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Another runaway Toyota Prius reported
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DETROIT |
DETROIT (Reuters) - Federal regulators said they were looking into a report of another runaway Toyota Prius, this one in Westchester County, New York, where police said a woman pulling out of a driveway zoomed across a busy street and into a stone wall.
The 56-year-old driver sustained nonlife-threatening injuries on Tuesday when the 2005 Prius she was operating knocked some large boulders from the wall after the crash, said Capt. Anthony Marraccini, acting police chief in Harrison, New York, which is about 25 miles northeast of New York City.
"Toyota has expressed interest in taking the vehicle," Marraccini said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
Toyota Motor Corp officials could not immediately be reached for a comment.
It was the second straight day in which an incident of reported uncontrolled acceleration by a Prius attracted media attention, adding to product safety woes that have damaged the automaker's reputation and led to the recall of more than 8 million vehicles.
On Monday, a California man said his 2008 Prius sped out of control on a California freeway. The man, 61, said his car accelerated beyond his control after he overtook another vehicle in San Diego County.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is aware of the incident and is looking into the matter, said Olivia Alair, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The woman, who was not identified, was driving on a long, curving driveway when the Prius accelerated beyond her control, Marraccini said, adding that the two-lane road she sped across is a "fairly busy" street.
She traveled 150 to 200 feet, he said, before the Prius' front end struck the rock wall -- built with boulders weighing some 500 to 1,000 pounds -- with such force that it "hurled those boulders 10 or 15 feet away."
"The floor mat is not a contributing factor," Marraccini said, adding that it was firmly secured.
He said the car had previously been taken to a nearby Toyota dealership by the owner after the model was recalled.
Toyota recalled 2004-2009 Prius models last November as part of a wide-ranging safety recall to fix loose floor mats that can trap the accelerator and cause unintended acceleration.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall and Soyoung Kim, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
Many years ago Audi in US had sudden acceleration problems, but Audi in Europe had never had such incidents. Now Prius in US have sudden acceleration problems, and in Europe we had not witness any of such incidents. So the question is: are cars made for US market significantly different from the one made for European market? if not then the problem is to be found somewhere else
Has anyone at the NTSB or the other agencies (or the congressional panels) examined the possibility that the drive-by-wire control systems that use computer chips and memory to run software are suffering soft error (rate) issues from cosmic ray interactions. Before your readers hoot with laughter this is a real issue with computer chips and memory chips that are not hardened or have built in error correction or redundancy. IBM studied this issue extensively and found it was infrequent at low elevation (e.g. New York City), but increasingly common at elevated cities like Denver. It begs the question is it time for the folks who regulate products and are responsible for safety issues to review this possibility. Your i-pod freaking out and doing the endless shuffle doesn’t hurt, but heavy metal in the form of a car going beserk from a transient software/chip failure can kill. Think about it folks…
JAKE AND ELWOOD BLUES HIRED BY TOYOTA:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/03/toyota-enlists-jake-and-elwood-blues.html
From a safety standpoint vehicles from American manafacturers are lookijg like a better purchase.
Reply to marcog: The difference may also be the number of miles driven and frequency of trips in the US far excede the mileage and trips in Europe. If the Prius’ in Europe were used as long and often, the may exhibit the same problems.
They should call these Toyota Toy cars. I owned a 2009 Toyota Venza for 3 weeks and got rid of it. Why anyone would risk the lives of themselves and others by driving these dangerous toy cars is beyond me. Is 57 deaths acceptable to the NTSB and american public? They should seize the Prius’s involved in the recent incident and finally figure out what is going on. I can’t believe in this day and age of technology that someone can’t look at these cars and figure out what is going on. Toyota should be shut down. I will never buy another Toyota or ride in one. They should all be pulled off the road.
I am not sure how many years the Prius has been manufactured, but I would be interested in knowing more about Toyota’s manufacturing/supply chain. If a change in supplier happens for key material parts and the quality control is lacking at both manufacturing and (new) supplier end, then stuff happens…Or the long-standing supplier starts using something different in his manufacturing process. Or something on the production line is out of whack, or its a design fault that has come to light thru switching suppliers and the materials react differently..the list is endless, but I would dearly like to see a report on their findings :)
