“Your Honor, I’d like to Plead Innocent by Recall”
Aside from the millions of American Toyota owners who have had to deal with the massive recall from the Japanese automaker, there are also some interesting things happening on the side as a result. One man is hoping that it will get him out of prison.
Koua Fong Lee was driving home from church in 2006 with his pregnant wife, daughter, father, brother, and niece when he claims that his car, a 1996 Toyota Camry, suddenly accelerated without his control, causing him to strike two vehicles and kill three people.
He claimed that he was pumping the breaks as he approached the intersection at between 70 and 90 miles per hour. The prosecutors disagreed, saying that his foot was on the gas as he came up to the red light. The mechanics who investigated the car testified that the brakes and the engine were fine at the time of the attack. Though, they did note that the throttle was set at 15 percent open, which was odd. They dismissed the throttle position as something that resulted from the crash. Lee was charged with vehicular homicide and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Lee’s 1996 Camry is not part of any existing recall, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other similar problems reported with that model. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration complaint database, there have been 526 incidents reported for the 1996 Toyota Camry. Roughly two dozen of them were related to vehicle speed control. In one incident, a woman claimed that when she was driving at 65 miles per hour on the highway, she pressed the brake to slow down but the car accelerated on its own instead. Only by aggressively pumping the brakes was she able to pull the car over to a stop. Another incident involved a woman stopped at an intersection. Her car suddenly lurched forward into traffic, causing an accident with a motorcycle that resulted in the death of the rider later on.
What’s more interesting about this case is that the families of the victims of Lee’s crash are on his side. They say that they want the truth to be revealed and that they don’t feel that Lee was responsible for the accident, citing that his whole family was in the car with him at the time and it wouldn’t make any sense.
To read the original article, please go to http://http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/02/toyota.recall.appeal/?hpt=C2