>> reporter: sikes relived it for our ted rowlands. >> i was in the 80s somewhere and i kept hitting the brakes, kept hitting the brakes, and it wasn't slowing down at all. it was just accelerating. >> reporter: yet after two hours of trying to duplicate what happened on sikes own car and another exact model, federal investigators and toyota came up short. a draft memo says every time the technician placed the gas pedal to the floor and the brake pedal to the floor, the engine shut off and the car immediately started to slow down. experts say that's a key safety feature of the car. so if sikes says the accelerator was stuck and he was pressing hard on the brake, why didn't his car slow down? >> maybe what was happening was not that his engine was overpowering the brakes but his brakes were incapable at that point of overpowering anything. >> reporter: the same memo says his brakes were worn out. it doesn't say whether they were that way before or after the incident. a toyota investigator told