Michael Fumento on “misinformation cascades” [Philadelphia Inquirer]
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Posts tagged as:
sudden acceleration
According to Kelley’s Blue Book, consumers are trending back toward the Japanese maker in their buying plans. [New York Times "Bucks" blog] That’s despite the menace of rays from outer space, as denounced by one anonymous informant to NHTSA. [Detroit Free Press, which has a PDF of the submission from "A Concerned Scientist"]
More: On a more serious note, Holman Jenkins has a good column today [WSJ, sub-only] tracing the key role of bandwagon effects in sudden acceleration consciousness (which is one reason waves of complaints tend to occur in clumps, by carmaker and otherwise). Excerpt:
…In 2001, at least four papers were presented at the annual meeting of the Trial Lawyers Association urging a revival of sudden unintended acceleration litigation, insisting that such cases could prevail in absence of evidence of a defect, and even amid evidence of driver error, simply by harping in front of a jury on a record of “Other Similar Incidents” (OSI).
That’s the roadmap being followed now, as lawyer Randy Roberts told CNBC this week: “Toyota is very good at taking one consumer complaint about sudden unintended acceleration and dissecting it and convincing you that it may have been a floor mat or driver error or a sticky pedal. But when you put all those complaints out on the table, then you can see the big picture. That’s how you connect the dots.”
Huh? The logic here is ridiculous. To wit: 15 examples of X causing Y are proof that something other than X must cause Y.
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- In much-publicized recent Harrison, N.Y. crash, computer shows no indication that housekeeper driving car was using the brake [NY Times, Detroit News]
- My National Review Online piece (which spent a couple of days in the #1 and #2 most-read positions at that site) is discussed by Damon Root at Reason “Hit and Run” among elsewhere;
- 69 year old plows her car into a clinic waiting room in Peabody, Mass., but she was driving an Infiniti so everyone can turn the page [Boston Herald]
- About that “declining quality at Toyota” meme [Truth About Cars, Fumento and more]
- As I pointed out in the NRO piece, complaints of unintended acceleration ebb and flow for reasons that often seem to have more to do with cultural and media trends than with what might actually be going on with the cars. Apropos of which, blogger Auto Prophet says complaints actually dropped drastically during the years that electronic throttle controls became common;
- NHTSA administrator Strickland, who counts as a bit of a hostile witness around these parts, testified last week that “the rate of complaints against Toyota, when compared with other makers, was ‘unremarkable.’” [WaPo]
- Toyota demanding retraction of ABC News story [Gawker]
- Here’s a seminar on how to sue, with CLE credit and speakers from firms like Kline & Specter;
- Highway deaths fall to historic low [David Henderson/EconLog, Payne/NRO "Planet Gore"]
- Simply priceless: the L.A. Times, which of all the big papers perhaps most reliably transmits a Litigation Lobby view of the world, prints a grossly tendentious paean to the glories of auto-design litigation that relies extensively on the views of Ben Kelley — yes, the Ben Kelley. One place to begin for a corrective is Charles Babcock’s paper, “Approaches to Product Liability Risk in the U.S. Automotive Industry“, published in the 1994 National Academy of Engineering volume Product Liability and Innovation: Managing Risk in an Uncertain Environment.
- Sam Smith at Jalopnik is taking a hard line: “America, You Brought The Toyota Hoax On Yourself”
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In 1992, Diana Maychick drove her mother’s Oldsmobile back to Washington Place in Greenwich Village, and got out. Her mother, the 74-year-old Stella Maychick, slid over from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat, readying herself to return to Yonkers. Maycheck, a shorter-than-average woman, suddenly took off in the car, which sped up, ran two stop signs, and tore through Washington Square Park, killing five and maiming several others.
Diana Maychick is now Diana Foote, a restaurant reviewer for a Palm Beach newspaper, and recently recounted the accident, claiming the recent Toyota troubles exonerated her mother.
Which I found fascinating, because I worked on that litigation—and the evidence that Maychick hit the gas instead of the brake was so strong that the plaintiffs’ lawyers abandoned the standard specious “mysterious gremlins caused the car to accelerate” theory and replaced it with a “General Motors knew that drivers were hitting the wrong pedal but didn’t do enough to warn them” theory. I took issue with Foote’s column in a letter to the newspaper.
As for the lawsuit itself, the judge excused everyone in the voir dire who expressed the remotest skepticism about plaintiffs’ theory, and GM settled shortly after the start of trial. One certainly marvels at the chutzpah of the theory of the case, given trial lawyers’ role in trying to persuade the public that driver error couldn’t possibly be to blame.
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Pretty much shows that he was faking it, according to a memo in Jalopnik’s hands. Kudos to Michael Fumento for calling it.
