Safety officials investigate runaway Prius incident

All eyes are on Toyota as U.S. federal safety regulators send investigators to San Diego to inspect a Prius that sped out of control, the latest in a string of high-profile safety complaints to plague the automaker.

At roughly 1:30 p.m. Monday 911 dispatchers called on a California Highway Patrol (CHP) unit to assist a driver who said the accelerator pedal on his 2008 Prius vehicle was stuck on Interstate 8.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny ... it jumped and it just stuck there,” the uninjured 61-year-old driver, James Sikes, said at a news conference following the incident.

The car reached speeds of 150 kilometres per hour as CHP officers drove alongside the vehicle using a loudspeaker to shout commands at the Sikes.

Patrollers instructed him to stand on the brake pedal, pull the emergency brake and steer the car toward upward inclined roads. When the vehicle decelerated to approximately 80 kilometres per hour, Sikes cut the engine power and coasted to a gradual stop.

The incident came two weeks after Sikes was turned away by a California dealership for repairs. They said his car wasn’t on the recall list of Prius vehicles even though Sikes received a letter of notice from the company, according to reports. Last November, Toyota voluntarily recalled Prius models on floor mat entrapment concerns.

Sikes’ experience eclipsed Toyota’s live webcast Monday defending itself after ABC News aired a segment featuring a dramatization of a runaway Avalon by Southern Illinois University professor David Gilbert.

Gilbert’s subsequent report to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations claimed faulty electronics are the root cause of the safety woes at the Japanese automaker. In recent months, Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million light cars and trucks citing issues ranging from sticky accelerator pedals to faulty brake systems.

Ongoing tests by Toyota and engineering group Exponent found Gilbert’s demo inconsequential because the car’s electronics were rewired in ways “that are virtually impossible to occur in real-world conditions without visible evidence.”

The Avalon used by Gilbert did not show a Diagnostic Trouble Code after his demonstration but that does not indicate an undetectable safety defect, Toyota said.

Kristen Tabar, general manager of electronics systems, Toyota Technical Center, raised red flags over the artificial nature of the demonstration.

“First, an electrical circuit that has been reengineered and rewired will not behave as it was originally designed and engineered,” she said.

Toyota also said the “manipulations” could be made to vehicles by other manufacturers to achieve the same results.

Gilbert’s study was commissioned by Sean Kane, a paid advocate for trial lawyers involved in litigation against Toyota and other automakers, Toyota said.

“Toyota remains confident in the integrity of the electronic throttle control system in its vehicles and there has been no reliable evidence of any kind to the contrary presented to the media or to Congress,” it said.