The Woe is Toyota report: Runaway Prius on the San Diego Freeway

[marmar]

March 8, 2010, 10:28 p.m. EST ·

Runaway Toyota Prius reported in California
Gas pedal said to have stuck, though Prius not covered in accelerator recall

By MarketWatch


LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Police in San Diego, Calif., had to assist a runaway Toyota Prius when its gas pedal stuck on a freeway Monday afternoon, according to reports.

California Highway Patrol officers responded to an emergency 911 mobile-phone call from the motorist, who was traveling as fast as 94 miles an hour, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

The police instructed the driver to use his regular and emergency brakes, and once the car had slowed to 50 mph, he cut the engine and coasted to a stop.

The Prius has been one of a number of Toyota models subject to a series of massive recalls by the Japanese auto maker.

But while some other Toyota vehicles have been recalled for sticking accelerator pedals, the Prius has not -- instead, the 2010 Prius may suffer from braking-system issues, while the 2004-2009 Prius models are subject to a recall due to floor mats that can trap the gas pedal. See Toyota Web-site pages on floor-mat recall and sticking gas-pedal recall. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/runaway-toyota-prius-reported-in-california-2010-03-08?dist=beforebell

[Not Me]

1. I intended to buy one this Spring

My car is seven years old and runs great, but the mileage is about half of a Prius. I have a 22 mile commute each way to work, and am determined that my next car get improved mileage. But I don't believe that the 'fix' that they have in place is the root of the problem...simply window dressing.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Just think..it may reduce your travel time.

Color me an optimist.....:evilgrin:

[Ian David]

2. A similar thing happened to my 1958 Plymouth Fury.

But I was rescued by these guys...

[MindPilot]

3. Another one?! Here's a much more complete report.

EL CAJON — James Sikes was on his way home to Jacumba yesterday afternoon, driving his blue Toyota Prius on a winding stretch of Interstate 8, when he encountered a car that was going a little too slow. Sikes hit the accelerator, totally unprepared for what happened next.

“It did something kind of funny,” said Sikes, 61. “It just stuck there.”

For about 30 hair-raising miles beginning near Lake Jennings Park Road near Flinn Springs, Sikes tried frantically to slow down the 2008 hybrid. At one point the speedometer hit 94 mph, said Sikes, who called 911.

A CHP officer was dispatched and while driving alongside, coached Sikes over a loudspeaker on how to get control of the car, a process that involved the brakes, the emergency brake and, when the speed came down some, turning off the ignition.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/mar/08/chp-helps-stop-runaway-prius/

[Tesha]

4. I've decided that a lot of drivers are completely incompetent at operating their cars.

For thirty miles he was unable to control his car. Assuming
he was travelling at ninety MPH for the entire time, that means
he was unable to turn the car off for twenty minutes.

Does anyone actually believe that the electronic controls in
this car are so screwed up that there's no way, NONE
WHATSOEVER, to shut off the engine in this car? And
at the same time, the electronic controls continue to be sane
enough to operate the electronic fuel injection, spark, and
the Prius's hybrid system?

Everyone: No matter kind of car you drive, learn how to
shut off the engine in emergency circumstances! Practice
it a few times in a big empty parking lot! And don't drive
on the road again until you've done so!

We really are becoming Idiocracy.

Tesha

[MindPilot]

7. I thought that too -- this one really smells fishy

He had the wherewithal to get the phone out, dial a number and carry on conversation--an act so detrimental to one's control of a vehicle that it has been equated to drunk driving--yet he couldn't get it in neutral and turn the key off?! I can see not reacting in the second and a half it takes for a car to charge across the intersection, but this guy had--like you say--TWENTY minutes to fix the problem. I ain't buying it.

This one makes me wonder if he...ummm...maybe owes more on that car than it's worth?

[Tesha]

9. Well, it's a Prius and I can't remember if they even have a "neutral" position...

...on the direction selection lever, so I'll cut the guy
slack that far. But I'm *CERTAIN* there's a way to
kill the Hybrid Synergy Drive, and even if it only killed
the internal combustion engine, the NiMH battery
would have run quite flat before he'd made his thirty
miles at ninety MPH; the *BEST* of the "plug-in hybrid"
modifications can't achieve *THAT* trick and they have
hugely-larger add-on batteries!

