Toyota Apparently Rejects Man's Prius Car for Recall, which Later Becomes a 'Runaway' outside San Diego

Photo by KOMUnews via Flickr

A man who claimed that Toyota said his 2008 Prius wasn't on the recall list when he brought it to a dealer apparently became part of the latest incident in which the vehicle accelerated and wouldn't stop. On Sunday, James Sikes said he was driving on Interstate 8 when he accelerated to go around a car, only the car kept on accelerating, sometimes up to 94 miles per hour, on a 30-mile ordeal. He alerted the CHP, which dispatched two patrol units.

“When I saw him, I could smell the brakes,” said Officer Todd Niebert, a 14-year CHP veteran, to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “I could see his brake lights coming on.”

"Niebert said he instructed Sikes to put the car in neutral and hit the emergency brake and the floor brakes simultaneously," reported the paper. "This, plus a slight incline, helped Sikes slow the car to about 50 mph. Finally, he was going slow enough to turn off the power, something he had been reluctant to do for fear of losing control when the car was speeding. With Niebert’s patrol car in front of him as a barrier, Sikes finally brought the Prius to a halt."