Allen K

iTrader: (4)

That first video just made my morning I'll watch the lady when I get home

flipside909

A stupid lawsuit by Orange County:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1213360020100312

UPDATE 1-Orange County files lawsuit against Toyota
Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:44am EST
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LOS ANGELES, March 12 (Reuters) - Prosecutors in Southern California said on Friday they were filing a lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) (TM.N), charging that the automaker has endangered the public with defective vehicles, and engaged in deceptive business practices.

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Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas' office said it was filing the civil suit against Toyota's U.S. sales arm -- Toyota Motor Sales USA -- "to enjoin them from continuing to endanger the public through the sale of defective vehicles and deceptive business practices."

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally to address the risk that accelerator pedals on a range of its vehicles could become stuck because of a loose floor mat or a glitch in the pedal assembly.

Unintended acceleration in the company's Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating reports alleging 47 other fatalities over the past decade.

Orange County is just north of San Diego County, where a California Highway Patrol trooper and three members of his family were killed in a crash last August involving a Toyota vehicle. It abuts Los Angeles County, where Toyota has its U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance.

Rackauckas plans a press conference Friday morning.

Toyota representatives had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall, editing by Matthew Lewis)

MPLexus301

iTrader: (3)

Only in California...

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

Land of the 'fruits' and 'nuts'.

Mister Two

So he's a vette owner who fears shifting his car into neutral.

http://www.examiner.com/x-11235-Bowl...-runaway-Prius

Corvette owner James Sikes can't handle runaway Prius

The guy that was all over the news because he couldn't get his runaway Prius whoa'd up is a Corvette owner. Which means one of two things: he has never driven his Corvette at 90 mph (doubtful) or he just went brain dead when he lost control of the Prius speed.

Unless you have been stuck under your C4 the past few days, you probably have seen and heard James Sikes frantic 911 made while his Toyota Prius was stuck going 94 mph on a San Diego highway.

Turns out Sikes is a member of a car club that owns the hottest production sports car made in the US: the Corvette Owners Club.

Once Corvette owners get wind of his lack of ability and panic at buzzing down the SoCal freeway at a measly 90 mph with no apparent braking ability, the razzing will be ruthless.

Despite what Toyota says...

“There is no new recall being planned for the Prius to address this issue. To be clear, the 2004-2009 Prius was part of Toyota’s November 2, 2009 announcement of a voluntary safety recall campaign to address floor mat entrapment in certain Toyota and Lexus vehicles.”

The Corvette Owners Club might decide to issue a recall of their own - if not for James Sikes Corvette, at least for the jacket.

Tirekicker had this to say:

"Now let me get this straight: A Corvette owner...who panics about doing 80 miles an hour on the interstate and later tells a magazine he didn't put the car in neutral because he "thought it would stop too suddenly"?

To borrow a phrase from at least two other automotive blogs: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

IF Sikes belongs to the Corvette Owners Club of San Diego ...he's in for some serious ribbing at the next meeting.

Even better, his real estate website shows a company car...a PT Cruiser."

LexFather

Check this out

FOX40 News did uncover a new business that Sikes appears to have started: the website AdultSwingLife.com, registered with the California Business Registry's database asAdultSwingLife, LLC. James Sikes is listed as an "agent and member" according to records obtained by FOX40 News, and an online listing with an affiliated adult website lists a personal cell phone number of Sikes' as a point of contact for AdultSwingLife.com.

The AdultSwingLife website is not a pornographic site, but the online forum features erotic photos of its members. It's not clear how much money the site is making, or whether it will help with the bankruptcy.

-J-P-L-

Anyone ask if any witnesses saw a blue Prius going 80+MPH had the brake lights flashing for 30 miles yet no slowdown???

LexFather

Here is the Orange County Board

Board of Supervisors
Board of Supervisors!
Your Board of Supervisors

Janet Nguyen - Board Chair (1st District)

Bill Campbell - Vice Chairman (3rd District)

John M. W. Moorlach - Supervisor (2nd District)

Patricia C. Bates - Supervisor (5th District)

District Attorney Tony Rackauckas
http://orangecountyda.com/home/index.asp

LexFather

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/op...=1&ref=opinion

Marina del Rey, Calif.

THE Obama administration has said that it may require automakers to install “smart pedals” on all new cars. This kind of system — already used in BMWs, Chryslers, Volkswagens and some of the newest Toyotas — deactivates the car’s accelerator when the brake pedal is pressed so that the car can stop safely even if its throttle sticks open.

