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A California Highway Patrol officer helped slow a runaway Toyota Prius from 94 mph to a safe stop on Monday after the car’s accelerator became stuck on a San Diego County freeway, the CHP said.

Prius driver James Sikes called 911 about 1:30 p.m. after accelerating to pass another vehicle on Interstate 8 near La Posta and finding that he could not control his car, the CHP said.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny… it jumped and it just stuck there,” the 61-year-old driver said at a news conference. “As it was going, I was trying the brakes…it wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t doing anything and it just kept speeding up,” Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning he was pressing the pedal so hard.

A patrol car pulled alongside the Prius and officers told Sikes over a loudspeaker to push the brake pedal to the floor and apply the emergency brake.

“They also got it going on a steep upgrade,” said Officer Jesse Udovich. “Between those three things, they got it to slow down.”

After the car decelerated to about 50 mph, Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt

{ AP/Google | Continue reading | courtesy of Andrew P. }

{ Obsessive driving fanatics are prone to drive aggressively | Full story }

screenshot { from Embryo, 1976 | more | IMDb }

{ Toyota recall Q & A: What to do if your car suddenly accelerates | LA Times }

Does every large country make its own cars?
Well, no. I mean, it depends on what you mean by large country. Cars are made all over the place. Most of them are made in China, Japan, Germany, the US—although less so in the US these days—and then Brazil and Spain and the UK, Mexico, Russia. Those are all places that make, oh, I don’t know, a million or more cars every year. And some places you wouldn’t think of, like Iran makes nearly a million cars. India makes nearly two million cars.

Who makes the most cars?
Right now the most cars are made in Japan, just about 10 million. As of 2008 China made 6.8 million; Germany, 5.5 million; the US, 3.8 million. What else is big? Brazil, 2.5 million. India, 1.8 million. (…)

What’s the reality of the car-making that goes on for example in the United States? To what extent is it American? To what extent is it Japanese? Where cars are made is a function of how governments are helping companies come in and how cheap land is and those kind of things, as opposed to, “We’re gonna have an American-made car.” (…)

And the interesting thing about China is by law any foreign company doing business in China, building cars in China, has to be fifty percent owned by the Chinese. So you end up with companies like GM building Buicks in China, but it’s actually a joint venture with the Chinese.

{ Interview with car critic Daniel Albert | n+1 | Continue reading }

photo { Akroe }

{ A new technique for measuring the accessibility of a city shows why Paris is more accessible than London. }

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{ Mr. Toth has built a precise replica of a first-class cabin from a Pan Am World Airways 747 in the garage of his two-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, Calif. The setup includes almost everything fliers in the late 1970s and 1980s would have found onboard: pairs of red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead luggage bins and a curved, red-carpeted staircase. | Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

The European Union is funding ambitious programs aimed at monitoring human behavior in an effort to identify deviance and pick out potential terrorists. The implications for privacy are myriad. (…)

One system involves a network of cameras in airports that can measure your speed and alert the control room should it seem excessive. The system knows terrorists tend to be nervous and almost never stop for coffee. This makes a speedy traveller a suspicious traveller.

You may also want to think twice about using the airport bathroom more than once. There is a good chance you will be picked out for an extensive security check.

{ Der Spiegel | Continue reading }

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