The car in front … is a Toyota stranded at 94mph Business The Guardian

A Prius hybrid sits at a Toyota dealership in Stone Mountain, Georgia, one of the US states where a small dealers are pulling ads from ABC television. Photograph: Erik Lesser/EPA

James Sikes was carrying an uneventful expostulate home along a San Diego main road when things became a small some-more eventful. He pushed down the accelerator pedal of his 2008 Toyota Prius to pass an additional car; afterwards "it did something kind of funny", he pronounced later.

What it did was to speed up. Then speed up a small more. Within minutes, Sikes was hurtling down the main road at up to 94 mph, weaving past cars and lorries as he went.

"It jumped and it only stranded there," Sikes pronounced after of the accelerator pedal. "As it was going, I was perplexing the brakes … It wasn"t stopping."

First he stood on the brakes with all his might, but the car only kept on speeding up. Then he attempted pushing with his left palm and disposition down with his right to lift the accelerator up and regulate the building mat, that has caused problems in alternative Toyota models.

"I stayed on the brakes as prolonged as I could, until eventually they proposed inhaling and exhaling unequivocally bad," he said.

Sikes called 911 and a military car was finished with to float to one side him. "I could discuss it he was physically perplexing to stop and the car was hardly negligence down," pronounced unit military military officer Todd Neibert. "And afterwards I beheld it would accelerate again and we were up to 90 mph."

Neibert knew they had difficulty ahead: they were coming a high downhill widen that could be fraudulent at such speeds.

Using his loudspeaker, the military military officer took Sikes by an puncture braking procession that slowed the Prius down to about 50 mph, permitting the motorist to cut off the engine and pull solemnly to a hindrance a small twenty mins and thirty miles after the distress began.

Sikes, 61, appeared not to have relished the possibility to fool around the Sandra Bullock purpose in the movie Speed. "I won"t expostulate that car again, period," he said.