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Lemon of the Week

Runaway Acceleration Problem Plagues Prius Owners

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 1, 2007

Much to the dismay of smug Prius owners, who refer to themselves as Prians, the little car can sometimes take off almost on its own, a lot like a horse in a high country meadow after chewing bad grass.

That is just what happened to a reader in Washington state. Tina reported that her Prius suffered from “uncontrollable acceleration” on a freeway near Everett, Washington.

“As I attempted to merge into heavy traffic,” Tina told us, “I accelerated up the on ramp and was attempting to place the car between two vehicles going at a rate of approximately 50 miles per hour.” “The car lunged forward and would not slow down without repeated pumping of the brakes.”

Our reader left the freeway as soon as she could weave her way through heavy traffic still unable to disengage the Prius throttle.

She turned the Prius off with the power button while sitting on the high speed freeway off ramp. Knowing that this was an unsafe place to leave the car, she headed for a nearby parking lot after regaining her confidence.

Tina noticed a “foul odor” that she assumed was rising from the overheated Prius brakes and called her Toyota dealer.

Despite the problems with uncontrolled acceleration, the Toyota service department asked Tina to drive the Prius to them.

On the way to the dealership, the computer display malfunctioned.

But the Toyota service department diagnosed the problem with the runaway Prius as nothing more than a carpet jamming the accelerator pedal or driver error.

The dealer insisted that he did not know of any other similar incident despite repeated reports and complaints of unintended acceleration with the Prius..

Now Tina is stuck with a Toyota Prius she cannot trust and that makes her Prius the ConsumerAffairs.com Lemon of the Week.

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