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Apparently the officer that smelled the brakes burning when he pulled up was lying. Whoda thunk it!

Toyota Motor Corp said on Monday it had found no evidence to support the driver’s account of a widely publicized “runaway” Prius incident in California.

The report had threatened to overshadow Toyota’s attempts to restart sales after a punishing series of recalls.

U.S. safety investigators said separately that they had yet to pinpoint any evidence to support or disprove the claim that a 2008 Prius sped out of control near San Diego a week ago.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration engineers drove the hybrid in an effort to recreate the episode reported by the driver, James Sikes, but were unable to do so, the agency said in its first statement on a hurried and high-profile analysis.

Read the rest of this article here.

*Just as a side note, I owned a Ford once, whose model had a history of stalling at any speed. In fact, many Ford models of a certain year-span had troubles with the engines stalling for no reason. It turned out there was a poorly engineered throttle component, and the cars were recalled so it could be replaced. Funnily enough, the guys at the Ford dealership garage said they could never get my car to stall on them while they were driving it, but it didn’t stop them from believing me. I could never get it to stall on queue, either, and it was MY car. They gave me a loaner while they did the recall work on my car, to make sure they had plenty of time to assure it was safe to drive. Toyota should follow Ford’s lead! (And, yes, I still own a Ford, and will forever more.)