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From: review@drutx.UUCP (MillhamBD)
Newsgroups: net.bizarre
Subject: Talking Cars
Message-ID: <120@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 11:16:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: drutx.120
Posted: Thu Oct  3 11:16:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 05:00:13 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 79

(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.

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