LOS ANGELES — James Sikes bought his Toyota Prius in 2008 and 85,000 kilometres later, the car was driving fine. But on Monday afternoon when he accelerated to pass another vehicle on Interstate 8 east of San Diego, the car kept going.

“The gas pedal stuck open all the way,” said Sikes, 61, a realtor from San Diego.

For 48 kilometres, he said, he swerved in and out of traffic, narrowly missing a big rig and trying desperately to slow the vehicle down, at one point reaching down with his hand to pull back on the gas pedal. The brakes were useless.

“I was laying on the brakes,” Sikes said, “but it wasn’t slowing down.”

The “nerve-racking” experience, he said, ended when a California Highway Police officer, responding to his 911 call, instructed him through a loudspeaker to apply his emergency brake in tandem with the brake pedal. Sikes pressed down, hard.

When the Prius, which had reached 144 kph, dropped to about 80 kph, Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a stop. There was nothing he could have done to stop the car, he said.

“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.”

Sikes recounted his ordeal during a news conference held in front of a Toyota dealer Tuesday as a federal safety agency said it was sending two investigators to San Diego County to probe the incident.

“They’re special crash investigators and they’re going to gather the details from the car and find out what the potential causes of any problems are,” said Karen Aldana, a spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Sudden unintended acceleration has allegedly been the cause of 56 fatal accidents involving Toyotas in the United States, going back as far as 2004. Sikes’ Prius was one of more than four million Toyota vehicles recalled in November because of the reported acceleration problems.

He said he received a recall notice, but when he brought his Prius in for service about three weeks, the dealer in El Cajon said his car wasn’t part of the recall. Sikes, who said he didn’t read the letter from Toyota, couldn’t specify what problem the recall was addressing.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, said Monday it would send a field technical specialist to investigate what happened. By Tuesday morning, Sikes said he had yet to hear from the manufacturer, and that his calls to Toyota’s toll-free number turned up a busy signal.

The incident took place the same day that Toyota held a demonstration to challenge claims that car electronics could cause the gas pedal to stick. Toyota has recalled millions of cars but claims the problems are simply mechanical.

At the Toyota dealer in El Cajon, where he went to pick up a loaner car, he said he was still a little shaken by the incident. A longtime owner of Toyota cars, he said the car had just received a maintenance check and everything appeared to be fine.

When the accelerator stuck, Sikes said he weighed all his options. He feared turning the car off in the middle of traffic, expecting the steering wheel to lock. If he shifted into neutral, he worried that it would slip into reverse. The floor mat, he said, wasn’t interfering with the gas pedal.

“It was accelerating out of control. Period,” he said.

Sikes said he had never had a problem with Toyota vehicles. But when his friend showed up Tuesday morning to take him to the dealer, in a Prius, he hesitated. “It just felt funny,” he said. “I love Toyotas. I will not drive a Prius again.”

McClatchy-Tribune