it doesn't seem like you did.
very irresponsible and uncritical reporting sir.
Runaway Prius
Anyone living in California should know that you can't drive a car for 23 minutes at 80 MPH without hitting something. Have you now heard the the police recording of the conversation? Sikes was obviously faking the whole thing. He refused to put it in neutral or to turn the car off because he was "afraid of being rear ended". Not much adds up in Sike's story, but this reporter didn't feel any actual investigation was necessary. No journalistic integrity whatsoever.
"That same day, all those
"That same day, all those fail-safes failed Sikes. One explanation, offered by Professor Gilbert: A short-circuit could occur when a driver pressed the gas pedal. Gilbert created a short-circuit situation by tapping some Toyota engine wires and applying a small voltage. It caused a sudden acceleration undetected by engine computers; no error message was sent to turn off the engine."
Uh, no.
Actually he cut the wire to open the circuit, installed a specific resistor, and then applied voltage to it.
In the real world that scenario is very very unlikely.
Heavy equipment has been using electronic throttle and other controls for years, I troubleshoot and repair those system and I've never seen or heard of an engine revving up accidentally or a electronically controlled hydraulic system moving on it's own or an electronically shifted transmission running amok.
We have trucks and other equipment with over 80,000 hours on them and they don't rev up and drive around on their own.
While I am not familiar with Toyota's version of this, these systems are designed to fail to a safe condition. A broken wire returns the engine to idle, a short or abnormal voltage or current produces an error code.
And isn't it odd that the evil monkey living in the Toyota engine Electronic Control Module knows how old the driver is?
These incidents almost always involve elderly drivers.
I guess since AGW has bitten the dust the media has to hype something....
Brakes! brakes!
When Audi had this problem twenty years ago, a dealer in the midwest effectively debunked the issue. He offered a million dollars to anyone who could make an Audi accelerate. They were free to press on the gas, replace chips, rewire the engine: anything they wanted to do so long as they didn't damage the brakes the dealer was able to sit in the driver's seat with his foot firmly on the brake.
No-one ever collected.
Brakes
Toyota has been involved with a series of car recall regarding the pedal assemblies and brakes of their cars. Now Toyota Prius is dealing with this problem. Toyota should solve this issue as soon as possible. Its really hurting their reputation as a car manufacturer.