http://www.caranddriver.com/news/car/10q1/toyota_recall_scandal_media_circus_and_stupid_drivers-editorial
Let me state upfront that I am no big fan of Toyota. To quote Mike Dushane of Car and Driver, ” Toyota has earned a reputation in this country over the past 30 years as a maker of utterly dull and utterly reliable transportation appliances.” I drive a 1996 GMC Suburban, the anti-Prius if there ever was one. Having said that, I now intend to defend Toyota based on common sense and some automotive history. 
In the 1960′s Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, his opus of bile against the American automobile industry. The centerpiece of the book was Nader’s criticism of the Chevrolet Corvair, General Motor’s attempt to capitalize on the unexpected popularity of the Volkswagen Beetle. Nader asserted that the rear engined, swing-axle suspension design of the Corvair made it inherently unstable in cornering situations. Nader made a critical error that would be repeated by other automotive safety critics, the media, and the U.S. government at least two more times in the next 30 odd years.
What Ralph Nader neglected to mention is that most Corvair buyers had no previous experience driving rear engined cars. The handling characteristics are quite different from the larger, front engine/rear wheel drive cars Americans were used to. The Corvair, as well as the contemporary Beetle, tended to over-steer, that is, the rear end of the car would come around if cornering at too high speeds. Compounding this quirk was the swing axle suspension, which allowed the inside rear wheel to “jack up” in a corner, increasing the chance of a rollover.
Drivers experienced with oversteer conditions knew to overcome them by careful steering correction. American drivers, lacking this knowledge, ended up rolling their Corvairs over or running them off the road. It probably didn’t help that the small Corvair had to share the road with the two-and-a-half ton land yachts of the time. Naturally, as today, the smaller car fared much worse in a collision with a larger one. Thus did General Motors end up with a reputation for selling a deathtrap, and Ralph Nader established himself as America’s first car nanny.
Fast forward to the 1980′s, and the origin of today’s “sudden acceleration” hysteria. Audi was beginning to establish itself in America as a maker of high performance German luxury cars. There were some incidents of Audi 5000 models seeming to take on minds of their own, accelerating when their drivers were trying to brake. CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes broadcast a horribly biased account of these events, using a plaintiff’s attorney’s consultant as their resident expert. After numerous lawsuits, the US government determined that “every single so-called unintended acceleration accident was caused by driver error.” Again, most American drivers of Audis were used to the brake and accelerator pedals being farther apart, as they had traded their Buicks and Lincolns for the latest in high-end autos.
This brings us to the current day, and the media and government feeding frenzy against Toyota. The most highly publicized incident so far, the deaths of 4 people in a Lexus in California, has been found to have been caused by an incorrect floor mat causing the accelerator to stick wide open. Likewise, the recent incredible story of the runaway Prius is full of holes big enough to drive an F-150 through. All car manufacturers have had cases of unintended acceleration reported to them. The reason Toyota gets more attention is that there are more Toyotas on the road, and, especially in the case of the Prius, most drivers are unaccustomed to newer technology such as hybrid powerplants and electronic,”drive-by-wire” throttles.
In spite of Nader’s assertions and those that have followed him, automakers do not build cars to kill their customers. That would be bad for business. There are many good articles available on the web explaining what to do if your car suddenly accelerates on its own. Please read them if you think you will ever be in that situation. I have driven for more than 35 years, and it hasn’t happened to me yet. Read these reports of runaway Toyotas (and other makes) with a grain of salt, and apply some common sense.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/09q4/how_to_deal_with_unintended_acceleration-tech_dept
