Runaway Toyotas: Could it be driver error?

Finally, some “great news for Toyota,” said Brian Cooley in CBSnews.com. After the accelerator and floor-mat problems that led to the recall of millions of cars, the last thing the world’s largest automaker needed was last week’s claim by James Sikes, 61, that his Toyota Prius dragged him on a high-speed, 30-mile terror ride through California traffic as he stamped desperately on the brake pedal. But the tide of bad publicity may be turning. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported this week that Sikes’ Prius has no obvious mechanical flaws, and that the car’s internal recorders show that while Sikes pressed both pedals dozens of times during the incident, he never fully depressed the brake pedal, as he claimed. If this runaway Toyota incident “turns out to be a bogus story,” it will cast doubt on the others, and Toyota will have a chance to counter its tarnished reputation.

There would be some justice in that, said Walter Olson in National Review Online. The “Great Toyota Panic,” like the Audi panic of 1986, is probably the result of distorted media coverage and mass psychology. Any fair observer of the history of so-called sudden-acceleration cases will notice that the phenomenon disproportionately affects drivers in their 60s and 70s, as well as parking-lot attendants. Why? Older people—and attendants unfamiliar with the vehicle—are more likely to make the mistake of placing their right foot on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake. When that happens, said Richard Schmidt in The New York Times, the car shoots forward and the panicked driver stamps even harder on what he thinks is the brake—and off the car roars, appearing to have a mind of its own. That’s why engineers who study these runaway cars never can re-create what went wrong.

My company’s engineers examined Toyotas, said Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of car-review website Edmunds.com, in The Washington Post, and we, too, found nothing to explain the spate of sudden-acceleration reports. In fact, when we took a Toyota Camry out on the track and applied full acceleration, we found that we could stop the car simply by applying the brake at full force. Drivers of runaways usually say they stamped the brake to no effect. So is the cause of these incidents—which have affected all major car companies—mechanical, or driver error? The truth is that nobody really knows.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up