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And in timely news, a specious $18M sudden acceleration verdict (see our August 2006 coverage) was unanimously reversed by the South Carolina Supreme Court after they threw out junk-science testimony theorizing that electromagnetic interference with the cruise control caused the sudden acceleration. Passengers in the crash that wore their seatbelts were uninjured, but the unbelted driver was paralyzed. The plaintiff has the option of a new trial. (Sonya Watson v. Ford Motor Company, h/t L Nettles comment).
Don’t miss Walter’s phenomenal overview of the Toyota sudden acceleration frenzy, and its remarkable similarity’s to last generation’s Audi frenzy. At today’s NRO.
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My Toyota op-ed is going viral, with dozens of retweets, and listings on the front pages of Hot Air and reddit—not to mention an Instalink. And Alex Tabarrok tests my numbers at Marginal Revolution.
Update: Don’t miss Megan McArdle’s comprehensive take.
I expand on my earlier post in today’s Washington Examiner, including my skepticism of the conventional reporting on the James Sikes incident.
Michael Fumento is also on the case on his blog and in the LA Times; see also Richard Schmidt in the New York Times on the last generation of sudden acceleration.
Update: Fumento goes farther on the James Sikes story than I did. I also found the idea that Sikes reached for the accelerator while driving implausible after trying to repeat the experiment in a (parked!) Prius.
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Dating back to 1992 models, LA Times reporters found 56 deaths reported to NHTSA over the course of 19 model-years. If Toyota is suffering from electronic problems, these electronic problems should affect all drivers equally. If Toyota sudden acceleration is caused by driver pedal misapplication, then we should expect to see a disproportionate number of elderly and short drivers. Unfortunately, we don’t have driver heights, and in only 24 of the 56 cases, did the Times list the age of the driver.
The ages: 18, 21, 22*, 32, 34, 44, 45, 47, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71**, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89.
*Passenger victim was 22 and “friend” of driver.
**Passenger victim was 71 and married to husband-driver for 46 years.
The median age is 60.5; the majority of drivers are 60 or older; a third are older than 70. And I left out the case of a driver who was the son of a 94-year-old victim rather than guesstimate his age to be 65. That looks suspiciously like the makeup of Audi sudden acceleration cases, and a lot like driver error to me. Color me skeptical. Very very skeptical.
Update, March 12: Megan McArdle has done some very impressive journalism following up on my work to fill in the gaps that the LA Times left out. Here’s her spreadsheet. (McArdle also has the guts to mention the disproportionate number of immigrants in the sample, which I didn’t.) Her report makes me realize I made a mistake in the sequence above: I confused an 89-year-old passenger with a 71-year-old driver. In addition, the driver I conservatively estimated to be 71 above turns out to have been 75. And McArdle says that a driver I listed as 61 is 60. Here’s McArdle’s more complete and more accurate sequence; I’ve estimated three of the ages where they were not listed:
18, 21, 21*, 20s**, 32, 34, 36, 44, 45, 47, 56, 56, 57, 58, 60, 60, 63, 60s***, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 75, 75, 77, 77, 79, 83, 87
*Driver was with 21-year-old friend
**Driver had girlfriend and young daughter
***Driver was picking up 67-year-old friend for church.
This actually strengthens my case: the median age is 60, 16 out of 30 (or 15 out of 29) are 60 or older (as compared to 16% of drivers in all automotive fatalities)—that’s a relative risk of over 6. We’ve gone from a small sample size of 24 to a slightly less small sample size of 29-30, improving statistical significance.
Separately, reader G. writes:
Hey Ted: one more data point on why Mr. Prius Acceleration is likely a fake — the stretch of I8 where the incident occurred. If you were to pick the one stretch of highway in San Diego County where you could go 94 MPH with almost no traffic and almost no curves, that is the stretch. At about 15 miles east of San Diego that road becomes deserted at all hours — it runs out into the Imperial Valley and then into Arizona. I have driven it tens of times, at all times of day, and never hit traffic unless there was a Border Patrol checkpoint. It is also almost straight– with some very moderate curves and some hills. Counter-data points: (a) About 60 miles east of San Diego (heading East) you hit some severe curves and a steep downhill grade as the road heads out of the mountains and onto the desert floor. I wouldn’t want to head into that at 94 MPH, even if I was faking the acceleration; and (b) dude is from Jacumba, which is on that highway (he didn’t drive from another part of the area just to drive on the road.
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Looks like network news departments are up to some of their old tricks. Gawker has the story (“How ABC News’ Brian Ross Staged His Toyota Death Ride”) and followup (“ABC News’ Toyota Test Fiasco”).
In the chapter “Trial Lawyer TV” in my book The Rule of Lawyers (St. Martin’s 2003, not online, why don’t you buy a copy?) I found that not only had the networks seemed to have learned nothing from the notorious 1993 “Dateline NBC” fiasco, they had actually gone back to using some of the same expert witnesses, “consumer” groups and staging techniques that had gotten them in trouble in the first place. So I must say nothing surprises me.