The idea is to prevent the kind of sudden acceleration that has recently led to the recall of millions of Toyotas. Federal safety regulators have received complaints asserting that this problem has caused accidents resulting in 52 deaths in Toyotas since 2000. Smart pedals might help prevent more such accidents if the cause of unintended acceleration turns out to be some vehicle defect.

But based on my experience in the 1980s helping investigate unintended acceleration in the Audi 5000, I suspect that smart pedals cannot solve the problem. The trouble, unbelievable as it may seem, is that sudden acceleration is very often caused by drivers who press the gas pedal when they intend to press the brake.

From the mid-1980s until 2000, thousands of incidents of sudden acceleration were reported in all makes and models of cars (and buses, tractors and golf carts). Then, as now, the incidents were relatively rare among car crashes generally, but they were nevertheless frequent and dangerous enough to upset automakers, drivers and the news media.

I looked into more than 150 cases of unintended acceleration in the 1980s, many of which became the subject of lawsuits against automakers. In those days, Audi, like Toyota today, received by far the most complaints. (I testified in court for Audi on many occasions. I have not worked for Toyota on unintended acceleration, though I did consult for the company seven years ago on another matter.)

In these cases, the problem typically happened when the driver first got into the car and started it. After turning on the ignition, the driver would intend to press lightly on the brake pedal while shifting from park to drive (or reverse), and suddenly the car would leap forward (or backward). Drivers said that continued pressing on the brake would not stop the car; it would keep going until it crashed. Drivers believed that something had gone wrong in the acceleration system, and that the brakes had failed.

But when engineers examined these vehicles post-crash, they found nothing that could account for what the drivers had reported. The trouble occurred in cars small and large, cheap and expensive, with and without cruise control or electronic engine controls, and with carburetors, fuel injection and even diesel engines. The only thing they had in common was an automatic transmission. An investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found no electro-mechanical defects to explain the problem. Nor did similar government studies in Canada and Japan or any number of private studies.

In the Toyota situation today, some have suggested that unintended acceleration has been caused by floor mats or sticking throttles, but there is considerable doubt about these explanations, and the search for the smoking gun continues. One thought is that computerized engine management systems or electronic controls may be to blame. And so it is interesting to note that unintended acceleration in the 1980s happened before the arrival of drive-by-wire controls and computerized engine-management systems.

Back then, many of us who worked in fields like ergonomics, human performance and psychology suspected that these unintended-acceleration events might have a human component. We noticed that the complaints were far more frequent among older drivers (in a General Motors study, 60-to-70-year-olds had about six times the rate of complaints as 20-to-30-year-olds), drivers who had little experience with the specific car involved (parking-lot attendants, car-wash workers, rental-car patrons) and people of relatively short stature.

Several researchers hypothesized how a driver, intending to apply the brake pedal to keep the car from creeping, would occasionally press the accelerator instead. Then, surprised that the car moved so much, he would try pressing harder. Of course, if his right foot was actually on the accelerator, the throttle would open and the car would move faster. This would then lead the driver to press the “brake” harder still, and to bring about even more acceleration. Eventually, the car would be at full throttle, until it crashed. The driver’s foot would be all the way to the floor, giving him the impression that the brakes had failed.

In the cases that went to court, jurors naturally asked, why would a driver with decades of driving experience suddenly mistake the accelerator for the brake? And why would the episode last so long — often 6 to 10 seconds or more? Wouldn’t that be ample time to shut off the ignition, shift to neutral or engage the parking brake?

First, in these situations, the driver does not really confuse the accelerator and the brake. Rather, the limbs do not do exactly what the brain tells them to. Noisy neuromuscular processes intervene to make the action slightly different from the one intended. The driver intends to press the brake, but once in a while these neuromuscular processes cause the foot to deviate from the intended trajectory — just as a basketball player who makes 90 percent of his free throws sometimes misses the hoop. This effect would be enhanced by the driver being slightly misaligned in the seat when he first gets in the car.

The answer to the second question is that, when a car accelerates unexpectedly, the driver often panics, and just presses the brake harder and harder. Drivers typically do not shut off the ignition, shift to neutral or apply the parking brake.

In 1989, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration concluded that the incidents of unintended acceleration by the Audi 5000 were mostly caused by this kind of pedal error — not some electro-mechanical defect in the vehicle. To fix the problem, Audi designed something called an automatic shift lock, which, when the car is being started, keeps the transmission in park unless and until the brake pedal is depressed. If the driver should press the accelerator instead of the brake, the vehicle remains safely in park.

