Run Away Prius a Hoax

"Outlets"?? No, the NHTSA reports this. Sorry if you don't want to believe?

The car was working fine. No anomolies were found.

Quite the contrary. Up until VERY recently, when facts started surfacing about this charlatan, pretty much everybody, and every news outlet believed all these claims regarding runaway Camry's, lexus and Prii, breaks failing, steering issues on Corollas, etc, etc...

Back in my youth, things like this were thoroughly vetted by the news media before blasting it for public consumption. Back in the day, we use to have real, honest to goodness investigative reporting. Now, we have gotten so lazy as a society, that we need instant news, with no thought to verification. You want fries with that?

Thank God that finally, some "outlets" are pausing, and taking a much closer look surrounding this alleged incident...unfortunately, Toyota has already been damaged.

As my mom use to tell my brothers and I as we would try to spin our way out of a situation by weaving lies - "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...it probably is a duck". This is a HOAX. Period.

 

It's not a hoax. And balloon boy was framed.

 

The boy, or his 'ol man?

 

As a society, we are far to quick to rush to judgement, and believe everything the media reports. More often than not, all that is needed is a simple allegation, and people accept it as fact. No investigation. Somebody said it, so it must have happened.

A good friend of mine was a school teach a number of years back. He was a great teacher with over 20 years of service. But one day a kid in his class made a false allegation. My friend spent the next two years trying to undo the damage and regain his good name that this false allegation had caused (evetually, the kid recanted his story). But the damage was already done, and he left the teaching profession.

It only takes one allegation to destroy a persons life, ot to tarnish a companies reputation. Unfortunately, we live in a society that facts have become an after thought.

 

Facts? What are you some kind of pinko communist? We don't need no stinkin facts.
Toyota is a bunch of thieving criminals, I say hang em, hang em high!

 

You mean none of those stores are real but all made up?

The only supposed fact is that the testing after the incident could not replicate the incident.
If you read past such incidents, you will see that the ones who were able to shut the car off, everything worked just fine afterwards when restarted. This is the issue hindering the answer to fix this random event as it just cannot be replicated, so far.

 

It sounds like you think all the report pedal sticking is operator error for us idiots over 50, get real, I will give you that some are probably operator error but not all, the ECM controls all the throttles function right down to the angle of the gas pedal. This is a problem that Toyota needs to find and admit. Software problems are random and occur under certain conditions.

 

I don't believe Mr. Sikes account of what happened. I just listened to the 911 call and even though the operator repeatedly told him to put the car in Neutral and also told him to press and hold the Start button, he never did either of these. I didn't once hear him say, "I tried to put it in Neutral" or "I held the Start button". I'm not sure what his motivations are but I hope that they are discovered. I was upset at first that the newspapers and web reported this story without any validation. Now I'm happy because I'm hoping that with lots of people looking closely at this guy, they are going to figure out if he created this hoax. I think that Balloon Boy dad saw fame and fortune when he called 911 to lie about his son floating away but the media and the courts got the truth out. Since Sikes was wearing his Corvette club jacket is he upset that so few are buying Corvettes and many are buying Priuses? Is he upset with Union representation among Japanese auto makers? Did he or his friends "short" Toyota stock in the hopes that the price would drop after his stunt? I hope that this guy gets fully investigated by both law enforcement and news reporters. I also hope that he pays the price if he created a damaging hoax.

 

There's a little more to it than not being able to replicate the incident:

Toyota dismisses account of runaway Prius

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Sounds to me like he was deliberately trying to overheat the brakes by alternating back and forth between the brake and the gas pedal.
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I don't blame it all on the age alone, there may be some valid cases. My point was to have some type of process to control the most unreliable part (driver) of the car because there are none now.

Jalopnik made the point well using 20 years of data. Death rate is much higher for age 22-30 but the death due to SUA start to climb after 50 years of age. Of course it does not happen to every 50+ years old driver. We just need a way to revoke the license of those drivers to prevent lifes. That's a strong statement... Maybe they ought to take some type of driver education course. Something has to be done....

 

Well what do you know? IT IS A DUCK!

Hey, I think we all learned something. All the experts here at PC, who I respect and admire, have been saying that the EDC only records the last 5 seconds of data prior to an airbag deployment, and that's it. No other recording of data, save for possibly some trouble codes.

Correct me if I misinterpreted it, but it appeared to me that the Toyota spokesperson said that there is a special computer onboard that records the last 250 discrete "events", in this case, the pressing of either the brake or the accelerator is an "event". As most of you are aware by now if you saw the news conference, Toyota discovered that the final 250 recorded events were that of the driver alternately pressing the brake and the accelerator.

