good morning. more wild weather. a line of severe storms tears across florida, spawning at least four tornadoes. this morning, a powerful system is promising a weekend of heavy rain, strong winds and possible flooding up and down the et coast. who knew what when? republicans call for an investigation into how reports of former congressman eric massa s behavior were handled. why was house speaker nancy pelosi not told about complaints made to her office as far back as october? this morning, her response. and together again. following a decades-long family feud, ryan and tatum o neal say they have finally buried the hatchet. and after years of not speaking, they re sitting down for their first interview together, today, friday, march 12th, 2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and welcome to today on this friday morning. i m meredith vieira. and i m lester holt in for matt this morning. hope you didn t make any outdoor plans for the weekend because we ve
good morning. more wild weather. a line of severe storms tears across florida, spawning at least four tornadoes. this morning, a powerful system is promising a weekend of heavy rain, strong winds and possible flooding up and down the east coast. who knew what when? republicans call for an investigation into how reports of former congressman eric massa s behavior were handled. why was house speaker nancy pelosi not told about complaints made to her office as far back as october? this morning, her response. and together again. following a decades-long family feud, ryan and tatum o neal say they have finally buried the hatchet. and after years of not speaking, they re sitting down for their first interview together, today, friday, march 12th, 2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and welcome to today on this friday morning. i m meredith vieira. and i m lester holt in for matt this morning. hope you didn t make any outdoor plans for the weekend because we
affiliate kare. reporter: as a recently retired mayo clinic physician, allen hoffman spent a career saving lives. but says his 2007 toyota prius nearly cost him this. he had driven his prius to a medical convention in chicago in december, was right here in this hotel parking lot, shifting into reverse, when his car took off, backwards. this was flying. i had no idea but my guess was it was 35 to 40 miles an hour. reporter: he sideswiped a car and came to a stop within feet of a busy highway. i could easily have been killed in this, almost went out into a four-lane highway at rush hour hoffman insists he slammed and held both feet on the brake as soon as the prius took off. we had practiced this. there was a little sign that my wife had put on the dashboard. we had prepare for a sudden acsellration. reporter: he felt little satisfaction in a letter he sent to toyota. this week is another apparently
driving it. what i meant to say, what i thought i said was, if you own one of these cars, or if you re in doubt, take it to the dealer and they re going to fix it, okay? that good enough for everybody? all right, let s see if we can a bit snarky, let s see if we can get some clarity here. let s systematically what we need to do if we find ourselves in one of these sudden acceleration situations. you tell us the first thing to do and then explain it, would you please, is to practice deliberate calm. walk us through that. what do you mean about that? well, tony, dr. hoffman in the peeiece that you aired show the classic survivor mentality. as a doctor he knows this, deliberate calm is a concept that you have to consciously calm yourself down and tell yourself that panic in one of these moments is your enemy. dr. sully sullenberger exercised calm. dr. hoffman had a car in his in
sudden acceleration of a prius makes news in california. hoffman is rid of his. we weren t going to drive it again, but we didn t want other people to drive it again. reporter: he donated the car to the engineering school of illinois northwestern university. he is hoping that somebody there can solve the mystery. the car was great, but the last few seconds were really bad. reporter: kare 11 news, rochester. as these harrowing accounts of runaway toyotas come in, we want you to survive the sudden acceleration. we turned to the man that wrote survivors club. joining us from los angeles. we ve got you up and the book up, well done, off to the races here. look, you remember this moment from the transportation secretary ray lahood, about a month ago in his congressional testimony. we want to play it for everyone, because it got a lot of us confused and then we ll talk about it. my advice is if anyone owns one of these vehicles, stop