{"id":422075,"date":"2010-03-12T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/12\/unintended-acceleration-prius-case-gets-a-twist-involving-debt\/"},"modified":"2010-03-12T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T23:00:00","slug":"report-unintended-acceleration-prius-case-gets-twist-involving-debt-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/422075","title":{"rendered":"Report: Unintended acceleration Prius case gets twist involving debt, technology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/gallery\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/#8\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/green.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/03\/07priusloc2-630.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><small>Second-gen Toyota Prius &#8211; Click above for high-res image gallery<\/small><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<p>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/09\/second-gen-prius-involved-in-unintended-acceleration-incident-in\/\">unintended acceleration case of the second-generation Prius<\/a> belonging to James Sikes now officially has an interesting backstory. Apparently, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/autos\/2010-03-12-prius12_ST_N.htm\"><em>USAToday<\/em><\/a>, Sikes&#8217; &#8220;case against Toyota is starting to look shaky.&#8221; Why? Two reasons. First, and most important, is the technical argument. Toyota is saying that Sikes&#8217; Prius has a brake override system that should have slowed the car down in the situation Sikes has described to the media and to investigators. Also, looking at Audi&#8217;s history with a similar problem back in the 1980s, it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/autopia\/2010\/03\/unintended-acceleration\/\">often driver error<\/a> that led to the acceleration, not a problem with the vehicles themselves. <\/p>\n<p>Second, and only to consider possible motives for pretending something was wrong when there really wasn&#8217;t, Sikes is apparently deep in debt according to financial records uncovered by <a href=\"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/5491101\/did-bankrupt-runaway-prius-driver-fake-unintended-acceleration\">Jalopnik<\/a>. He has said repeatedly that he doesn&#8217;t plan on suing Toyota, but he has retained a law firm.<\/p>\n<p>As we said yesterday, there is no obvious explanation for why Sikes&#8217; Prius (and <a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/10\/report-another-prius-accelerates-unintentionally-in-new-york-an\/\">a similar model in New York a few days later<\/a>) sped up and there&#8217;s a case to be made that <a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/11\/is-the-cause-of-runaway-prius-stories-other-runaway-prius-st\/\">the hype is getting out of hand<\/a>. Still, <em>something<\/em> happened, and the sooner we get the facts here, the better off we&#8217;ll be. For now, we&#8217;ll just have to file this under &#8220;Ongoing.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"postgallery\">\n<p><strong>Gallery: <a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\">Review: 2007 Toyota Prius Touring<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autobloggreen.com\/media\/2008\/01\/07prius_loc2_hi10_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autobloggreen.com\/media\/2008\/01\/07prius_loc2_hi12_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autobloggreen.com\/media\/2008\/01\/07prius_loc2_hi18_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autobloggreen.com\/media\/2008\/01\/07prius_loc2_hi19_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/green.autoblog.com\/photos\/2007-toyota-prius-touring-1\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autobloggreen.com\/media\/2008\/01\/07prius_loc2_hi20_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>\n[Sources: <a href=\"http:\/\/jalopnik.com\/5491101\/did-bankrupt-runaway-prius-driver-fake-unintended-acceleration\">Jalopnik<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/autos\/2010-03-12-prius12_ST_N.htm\">USAToday<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/autopia\/2010\/03\/unintended-acceleration\/\">Autopia<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/12\/unintended-acceleration-prius-case-gets-a-twist-involving-debt\/\">Report: Unintended acceleration Prius case gets twist involving debt, technology<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\">Autoblog<\/a> on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST.  Please see our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogsinc.com\/feed-terms\/\">terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;\"><\/h6>\n<p><a href=http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/driveon\/post\/2010\/03\/runaway-prius-case-could-become-toyotas-crisis-turning-point\/1>Read<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/12\/unintended-acceleration-prius-case-gets-a-twist-involving-debt\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent link to this entry\">Permalink<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/forward\/19397151\/\" title=\"Send this entry to a friend via email\">Email this<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/03\/12\/unintended-acceleration-prius-case-gets-a-twist-involving-debt\/#comments\" title=\"View reader comments on this entry\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Second-gen Toyota Prius &#8211; Click above for high-res image gallery The unintended acceleration case of the second-generation Prius belonging to James Sikes now officially has an interesting backstory. Apparently, according to USAToday, Sikes&#8217; &#8220;case against Toyota is starting to look shaky.&#8221; Why? Two reasons. First, and most important, is the technical argument. Toyota is saying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}