Police said Jim Sikes was driving his 2008 Toyota Prius on a California interstate outside San Diego Monday and as Sikes tried to pass a car, he told police his car accelerated to more than 90 miles an hour on its own.
Sikes said he called 911 from his cell phone and when officers with the California Highway Patrol said they found Sikes in his speeding car, they pulled up beside him and used the PA system to instruct Sikes on what to do.
"When I was getting up to the car, when I saw him, I could smell the brakes. I saw his brake lights coming on," Officer Todd Neibert said.
Sikes said he even tried to see if the pedal was stuck on the floor mat.
“My mat was perfect. There was nothing wrong with my mat, and the pedal wouldn't do anything,” Sikes said.
Then, he said he tried to push the button that is supposed to shut the car off.
"I pushed the button to shut it off, but it didn't shut off. So I did so I did it a couple more times and it did shut down."
Finally slowing down, Sikes said eventually he came to a stop, rolling right into the patrol car in front of him.
"I won't drive that car again. Period," Sikes said.
The sudden acceleration came on the same day Toyota took a professor to task for demonstrating sudden acceleration on a Toyota during an interview with ABC's Brian Ross.
Professor Dave Gilbert of Southern Illinois University showed Ross how he could manipulate the Toyota car to suddenly accelerate and pointed out that afterward, there was no error message recorded on the system that is supposed detect errors and shut the throttle down.
But Toyota said Gilbert's scenario could not have happened in the real world and Toyota's engineers showed that they too, could get the results Gilbert found on several cars of different makes and models. Toyota said Gilbert's experiment proved nothing.
"We have found no signs that electronics had anything to do with unintended acceleration," Mike Michels, Toyota, said.