Tesha

[renie408]

11. Something that has been bothering me this whole time

You sound like you know a lot about cars and I have to admit that I know that you push the vertical pedal to go forward and the horizontal one to stop, so I have a question...

Why, if the pedal is just 'stuck', do the cars get going so fast? Wouldn't they go just as fast as you were going when they decided to 'stick'? I mean, 'stuck' means 'not moving', right? This has confused me all along. Sorry if it is a seriously stupid question. I asked my husband and he basically said that he hasn't understood ANYTHING about how cars work for the past twenty years even though he pretty much built his own first car from the tires up.

[Tesha]

12. That's actually a very good question!

I *THINK* the answer lies in the fact that there's loads of force available
(from your foot) to press a sticky pedal down, but there's only a little
force available from the return spring to bring it back up again. So any
slight motion by your foot tends to depress the pedal further, and if
it's sticking, it doesn't have any ability to rise up again.

I also suspect it's very human that if you don't get the response you
expect from the pedal, you're likely to try and "cycle" it by pressing
it down and letting it release, only in this case, it doesn't release
and ends up stuck at the bottom of its travel, fully depressed.

I wonder how many people have tried to pick the pedal back up
again with the toe of their foot? I also have no experience with
a Toyota gas pedal so I don't know if it's "double hinged" or
not (which might make it harder to pull back up with your toe).

I also expect it's very hard, ex-post-facto, for people to be able
to describe, precisely and accurately, exactly what happened and
exactly what they did about it. Certainly the Audi "sudden acceleration"
incidents exposed this: people swore they were pressing the brake
pedal but if you looked at their cars after the crash, the force of
their foot on *THE GAS PEDAL* driven by their bodies during the
impact, had destroyed the gas pedal, absolutely flattening it!

Tesha

[Fumesucker]

5. Umm....

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept

Our focus here is not to question the validity of the “floor-mat” claims (some investigators have suggested that a faulty drive-by-wire system is to blame) but to present methods for coping with this heart-stopping situation and to investigate a Toyota’s relative performance during such an event. For our tests, we rounded up a disparate bunch: a V-6 Camry (a recalled vehicle), an Infiniti G37 convertible, and a hugely powerful 540-hp Roush Stage 3 Mustang.

Our tests were conducted at highway speeds, as the incident with the Lexus ES350 happened on an expressway, and in the lowest possible gear, as that's the worst-case scenario. Here is how to deal with a runaway car:

Hit the Brakes

Certainly the most natural reaction to a stuck-throttle emergency is to stomp on the brake pedal, possibly with both feet. And despite dramatic horsepower increases since C/D’s 1987 unintended-acceleration test of an Audi 5000, brakes by and large can still overpower and rein in an engine roaring under full throttle. With the Camry’s throttle pinned while going 70 mph, the brakes easily overcame all 268 horsepower straining against them and stopped the car in 190 feet—that’s a foot shorter than the performance of a Ford Taurus without any gas-pedal problems and just 16 feet longer than with the Camry’s throttle closed. From 100 mph, the stopping-distance differential was 88 feet—noticeable to be sure, but the car still slowed enthusiastically enough to impart a feeling of confidence. We also tried one go-for-broke run at 120 mph, and, even then, the car quickly decelerated to about 10 mph before the brakes got excessively hot and the car refused to decelerate any further. So even in the most extreme case, it should be possible to get a car’s speed down to a point where a resulting accident should be a low-speed and relatively minor event.

<snip>

We included the powerful Roush Mustang to test—in the extreme—the theory that “brakes are stronger than the engine.” From 70 mph, the Roush’s brakes were still resolutely king even though a pinned throttle added 80 feet to its stopping distance. However, from 100 mph, it wasn’t clear from behind the wheel that the Mustang was going to stop. But after 903 feet—almost three times longer than normal—the 540-hp supercharged Roush finally did succumb, chugging to a stop in a puff of brake smoke.

[MindPilot]

8. good info...thanks for that

The guys at C/D do an excellent job of cutting through the BS.

[trof]

6. This was a 2008 Prius, but...

That wasn't mentioned on any TV news I saw this morning, and it's a very important piece of information.
I had to really dig on the web to find out.
I have a 2008 Prius that we've been driving for 2 1/2 years.
Never a problem, but now?
I'm calling the dealer this a.m.