BizNomic

If it’s Toyota’s reputation that you’re talking about, there surely is a faulty brake pedal here. Not only is it skidding, but also going totally out of control. In the latest incident, Toyota Motors and federal investigators are now looking into a dramatic incident that took place on California Highway. Ironically this incident occurred only hours after Toyota completed a presentation intended to demonstrate that the electronics in its cars couldn’t be the cause of unwanted acceleration.

Prius gone wild ?

A 61 year old Californian, Mr. Sikes called 911 for help on Monday and said his blue 2008 Toyota Prius sped up uncontrollably to 90 miles an hour on Interstate 8 near San Diego. A California Highway Patrolman then helped him slow the car and bring it to a stop. As the panic spread, videos flooded the Internet as TV shows featured the news. Understandably the incident sparked off a series of negative headlines about the company and its products.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny … it jumped and it just stuck there,” Mr. Sikes said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press. “I was trying the brakes … it wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t doing anything and it just kept speeding up,” Mr. Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning.

After calling 911, Mr. Sikes said his Prius hit speeds of up to 94 mph for about 20 minutes before a highway patrolman pulled up next to him and offered suggestions over a loudspeaker on how to stop the car, Officer Brian Pennings said in a telephone interview. When neither worked, he was guided to use both the brake and the parking brakes together simultaneously, which slowed the car to around 50 mph, eventually bringing the vehicle to a stop. Mr. Sikes told police that while the car was moving he reached down to try to grab the gas pedal and saw the floor mat wasn’t in the way. The police did a visual inspection and saw the mat was in place and the pedal wasn’t trapped, Officer Pennings said. An ambulance was called later as the incident left Mr Sikes clearly traumatized. The vehicle was held by the California Highway Patrol overnight and later taken to a Toyota dealer in El Cajon, Calif. It will be subject to a recall by the company.

In a separate incident today, a New York City driver, a 56 year old woman reported that her car accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into a stone wall. The car accelerated while she was exiting her driveway and lost control of the car. Luckily there were no collisions with the traffic as the car crossed a street. Police kept the vehicle for investigation. Toyota said it’s not yet known whether the company will also investigate.

Earlier, Toyota had announced a recall of almost six million vehicles in the U.S. and some 8 million world-wide to fix floor mats and gas pedals that can get stuck, causing unwanted acceleration. It announced that Prius’ from 2004 and 2009 model years (approximately 745,000 cars) would be covered by the recall, and drivers should remove their mats to prevent sudden acceleration. Since the company hasn’t yet developed a remedy for the problem, the recall hasn’t been enacted, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Regulators have linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by accelerator problems. There have been more than 60 reports of sudden acceleration in cars that have been fixed under the recall.

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