Prius safety under review: Federal officials investigating car that wouldn't stop

The government sent investigators yesterday to examine a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway, and Toyota said it wanted to interview the driver as it dealt with a high-profile new headache that raised questions about the safety of its beloved hybrid.

A day after state troopers helped the car slow to a stop and its driver emerge unharmed, Toyota could shed no new light on what might have gone wrong. The Prius is not part of Toyota's vast recall of gas pedals that can become stuck, but it is covered by an earlier recall of floor mats that can catch the accelerator.

The freeway incident happened at the worst possible time for Toyota -- just hours after it invited reporters Monday to hear experts insist that electronic flaws could not cause cars to speed out of control under real driving conditions.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent two investigators to examine the car, a government spokeswoman said. Brian Lyons, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Corp., said that Toyota is sending three of its own technicians to investigate.

Another Toyota spokesman, John Hanson, said that the company wanted to talk to the driver, James Sikes. His car, a 2008 model, was covered by the floor-mat recall, but Sikes said that the pedal jammed and was not trapped under the mat.

Sikes told authorities that he was driving on Interstate 8 outside San Diego when the accelerator became stuck. He said that the car reached 94 mph before a trooper, calling out instructions from a megaphone, helped him slow down and turn off the engine.

Two 911 calls spanning 23 minutes recounted the harrowing experience. In the audio released yesterday, Sikes sounds panicked at times as he tells a dispatcher about a stuck accelerator. The dispatcher, Leighann Parks, repeatedly tells Sikes to throw the car into neutral and turn off the ignition. Sikes often didn't respond to her instructions.

"My car can't slow down," Sikes tells her. At one point, Parks asks if he had put the car into neutral, and Sikes responds, "I'm trying to control the car!"

Sikes, 61, was identified in a 2006 newspaper article as a real-estate executive and longtime lottery player who won $55,000.

Sikes said he called 911 about 1:30 p.m. Monday after accelerating to pass another car.

"I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car, and it did something kind of funny.... It jumped and it just stuck there," he said.

Sikes said he tried to pull on the gas pedal but it didn't "move at all." He said he nearly hit the back of a big rig and was traveling so fast he could not read the numbers on freeway call boxes.

A patrol car driven Officer Todd Neibert of the California Highway Patrol pulled alongside the Prius, and Neibert told Sikes over a loudspeaker to push the brake pedal to the floor and apply the emergency brake.

The braking, coupled with a steep incline on the freeway, slowed the car to about 50 mph. Sikes said he then shut off the engine, and the car coasted to a stop. Neibert then moved his car in front of the Prius to block it.

"He was visibly shaken. He seemed in shock," Neibert said. "The brakes were definitely down to hardly any material."

The highway patrol held the car overnight, and it was towed to the dealership yesterday, Officer Brian Pennings said. "There's no collision, so our investigation's done," he said.

The Sikes family received a recall notice and took the Prius to Toyota of El Cajon about two weeks ago, but the dealership refused to examine the car, saying that it was not on the recall list, said Sikes' wife, Patty.

Hanson said that Toyota first sends a preliminary notice to owners saying that their vehicles are subject to a recall. A second notice comes later detailing how and where the vehicle can be fixed.

"I believe what could have happened is Mr. Sikes could have received his preliminary notification which says, ‘Hello, your car is going to be recalled, and we will notify you when to bring it in.'"

In other worries for Toyota, vehicle owners claiming that the massive safety recalls are causing the value of their vehicles to plummet have filed at least 89 class-action lawsuits that could cost Toyota $3 billion or more, according to a review by The Associated Press.

Those estimates do not include potential payouts for wrongful- death and injury lawsuits, which could reach in the tens of millions each. Still, the sheer volume of cases involving U.S. Toyota owners claiming lost value -- 6 million or more -- could prove far more costly, adding up to losses in the billions for the Toyota.

Such class-action lawsuits "are more scary for Toyota than the cases where people actually got injured," said Tom Baker, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "A super-big injury case would be $20 million. But you could have millions of individual car owners who could (each) be owed $1,000. If I were Toyota, I'd be more worried about those cases."

A key decision could come at a March 25 hearing in San Diego, where a panel of federal judges will consider whether to consolidate the mushrooming cases into a single jurisdiction.

After that, a judge will decide whether all claims filed by Toyota owners nationwide can be combined in a single legal action and whether the claims have enough merit to move toward either trial or settlement.

The lawsuits started appearing on state and federal dockets last fall, when Toyota began recalling about 8 million vehicles worldwide because of complaints about sudden unintended acceleration. The NHTSA reports that 52 people have died in accelerator-related wrecks. The AP conducted an extensive review of federal court filings and found a total of 89 class-action lawsuits filed nationwide as of Monday. Toyota attorneys said last week in a court filing that the company is aware of 82 such cases.

Also yesterday, Toyota said it will expand a recall announced last year to fix Tundra pickups with frames that could rust and lead to spare tires falling from the trucks.

The recall will cover Tundra pickups from the 2000-03 model years in all 50 states. It would broaden a recall announced in November that covered 110,000 trucks in 20 "cold-weather" states and the District of Columbia.