THE CASE OF THE RUNAWAY PICKUP TRUCK:

Oh my gosh...The Darned Thing had a Mind of Its Own!!!

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Tonight, I saw an ABC-TV "Nightline" report about Toyota cars that have an inclination to speed up at speeds at or above, 100mph, and evidently this whole "runaway Toyota" thing is happening more and more all the time. Generally speaking, here's what happens: A Toyota's gas panel sends electronic signals to the Car's Computer, and obviously, the right signals aren't being sent, slamming the car into sudden, unpreventable, out-of-control speeds approaching The Speed Of Light. People have been killed due to this auto-malfunction .This brings back to mind an incident about 30 years ago (can it really be that long ago?) when I was driving to work early one morning, and my little Datsun Truck's throttle all of a sudden became stuck wide open at top speed; it literally felt like the engine was gonna pop outta my truck...

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I was afraid to take it into town with the engine still running at Full-Speed-Ahead...the only thing I could do was stay on the highway and punch the foot pedal; I'd hit the gas, and then lay-off. When I popped it into neutral, the engine just raced harder; I didn't see that as an option. After several such cycles of mashing and grinding the gas pedal, my truck's little lawn-mower engine at last came to its senses. Phew! Anyway, if you're driving a Toyota which all of a sudden starts charging ahead at speeds approaching the Sound Barrier, put the car into Neutral, brake to a stop, and shut off your killer machine. That's what the Expert on the "Nightline" show just said. Oh, and try not to freak out when your car misbehaves. Like I almost did when my truck's engine threatened to leap out from under the hood. A scary moment indeed.

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I used to love that ol' Datsun pickup; it had a camper shell on the back, the added weight of which made the truck more drivable in Winter. One summer, I put a small mattress in the back and went to the Coast, and slept in the back at various campsites. On weekends, I used to take my little Orange Pickup up into the mountains and tool around on all the logging roads. Once I went down a logging road that Dead-Ended. With no place to turn around, I had to back-up for about a quarter-mile, with a steep dropoff lurking just outside my Drivers' Side Window. You kinda wanna avoid situations like that way up there in the National Forest.

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I finally had to get rid of the Pickup...although it was the then-standard Datsun Orange in color, it was fast turning into a Lemon...it began gobbling up fuses and shorting out. But it was a fun little vehicle. Super-easy on gas, too.