(In a car with a manual transmission, a driver is naturally prevented from making a simple pedal error, because even if his right foot goes to the accelerator instead of the brake, the car still will not move unless he also intentionally lifts his left foot from the clutch.)

Audi ultimately gave the world’s other automakers the rights to the patent on the automatic shift lock and by the mid-1990s virtually all new cars had adopted the feature or some variant of it. Incidents of sudden acceleration when people started their cars dropped sharply. The shift lock not only made people safer but also provided evidence for the hypothesis that most of the problems had been caused by driver error.

Yet the automatic shift lock did not entirely do away with sudden acceleration incidents — as the Toyota problems illustrate. The fix now championed by the Obama administration could work in situations in which there is an actual vehicle defect. It would tell the car that if it receives signals to both accelerate and brake, the accelerator should go dead so that the brake alone will work.

But this smart-pedal system can be of no use if the driver is simply pressing the accelerator and not touching the brake. The unintended acceleration — and the crash — would still occur.

What the smart pedal may do, however, is finally give us a sense of whether sudden acceleration tends to stem from operator error. If the reports of acceleration continue (and the smart pedals work properly), then there will be nothing and no one left to blame but the driver.

jruhi4

^^^ Fantastic find! Sums everything up very neatly.

LexFather

whoster

I had a friend who had a case of "unintended acceleration" way back in like 2000.

It was a Ford Escort of some sort.

Rammed the car into their garage wall trying to sneak out of the house against the parents' wishes.


The culprit?


as the NY Times article states,

and also just a massive lack of driving experience (she was not yet licensed at the time).

Dave600hL

But you can't forget the people who crashed their cars into their garages and their frightening tales of heroics while they battled to control their car with all possible methods available while the car was revving at full throttle, including shifting into neutral, applying the emergency brake and pressing the start button for a full 5 seconds all in a span of 30ft.

How long does it take for an accelerating car to go 30ft???

VVT-i

This Sikes guy may be the best thing for Toyota right now because he got caught liar on the national TV. People will look at all the SUA claims with second thought. Mr.Sikes may find a swinging life with his cell mates....

Today, I pulled up next to a brand new 4Runner and gave the guy a thump up. I said " How do you like you 4Runner, it's look good?". He gave me thump up back with a big smile, " love it". Hey, just give all the new Toyota drivers with drive out tag with a big thump up campaign...

I notice the public started to getting sick of the media. GM have to cheat to get the buyers.

GS69

California Sues Toyota for Hiding Defects

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A California prosecutor has filed a civil lawsuit against Toyota, accusing the Japanese carmaker of intentionally hiding deadly defects from consumers.

"We'll be alleging in court on behalf of the people of Orange County that Toyota knowingly sold cars and trucks with defects that caused Toyotas to accelerate suddenly and uncontrollably," Orange Country District Attorney Tony Rackauckas told reporters on Friday.

"We intend to prove that Toyota ignored, omitted, obfuscated, and misrepresented the evidence that was amassing for many years regarding serious safety defects in their cars."

Toyota has already been hit with dozens of lawsuits from owners seeking compensation in the wake of a series of mass recalls due to defects that led to sudden, unintended acceleration.

The carmaker has also been called to Washington to answer a congressional investigation and faces scrutiny by securities regulators and a US federal grand jury investigating whether there is sufficient evidence for criminal charges related to problems with Toyota's brakes and accelerators.

Friday's suit is the first filed under consumer protection laws and the district attorney is seeking a civil penalty of 2,500 dollars for every violation of the state's unfair business practices act.

"These defects exist in hundreds of thousands of Toyotas sold to Californians over the last several years," Rackauckas said.

Rackauckas said the purpose of the suit is to protect the public from "unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices."

"Toyota has known about these defects but intentionally did not disclose them to California purchasers," he said.

"Rather than halt the sales of products in California until the problem was fixed, they made a business decision to continue selling and leasing their defective products to Californians."

Toyota said in a statement that it "has not received the complaint and is not in a position to comment on pending litigation."

Toyota has insisted that it has found a solution to the defects that triggered the recall of more than eight million vehicles worldwide, including six million in the United States, and have been blamed for about 50 US deaths.

The most high profile case was the death of California Highway Patrol officer and three members of his family whose heart-wrenching 911 call for help has been played repeatedly on national television.

Critics question whether the mechanical fixes being applied to recalled vehicles are sufficient or if there's a problem with the electronic engine controls.

The Japanese automaker made headlines earlier this week after a Prius owner sought help from police after the car sped uncontrollably along a San Diego freeway.

Federal safety regulators are investigating more than 60 reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles which had already received the mechanical fix.