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Yesterday we told you about doubts Edmunds Inside Line aloft about a California man who claimed his Prius had raced out of control. Today, added humans are searching into the story.

Jalopnik thinks James Sikes, the man in the incident, may acquire had a motive: “James Sikes, the San Diego delinquent Toyota Prius driver, filed for defalcation in 2008 and now has over $700,000 in debt. According to one bearding tipster, we’re aswell told he hasn’t been authoritative payments on his Prius,” they write, adding, “it’s abeyant action for absent to acquisition an out — any out — on paying for the vehicle.”

Jalopnik’s questions about Sikes’ motives add to questions Inside Line aloft about the story. Inside Line acicular out that it’s almost simple to about-face the Prius into neutral, even at artery speeds. They aswell begin it odd that admitting he claimed to be accomplishing able-bodied over 90, Sikes managed to abstain an blow on a California artery for over 20 account — while panicking.

The Associated Columnist says the delinquent Prius adventure may be reinforcing itself. “Experts on customer attitude say the adamant abrogating media absorption Toyota has accustomed back the abatement makes it abundant added acceptable that drivers will aberration annihilation abrupt — or even a confused bottom — for absolute danger.” AP adds, “In just the aboriginal 10 weeks of this year, 272 complaints acquire been filed civic for dispatch ascendancy problems with the Prius, according to an Associated Columnist assay of counterfeit complaints accustomed by the National Artery Traffic Safety Administration. By comparison, alone 74 complaints were filed in all of endure year, and just eight the year afore that.”

Autoblog Green comments, “We’ll let the authorities investigate these latest cases and actuate as best they can what happened there, but we aswell wish the carelessness to calm down. Problems should be fixed, sure, but just because some humans acquire problems doesn’t beggarly anybody does.”

The day afterwards the Prius adventure in California, according to reports, a Prius accelerated al of a sudden in New York. In that incident, a woman was affairs out of her driveway if she says the accelerator stuck, causing the Prius to billow advanced into a stonewall. No one was aching in the incident.

However, Richard Schmidt, a assistant emeritus of attitude at the University of California, Los Angeles, writes in the New York Times that the affectionate of driveway book the woman describes is a prime archetype of disciplinarian absurdity getting mistaken for a automated problem. Shchmidt has spent abundant of his career investigating cases of adventitious dispatch for automakers. His plan has begin that letters of adventitious dispatch “typically happened if the disciplinarian aboriginal got into the car and started it. Afterwards axis on the ignition, the disciplinarian would intend to columnist agilely on the anchor pedal while alive from esplanade to drive (or reverse), and al of a sudden the car would bound advanced (or backward). Drivers said that connected acute on the anchor would not stop the car; it would accumulate traveling until it crashed.” Schmidt adds, “Drivers believed that something had gone amiss in the dispatch system, and that the brakes had failed.”

When engineers would appraise the cars, they’d acquisition annihilation was wrong. Schmidt writes, “Several advisers accepted how a driver, intending to administer the anchor pedal to accumulate the car from creeping, would occasionally columnist the accelerator instead. Then, afraid that the car confused so much, he would try acute harder. Of course, if his appropriate bottom was in fact on the accelerator, the burke would accessible and the car would move faster.” The result? “This would again advance the disciplinarian to columnist the ‘brake’ harder still, and to accompany about even added acceleration. Eventually, the car would be at abounding throttle, until it crashed. The driver’s bottom would be all the way to the floor, giving him the consequence that the brakes had failed.”

Of course, Schmidt’s acumen doesn’t explain the letters of the delinquent Prius in California, and it doesn’t prove that annihilation was amiss with the Prius in New York. But, disciplinarian absurdity additional added publicity may explain some of the fasten in letters of problems with Toyota.

Check out the latest Toyota anamnesis account and information, including how the company’s contempo troubles affect our rankings. If you’re in the bazaar for a new car, analysis out the U.S. Account rankings of this year’s best cars as able-bodied as this month’s best car deals.