Stop the presses, that's pretty damning evidence if I ever heard of it. It's sort of amusing that Toyota "strongly suggested" that Mr. Sikes lied and committed fraud without actually saying it. They didn't want to offer an opinion on Mr. Sikes' actions or intentions. Not yet, at least.

Basically, Toyota provided the dots and numbered them. They declined to actually connect the dots.

Toyota should go after this guy, but I can understand why they might not, from a public affairs perspective. If they don't, who will? Local authorities, the feds?

In my mind, Mr. Sikes committed the following:
excessive speeding and wreckless driving
intent to submit a false report to the public emergency reporting system (911)
actual false reporting to the public emergency reporting system
conspiracy to damage a private corporation (Toyota) through defamation
actual libel and slander against a private corporation
abuse of emergency responders (CHP)
making false statements to federal authorities (not sure if this one would fly, since I don't think Mr. Sikes was under oath).

I'm sure there are other charges that could be filed, but I'm not a legal expert.

Maybe he was under so much stress from his personal situations that he was having a mental meltdown at the time and truly believed what he stated. Now I'm just waiting for his "insanity" defense. You all know it's coming!

 

Dude you need to get grip on yourself...Your country represents 1-2% of all Prius sales...Recalls were done because there were a significant amount of complaints in Japan and US which account for 80% of Prius sales...Mr. Toyoda took an apology tour to many countries for a reason. If you seem to think that there is a national conspiracy here, which I take a slight for(As should any Canadian), perhaps you're feeling some payback for your country's historical secret conspiracy.

One American Hoax does not represent everyone's motive in this country !

BTW, When I went in for my software recall on my gen III brakes..I found my floor mat in my trunk, days later...Floor mats are NOT part of 2010 Gen III recall...Its all a conspiracy...

 

I'm really disappointed in the CBC (Canada's government-sponsored media) news story tonight on the run-away Prius hoax. Here's a link if you're interested (CBC.ca Video) I hope it works outside of Canada.

They chose their words pretty badly throughout, make it sound like there are still reasonable people who believe the Sikes story, and they leave out any description of what Toyota said about the car- just stating there were inconsistencies and questions.

I guess I can't expect them to accuse Sikes of lying if Toyota won't, but I did expect more than this. I hope you got more satisfaction on your station.



edit: Here's last week's story for comparison: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/ID=1436477225 They even found someone with a run-away Camry Hybrid to comment.

 

Hey, that's very typical of media these days. Selectively report only what they want to enhance their agenda. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes unintentional by force of habit. And if it's not selective reporting, it's really stupid reporters who are good at spelling and grammar and nothing else. They could barely recite their 3rd-grade multiplication table, let alone understand a technical explanation of the HSD and the Prius' safety features. Most reporters these days demonstrate a woeful grasp of logic, statistics, science and engineering. It's really pathetic. It's real torture to read media accounts of anything technical these days.

 

This has not been determined to be a hoax. Toyota did not say it was a hoax, only that they have not been able to replicate the same symptoms. Why is it so difficult to give others, that which we would insist on for ourselves, the benefit of the doubt until there is solid evidence to the contrary. The fact that people are so willing to treat others this way, in my opinion, is worse then what this person is being accused of. This information is pure speculation, including any comparisons with Audi.

 

The video I saw of the CHP officer had him saying: "I saw the brake lights come on..." (sorry, don't know which video it was, I'm playing catch up on this story and have gone through a lot of links!) Not that he saw that they were already on.

That indicates that Sikes was not riding the brakes the whole time.

 

Insisting it's electronic doesn't make it true. No credible evidence of electronic fault has been released by any entity. The nature of software is such that you cannot 100% rule out these errors, but that doesn't mean that they will always occur, or will occur at all.

The ECU does not control the gas pedal in any way. The gas pedal output (2 independent signals) is sent to the ECU. That's the extent of the communication between the two devices.

 

These were diagnostic code entries, not EDR. It looks like the driver's weird acceleration/braking pattern trigger DTC type codes. These shouldn't be confused with any sort of flight data recorder box that monitors and stores normal control inputs.

Tom

 

I would have to say that this is pretty solid evidence. Perhaps not yet enough for a court of law, but enough to be very, very suspicious. My scam-O-meter if fully off the scale.

Tom

 

Like we did'nt see this one coming about 12 minutes after I saw the "Breaking News"

Hope CHP's at least give him a speeding ticket. It's the least he deserves!!!