James Sikes Runaway Prius Report Dismissed By Toyota
March 17, 2010 by Jerry Reth · Leave a Comment
James Sikes Runaway Prius Report Dismissed By Toyota – Toyota Motor Corp. has been quiet regarding claims by a California motorist that his pedal stuck while he was driving his 2008 Prius down a popular California highway. This has been an ongoing problem for the Toyota company, and has caused them to recall millions of their vehicles across various brands and years in recent months. Toyota says that during their recent testing they were not able to replicate the results of the incident described by the motorist named James Sikes as he drove down the freeway in California. They also said that they have not seen any test results that show that the 2008 Prius gas pedals have been sticking at all.
Toyota responded by saying that their internal car data showed that Mr. Sykes had rapidly hit both the break and the gas. He did this over 250 times during the time that the gas pedal was supposedly stuck. This is different from the version of the events that Sykes gave, and were later confirmed by a police officer who was helping Sykes get the situation under control at the time of the incident. He had claimed that he had slammed the brakes, even lifting his rear end off of the seat to apply more pressure to the break in hopes of slowing down the rapidly moving vehicle.
Toyota claims that Sykes had hit the gas pedal lightly, which would not have caused the override system to shut off the power to the vehicle. The vehicle is designed to cut off once the break has been pushed completely in for a specified amount of time. The motorist who was involved in the incident has refused to comment on the matter and will likely save his comments for the courtroom. However, Toyota did not claim that the man had completely made up his account of the events, or that it was a hoax.
