Peanut Butter News

Technology or just money that the cars are not safe. You judge for your self.
Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — The driver of a Toyota Prius says he was taken on a wild ride Monday after the car’s accelerator became stuck, reaching speeds in excess of 90 mph on a winding, hilly portion of a southern California interstate.

It took the California Highway Patrol to bring the car safely to a stop.

The driver, Jim Sikes, said he was traveling east on Interstate 8 outside of the San Diego area when he attempted to pass a slower vehicle.

Full Story at msnbc.com

NEW YORK – Dozens of former federal officials are playing leading roles in helping carmakers handle federal investigations of auto defects, including those for Toyota’s runaway acceleration problems.

A Washington Post analysis shows as many as 33 former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees and Transportation Department appointees left those jobs in recent years and now work for automakers as lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and in other jobs that deal with government safety probes, recalls and regulations.

Full Story at NYTimes.com

JOSH SMITH is a large man with a shaved head, a goatee and a look in his eyes that can only be described as stoked. And he is never more stoked than when he talks about his job, one of the strangest at the General Motors Proving Grounds, here in this suburb 45 miles northwest of Detroit.

All day, he breaks G.M. parts.

Not just any parts. Mr. Smith is a member of Red X, a team of 33 engineers who study auto parts that are malfunctioning for reasons that have everyone stumped. The work is a little bit “CSI” and a little bit “MythBusters.” Red X takes working parts and methodically torments them in controlled experiments, hoping to re-enact the demise of ones that failed.

Full Story at CNN.com

(CNN) — Toyota’s reputation for making trusty, reliable cars has come into question after the company recalled millions of cars because of sticking gas pedals last week.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told lawmakers Wednesday that drivers of cars affected by the recall should “stop driving” them and take them to the dealer for repair. He later clarified his statement, saying that owners should take their cars to get them fixed as soon as possible. But the comment had already been reported by many media outlets, frightening many owners.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

New York (CNNMoney.com) — Toyota announced Wednesday night that it is adding another 1.1 million vehicles to an an earlier 4.2 million vehicle recall originally announced in November.

The vehicles are being recalled to fix a problem in which the gas pedal can become caught on the edge of the removable floormat, causing the vehicle to accelerate uncontrollably.

Full Story atmoney.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Because oil prices have always been directly related to the strength of the economy, a recovery might have seen headlines like these:

• The recession ends: Get ready for $100 oil

• The economy roars: $140 oil, is there an end in sight?

• Everyone in China buys a Cadillac: World tapped out

But a growing number of experts are saying that you can forget all that. For the next couple of years, they say, oil prices will remain well below $100 a barrel as the economy remains fragile and efficiency measures kick in.

Full Story atCNN.com

The youngest of five children, he was only 8 when his father died.

For three decades, he’d carried with him mere snapshots of memories: Family time at Christmas. Riding on the back of Dad’s motorcycle. Tommie Stephney’s love for drag-racing.

But as the 37-year-old Douglasville, Georgia, man set out September 22 to try and save a woman whose car was swept away by rushing waters, he thought of his father’s drowning. He, too, had fought to rescue people struggling against currents.

That was in 1979.

Tommie Stephney, a City of Atlanta employee, dove into the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, Georgia, to save canoeists who’d flipped their boat, his son said. He safely brought two to shore. The third, he said, panicked — forcing them both under. It would be a week before his father’s body was found.

Full Story at CNN.com

The Belle Mead, New Jersey, resident runs the car-review Web site mpgomatic.com with a focus on fuel efficiency, but even he strays over to public transit every now and then. Nowadays, even the biggest car lovers are taking notice of energy conservation.

Readers may not realize a guy who revs engines for a living might need a ride back home after dropping off a test car in New York. In these cases, he typically takes a train most of the 55-mile trip and gets a car ride for the rest of the route.

Gray shared an iReport video explaining how he decided — for one day only, he emphasizes — to see whether he could go entirely without the assistance of an automobile on the return trip. His journey was successful, but he spent an extra hour fumbling around with local buses and taking an unintentional detour to a local mall.

Full Story atmsnbc.com

ATLANTA – Some childhood lead poisonings in Maine last year came from an unusual source — the family car. Government health officials said Thursday the six cases are the first ever attributed to lead dust on childhood safety seats. The car seats themselves weren’t the source; the inside of family cars were contaminated through a parent’s workplace.

Parents got lead dust on their clothes at work and then shed it in the cars, said Tina Bernier of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

Full Story at msnbc.com

CLEVELAND – An Ohio bus driver who had been fired and reinstated after an earlier accident was on her cell phone when her bus struck and killed a pedestrian in March, according to investigators.

Angela Williams, 49, of Cleveland, was indicted Thursday on a felony charge of aggravated vehicular homicide. If convicted, she could get up to five years in prison in the death of Patrick Merrill, 59, of suburban Berea.

He was struck in a crosswalk while the bus was making a left turn. It was the second fatal bus accident involving a pedestrian in a crosswalk in seven months in Cleveland.

Full Story at msnbc.com

While heroic politicians all over America are mandating bicycle helmets, it’s still legal to drive 4,000 pounds of steel 60 miles an hour while your brain is turned to the moron setting.

Oh you know exactly who and what I’m talking about. You know because you are that one guy in all the world who is perfectly capable of operating your automobile and cellular device simultaneously without endangering yourself or those driving around you … all of whom are also operating their automobiles and cellular devices simultaneously, because they too are quite certain that they are that one guy … but of course they’re wrong because it’s you who is that one guy, not any of them … morons.

Full Story At Reuters.com

(Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co plans to launch production of electric vehicles and their batteries in the United States to tap low-interest loans for green vehicles, the Nikkei business daily said.

The overall investment is estimated at 50 billion yen ($516.4 million) and may rise to 100 billion yen, it said.

Under the plan, the new electric-car assembly lines are to be built at a plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, where Nissan North America Inc is based, the paper said.

The facility, capable of making 50,000 to 100,000 eco-friendly vehicles a year by 2012, is expected to first produce a small passenger car, it said.

Nissan also intends to construct a production facility for high-capacity lithium ion batteries at the Smyrna site with NEC Corp.