By ELLIOT SPAGAT and KEN THOMAS
Associated Press Writers
SAN DIEGO – The mystery surrounding a Toyota Prius whose driver reported a stuck accelerator deepened Sunday as the motorist’s attorney dismissed a congressional memo that questions his client’s version of events.
The memo said technicians with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota could not duplicate the sudden, unintended acceleration that James Sikes said he experienced March 8 when he reached 94 mph on a California freeway. Investigators tried during a two-hour test drive Thursday.
The memo was based on a congressional staffer’s observations of a two-day inspection last week at a dealership in suburban San Diego. A Toyota official who was at the inspection explained that an electric motor would “completely seize” if a system to shut off the gas when the brake is pressed fails, and there was no evidence to support that happened, according to the memo.