James Sikes was having an uneventful drive home along a San Diego highway when things became a little more eventful. He pushed down the accelerator pedal of his 2008 Toyota Prius to overtake another car; then “it did something kind of funny”, he said later.
What it did was to speed up. Then speed up some more. Within minutes, Sikes was hurtling down the motorway at up to 150km/h, weaving past cars and lorries as he went.
“It jumped and it just stuck there,” Sikes said later of the accelerator pedal. “As it was going, I was trying the brakes … It wasn’t stopping.”
First he stood on the brakes with all his might, but the car just kept on speeding up. Then he tried driving with his left hand and leaning down with his right to pull the accelerator up and adjust the floor mat, which has caused problems in other Toyota models.
“I stayed on the brakes as long as I could, until finally they started smelling really bad,” he said.
Sikes called 911 and a police car was dispatched to ride alongside him. “I could tell he was physically trying to brake and the vehicle was barely slowing down,” said patrol officer Todd Neibert. “And then I noticed it would accelerate again and we were up to 90m/ph (150km/h).”
Neibert knew they had trouble ahead: they were approaching a steep downhill stretch that could be treacherous at such speeds.
Using his loudspeaker, the officer took Sikes through an emergency braking procedure that slowed the Prius down to about 80km/h, allowing the driver to cut off the engine and draw slowly to a halt some 20 minutes and 48km after the ordeal began.
Sikes (61) appeared not to have relished the chance to play the Sandra Bullock role in the film Speed. “I won’t drive that car again, period,” he said. – guardian.co.uk