Still more on Prius runaway

[Dean Hoffman]

The article is from Forbes. The author is critical of the press that swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker. He says he found several flaws that a newsman should've found.

[Frank]

Today's "newsmen" are idiots. They write faster than they think, if they think at all. Unfortunately most of the public believes them. This story smelled from the beginning.

[AZ Nomad]

It's market driven and today's public love prefer hysteria over substance. If you want news, get it in a newspaper; if you don't want to deal with paper, get the same over the internet.

[Kurt Ullman]

"People everywhere confuse what they read in the newspapers with news."

-A.J. Liebling

[Eric in North TX]

If 34 times using the F word offends you don't click the link, but he lays it down fairly, strange he needs a mask though.

[salty]

So, we have now firmly established that you can stop a Prius by putting it in neutral IF THE CAR IS OPERATING NORMALLY.

Big Deal. I think most people already accept that.

[gnu / linux]

If it bleeds it leads .......

[Jon Danniken]

Yeah, well said. I was going to mention that about the last place I would go to get news is from the local newspaper. Well, unless I wanted the kind of "news" that was made up adults acting like whining children living in a fantasy world, anyway.

About the only place I've ever seen anything approaching objective coverage is the WSJ.

Jon

[mm]

As told in the article from Forbes, where it says he was afraid to shift to neutral, afraid to turn off the car, if it's a hoax as it sounds, how did the driver think he would get away with it?

Maybe he didn't. I can easily imagine Toyota paying him 10, 20, 50G to be a bogus complainer, to make all the other complainers seem more likely to be bogus.

[HeyBub]

On the Editorial Page.

[terry]

It seems somewhat paranoid every time some story that may have some doubtful angles to suggest that thre is some as yet undiscovered plot?

[mm]

Not to me. 50,000 is enough to buy an hour's time from a lot of people, as well as any time he ends up spending with reporters later, and any embarrassment he might feel by being called a hoaxster. They won't be able to charge or convict him of anything with what they have now. Even if they somehow find out about such a plot, and can prove it, I think "filing a false police report" might be the most he is guilty of. Maybe he needs a new car now. So they can throw in

40,000 more or whatever one of those costs.

At first this was for me just a mathematically derived possibility, but on second thought it seems very possible. After all, as some room freshener's advertisement says, we don't just cover up bad odors (as more advertising by Toyata would do), we make the odors disappear (as discrediting complainers would do.) For 10, 20, 50 thousand dollars paid to Sikes, they can accomplish a lot more than a million dollars of advertising would. One such phony complaint can make the real complaints seem a lot more likely to also be bogus.

This reminds me of the Canuck letter, forged and planted by Nixon's employees, to discredit Muskie, and lots of other things done by the Plumbers for the benefit of Richard Nixon. Or the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Most discussions of that fail to mention the motive. The motive was to find something humiliating about Danel Ellsberg, that he told his psychiatrist, in order to discredit Ellsberg, and in so doing, discrredit the Pentagon Papers, which embarrassed the Nixon administration. Even though nothing about Elllsberg personally really makes the Pentangon Papers any less embarrassing to Nixon and his administration. But they still thought it would help and in fact it probably would have. All the things in this paragraph really did happen.

How many more things like the things Nixon did have been done by others, but not learned of because there was no investigation. The Canuck letter wasn't disclosed iirc until years later, after the Watergate burglary and the investigation that came from that. Had it not been for Watergate, no one would have known about their role in the Canuck letter or the other things that Nixon's Plumbers did.

Also, I can't recall details but I have a vague feeling there have been other such attempts to discredit a manufacturer. Maybe all my recollections are from movies, but if movie writers can think of such things (or copy them from true stories) , a Toyota exec can also. It also reminds me of inserting people who look like union picketers to start violence on a union picket line, to discredit a union; or to insert those who appear like violent radicals into left-wing groups, to plan and execute violent acts, to discredit peaceful radicals. IIRC, the FBI itself did that. Again, I can't remember if those things actually happened, if I saw them in movies, and if so, I probably never knew if the movies were based on real life.

[JohnnyD]

Comedy GOLD!

[JohnnyD]

???

[jamesgangnc]

You're being way excessively paranoid. The downside of such a scheme backfiring is so totally overwhelming as compared to the marginal benefit that no one with any sense would consoider it for more than a moment.

Clearly this guy has issues that existed long before the toyota problems. When you put 300 million people in the mix some nut jobs that own toyotas are going to crawl out of the works.

Most real cases of runaway cars can be traced to throttle confusion when the post mortem can't find anything mechanically wrong. The high percentage of elderly in these mystery runaway cases supports that.

[Harry K]

" Even if they somehow find out about such a plot, and can prove it, I think "filing a false police report" might be the most he is guilty of. "

Try again. If they prove that, then the charge will be fraud and he would have a felony conviction on his record. Not worth 50,000 to me.

Harry K

[Ed Pawlowski]

"Harry K" wrote

How much then??? I'm holding out for $250k if no jail time. $1 million if jail time.

[salty]

So far, Sike's and the CHP officer's account have not been disproved - just attacked by those with an incredibly strong motive to want to cover this up.

California Highway Patrol's official position:

"Pennings reaffirmed CHP's position that no evidence has emerged to doubt Sikes' version of events."

[trader4]

Aye Karumba. Anybody who's followed these various discussions here over the last few weeks, knows I've been open to the possibility that in some of these incidents, something could be going on that prevents people from simply stopping the car if it starts to accelerate. But to say this guy is being unfairly attacked is just not true. This case is the most highly suspicious one and stinks to high heaven.

Far from being attacked, Forbes is right that most of the media just swallowed it hook line and sinker. They didn't use words like alleged, when describing the incident. Fox News, to their credit is the one news organization that did dig into his background and find out that he filed for bankruptcy for $700K last year, is months behind on his Prius payments, has had a couple reports of stolen property and insurance claims for substantial amounts in the last few years, etc. He also had taken the Prius to the dealer for a recall and they told him, apparently incorrectly, that there was none for his car, providing him with the perfect settup to try to make a case.

You have, according to Forbes, the 911 operator telling him many times during the call to put it in neutral or turn off the engine. He refused to do so. And also according to Forbes, it's impossible to be able to reach the accelerator peddle while driving and pull it up as he claimed he tried to do. Why don't the local cops start acting like cops and ask him to get back in the car and show us how he did it? NTSB and Toyota have analyzed the cars brakes and found no burning consistent with applying the brakes extensively for a long time. Then the guy hires a lawyer.

This guy is just like the Balloon Boy parents. Perhaps the stupist one here is the chief of police and or patrol officer that says they believe Sikes. That is what the sheriff said in the Balloon Boy case too, until he finally woke up.

As for claims that this could be a Toyota grand conspiracy to discredit others, that's beyond ludicrous too. Yeah, there's a chance of that. About .0001%, compared to the 99% probability that Sikes is a fraud.

[salty]

The CHP is a fairly respected organization, who has absolutely no motive to lie about what happened. In fact, it is their job to make sure the facts are reported. Their account, which they are standing by, includes input from eyewitnesses.

So far, nobody has anything factual to refute the official CHP report. Nothing.