More: Neal Boudette, “Toyota slams ABC News on pedals”, WSJ:
At a news conference, engineering consultants hired by Toyota also showed they are able to cause vehicles made by three other auto makers to rev suddenly by making the same electronic modifications used by a college professor who was the subject of the ABC report, and who testified before Congress last month.
Other coverage: Matt Hardigree, Jalopnik; Washington Post (quoting Edmunds.com senior editor Bill Visnic as saying the carmaker “really chipped away at the evidence provided by Dr. Gilbert during the congressional hearings”); Safety Research & Strategies of Rehoboth, Mass., a trial lawyer consulting firm, “funded Gilbert’s test”, according to Business Week; Gilbert’s response at Barrons.com.
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I’ve got a link roundup at Point of Law and have updated the earlier post as well; it seems NBC News led off its broadcast with 11 straight minutes on the carmaker.
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Some views you probably won’t be hearing during today’s highly orchestrated Capitol Hill events [Ed Wallace, Business Week] Regarding that “declining quality at Toyota” meme ["The Truth About NHTSA Complaints," TTAC] Sudden runup in count of deaths “linked to” possible Toyota acceleration is from newly filed reports on old cases [Fumento/CEI] Commentary from Richard Epstein [Forbes.com via Damon Root, Reason "Hit and Run"] Former trial lawyer lobbyist David Strickland, now helping lead charge against Toyota as NHTSA administrator, was principal author of ghastly CPSIA law [Amend The CPSIA] Also: links to ongoing Point of Law coverage.
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The Truth About Cars has the details. I’ve got a bunch of background links at Point of Law.
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- Insurance mandate or no, New Jersey specialists tending to duck out of high-legal-risk procedures like mammography [Amy Handlin, Gloucester County Times via NJLRA]
- Audi redux, or something different this time? L.A. Times endorses charges of sudden acceleration against Toyota [Holman Jenkins/WSJ, FindLaw "Injured"]
- Ghastly idea of the year: Rep. Waxman wants federal government to be “responsible” for fixing journalism [Coyote, Bainbridge]
- “Arkansas Judge Tosses Defamation Lawsuit Against Dixie Chicks Over ‘West Memphis Three’ Letter” [Citizen Media Law, Longstreth/American Lawyer]
- Judge Weinstein: falsification by arresting officers seems “widespread” in NYPD [Balko, Greenfield]
- U.K.: Carbon ration cards? [Krauthammer]
- Nova Scotia, Canada: “A Couple in their 70s Wave at A Kid…And In Swoop the Cops” [Free-Range Kids]
- Barbra Streisand loses suit over aerial photo of her Malibu home taken by environmental group; by suing, she ensures that many thousands more people will see the photograph, in what is dubbed “Streisand effect” [six years ago on Overlawyered]
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- More fen-phen scandals: Possible smoking-gun email in Kentucky case (see Walter’s post today) came from Chesley firm computer; Vicksburg lawyer first attorney convicted in Mississippi fen-phen scam. [Courier-Journal via Lattman; Clarion-Ledger (h/t S.B.)] (Updated with correct Courier-Journal link.)
- Allegheny College found not liable by jury for student’s suicide; school raised issue of student privacy concerns. Earlier on OL: May 30; Dec. 7, 2004. [WSJ]
- Update on the tempered glass versus laminated issue earlier discussed in Overlawyered (Feb. 15, 2006; May 16, 2005; May 13, 2005, etc.) [LA Times]
- Massachusetts court rejects quack sudden acceleration theory. (See also Dec. 20, Aug. 7, etc.) [Prince]
- California bill would bar carpenters from school campuses. [Overcriminalized]
- New book: Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice [Richard Epstein @ AEI]
- To be fair, I went to school with “young Mr Sussman, the boyish charmer”, and I don’t know how to pronounce “calumnies” either—it’s one of those words I’ve only seen written, and never heard spoken [Steyn; MSNBC]
If you ever want to see a trial lawyer manipulate the press, and the press unskeptically eat it up, you could do worse than to watch the recent performance of Steve Yerrid (Oct. 5-6) in a recent Tampa trial.
The facts convey an undeniably terrible accident. Fifty-year-old high-school-dropout Denzil Blake was cleaning an Isuzu Rodeo at Town ‘N Country Car Wash when he accidentally hit the gearshift, sending the car (which should not have been running) out of neutral. Blake didn’t know how to drive (Florida law allows a person without a driver’s license to operate a vehicle on private property, so there was nothing illegal about allowing unlicensed drivers to move cars in a carwash), panicked, and accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, sending the car speeding into 43-year-old Brenda Lee Brown, striking her just after she pushed her young son’s stroller to safety; she died of her injuries two days later. Blake was not criminally charged.
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Stephanie Mencimer, in a trolling post I really should just ignore, suggests that reformers are just “overprivileged white guys” who have “never flipped a burger” or driven an American car and whose “private schooling and Ivy League bona fides” mean we just want to stick it to the little guy.
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