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Report Fails to Shed Light on Runaway Prius in California

March 18, 2010
2 min to read


EL CAJON, Calif. - A California Highway Patrol officer responding to a report of a runway Toyota Prius last week arrived to find a Border Patrol agent near the driver with emergency lights on. The Border Patrol presence raises the prospect that there were other witnesses. It is one of the few new details in a report released Wednesday by the CHP that is consistent with what the CHP and the driver, James Sikes, have previously said, The Detroit News reported. But the seven-page CHP report sheds no new light on wildly divergent explanations from Toyota Motor Corp. and Sikes about what happened when the driver called 911 on March 8 to report that his gas pedal was stuck on a California freeway, sending him to speeds topping 90 mph. Toyota has dismissed Sikes' account, saying its tests show he pressed the gas and brakes rapidly 250 times, the maximum amount of data that the car's self-diagnostic system captures. The report revisits the harrowing ride that Sikes and CHP Officer Todd Neibert described to reporters shortly after the episode on Interstate 8, east of San Diego. Neibert wrote that he approached the Prius from behind to find a Border Patrol agent in an unmarked Chevrolet Tahoe with emergency lights illuminated from the rear window. "It was staying ahead of us and it was later determined that the agent driving the Chevrolet Tahoe was aware of the situation," Neibert wrote. The Prius brake lights were on "for a period of time and would turn off, indicating the driver was possibly pumping the brakes," Neibert wrote. "I was within 1/4 mile of the vehicle and could smell the heated brakes, which indicated they had been used extensively." Neibert told Sikes to shift to neutral but the driver shook his head from side to side, indicating to the officer that it didn't work or he couldn't do it. Sikes later told reporters he didn't shift to neutral because he worried he might go into reverse or flip.

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