Toyota Prius Crash in New York Under Investigation

March 10, 2010 (by Horatio Algren) According to reports one day after a California Highway Patrol officer had to help the driver of a Toyota Prius gain control and come to a safe halt another Prius crashes.

Federal safety regulators are investigating a report by New York police of another Toyota Prius that crashed due to unintended acceleration. This Prius according to reports accelerated on its own in a driveway, leaving the drive and crashing into a stone wall on the other side of the street.

Police believe the vehicle involved in the accident was on the recall list for a sticking accelerator, according to Capt. Anthony Marraccini of the Harrison New York Police Department. Capt Marraccini stated that Toyota Motor Corp wants to take the Prius involved in the crash, but that they are not prepared to release the hybrid.

The accident occurred when a 56 year old housekeeper was in forward gear driving down a curving driveway. When the 2005 vehicle unintentionally accelerated on the several hundred foot driveway it crossed a road where the vehicle could have been involved in an accident with other cars, but instead went across and struck a stone wall.

The airbags deployed after the 2005 Toyota Prius struck the wall according to Capt. Marraccini, and there were five boulders and smaller stone on the ground as far as ten feet from the vehicle. There were broken headlight pieces, broken glass and metal that could have been part of a window frame on the ground.

Joseph Leff the owner of the 2005 Prius stated that the unnamed housekeeper is a good driver and it had to have been the vehicles fault that the accident occurred. Leff also stated that he had contacted Toyota but had not heard back from them.

The Prius has been parked in a police parking lot with the front end crushed in, the hood buckled and the bumper broken. According to Leff the housekeeper that was driving the vehicle at the time it accelerated was not injured when it crashed into the stone wall. Hybrid vehicle accident attorney, Michael Ehine at Ehline Law | Los Angeles personal Injury Lawyer PC has been warning about this issue for quite some time. But now it appears that the facts bear out that many other Toyotas probably have this Toyota sudden acceleration problem.

This incident comes on the heels of the recent San Diego Toyota sudden acceleration incident that was televised on national news.