It's easy to bag on a strong foreign company dominating a very American industry (especially for politicians during a recession), but it looks like the real culprits for the acceleration safety problems were dumb-ass American drivers. Initial findings from the NHTSA investigation of 58 sudden-acceleration-associated Toyota crashes across the country showed ZERO evidence of electronics causing acceleration from vehicle data logs. In fact, in over 30 cases the vehicle log shows that the driver did not apply the brake, so in all likelihood their acceleration was due to a panic slam on the wrong pedal. With apparently no definitive evidence, Toyota was accused of sudden acceleration from electronics, floor mats, and sticky pedals. The company initially denied the claims, then acknowledged some design flaws, and issued big recalls to rectify the 3 risks. But in the government analysis, zero of the 58 crash cases were due to sticky pedals or electronics, and only one was due to the floor mat. Out of the millions of Toyotas being happily driven each day in the US and worldwide, there were only a small number of crashes, and funny how the acceleration accusations were only in our country, huh? NASA is currently helping to see if electromagnetic interference could have still caused electronic acceleration. Of course lawyers for greedy and blame-shifting plaintiffs suing Toyota are challenging these findings, but 58 is a pretty big sample size to me. What I'm ashamed of is how quickly the media took up the accusations as Biblical truth, and how I and most of the public believed them without proof.
No comments:
Post a Comment