I turn on the news, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think Hollywood has launched a brilliant viral marketing campaign for its new recycled horror movie: The Villain, a seemingly typical hybrid who refuses to listen to his driver or his own pills. brake, a metaphor for our blind faith in the hybrid auto industry; the victims, more than 8.5 million Toyota owners of such demonized machines around the world, four of whom tragically find their demise. Hey, it worked with a cell phone, right?

But reports from various independent agencies, as well as Toyota’s own investigation, seem to tell a strikingly different story, one with all the beautification, absurdity, and public interest of a primetime reality show. Most of the time, these reports find in Prius supposedly runaways, by far the largest of all reported runaways, that the accidents were caused by human error, not faulty brakes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which reports vehicle safety issues, recalls and defects, found in one of those accidents in New York City on March 9, 2010, that “information Retrieved from the vehicle’s on-board computer systems indicated that there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open “when the vehicle crashed into a stone wall, claiming that, in fact, the driver was at fault.

What about Southern California that claimed its Prius reached speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour on a crowded freeway the day before? Toyota’s report, confirmed by a congressional committee, finds that the brake pedal and accelerator pedal were repeatedly pressed more than 250 times, which can cause the safety function designed to stop inadvertent acceleration to fail, among other inconsistencies with his story.

So what, if anything, would cause drivers to create their own chapters in The Case of the Runaway Prius? Well, for one thing, we are social creatures and we crave attention in any form. It is also natural that humans want to blame an accident of any kind on something, or someone else. Once an alibi is created, or a loophole occurs, especially one with media attention like the Runaway Prius, it is also natural for such alibis to be repeated. Add these in with the potential for monetary gain through a class action lawsuit, and any such event can be overdone. As with all stories, it is essential to read the facts from reliable sources, so that we do not start to believe in works of fiction.