review@drutx.UUCP (MillhamBD) (10/03/85)
(Reprinted without permission from the Examiner, June 18, 85) ULTRAMODERN VEHICLE KILLS ITS FRIGHTENED OWNER An ultramodern talking car turned on its owner and ultimately caused his death. Yukio Hitoyoshi, 38, of Nagoya, Japan, was recently found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in the sleek automobile parked in a rest area on a Japanese superhighway. Police could find no explination for the apparent suicide until they discovered a journal the electronics engineer had hidden in the trunk of the car. In the diary he kept a chilling account of his car's menacing behavior. MISINFORMATION The car, which seemed to have a mind of its own, gave him wrong information through a sophisticated talking computer... causing him to go left when he signaled right and even locked the steering wheel as he drove. After reading the journal, suicide was ruled out, for Hitoyoshi was a happily married father of two and successful in his career. The auto has been locked in a storage vault until officials can determine the cause of its renegade behavior. "Something very strange happened as I drove to work with a friend," Hitoyoshi wrote in his journal the first week he owned the car. "I was discussing the HAL computer in the movie 2001 - the computer that took on a killer's personality and tried to kill the astronauts - when the car went haywire. "We were in rush-hour traffic, bumper-to-bumper at 60 miles per hour, when the car alternately slowed in speeded up and the front tire eventually blew out. A few more bizarre episodes led Hitoyoshi to wonder if his car wasn't more than he bargained for. Once while driving on a winding mountain road, his steering wheel locked momentarily as he approached a hairpin curve. "I know that there is something more than just mechanically wrong woth my car," reads one entry in the journal. "But being an engineer, if I told anyone they would think I was crazy." The journal records that Hitoyoshi arranged to sell the car - but one week later, his lifeless body was found in the car... the cause of death still a mystery. Detective Hideo Yamashi says he has never seen anything like it: "Hitoyoshi was an extremely healthy man. One of our medical examiners is convinced that there's something about the car which killed him. "You see, Hitoyoshi died of shock ... induced by terror. "We cannot exclude the possibility that this talking car could have talked him to death!" ----------------------------------------------------------- I have no comment, except to say that the day that this article was given to me that my car started telling he that my headlights were burned out! A month later, the speedometer quit for about 5 minutes. Last week there was a smell of gas in the car that lasted about 2 days. So keep reading the Examiner, you may see an article about me! -------------------------------------------- Brian Millham AT & T Information Systems Denver, Co. ...!ihnp4!drutx!review