A new report in the WSJ quotes a retiring NHTSA official as saying higher-ups are refusing to release the results of the agency’s staff investigation into charges of Toyota sudden acceleration, because those findings are not unfavorable enough toward the automaker. I’ve got more detail in a new post at Cato at Liberty, and Ted covers the story at PoL.
Meanwhile, proponents of a sweeping expansion of federal auto safety law, one that would thrust Washington much more deeply into the operations of the automotive industry, are really in a hurry — a quick, urgent, must-do-now hurry — to pass it, even though many of its provisions have not had much airing in public debate. An editorial today in the New York Times — a newspaper that almost comically underplayed the revelations earlier this month about the NHTSA probe’s pro-Toyota results — flatly asserts that the Japanese automaker’s vehicles suffer “persistent problems of uncontrolled acceleration,” and demands that the sweeping new legislation “be passed into law without delay.” It’s almost as if they are afraid of what might happen if lawmakers pause to take a closer look.
Among the many other things the new legislation would do is greatly enhance the legal leverage of automaker or dealership employees who adopt the mantle of “whistleblowers”. But if the new revelations from a responsible career employee of NHTSA are ignored, we will have another confirmation that some types of whistleblowing are more welcome in America’s governing class than others. (& welcome Coyote, Gabriel Malor, Death by 1000 Papercuts, Mark Hemingway/D.C. Examiner (“the indispensable Overlawyered blog”), Allen McDuffee/Think Tanked readers).
Tagged as:
accolades,
NHTSA,
Toyota,
whistleblowers
Years ago I promised myself that I’d stop wading into comments sections, but my breach of that promise today in a trial-lawyer blog attacking me for pointing out the truth about the bogus Toyota sudden acceleration claims might amuse some readers, and I might as well get a post out of it.
“Are not companies obligated to make the safest vehicle possible?”
The safest vehicle possible is a Sherman tank with a restrictor plate preventing it from exceeding 1 mph, so the answer to your question is “no”—though certainly trial lawyers have an interest in asking you to think manufacturers are doing something wrong when they don’t.
“Until Toyota can identify the exact cause of these accidents (besides the too-convenient driver error) anything and everything is in question and must be investigated.”
I look forward to you writing NHTSA and demanding they investigate if invisible vampires are causing elderly drivers to hit the wrong pedal. After all, anything and everything is in question, and you reject Occam’s Razor when it comes to an alleged electronic defect that simultaneously causes three separate systems to malfunction six times more often for elderly drivers than non-elderly drivers, so why not demand an investigation of the equally unlikely invisible-vampire problem as long as you’re rejecting science?
Tagged as:
junk science,
product liability,
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
I’ve got a new post up at Cato at Liberty on the new report that NHTSA investigators found no electronic flaws in the cars and extensive evidence of driver error. Ted’s post yesterday is below. Press coverage of yesterday’s numbers: USA Today, Bloomberg (Litigation Lobby figure Joan Claybrook doubles down on gotta-be-electronics line), Boston Globe (& welcome The Week readers).
Tagged as:
Toyota,
WO writings
WSJ (h/t C.W.):
The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that at the time of the crashes, throttles were wide open and the brakes were not engaged, people familiar with the findings said.
In other words, driver error, except in the one-in-a-million instances when a gas pedal was trapped by a poorly-installed floor mat. Will plaintiffs’ lawyers who have been conspiracy-theorizing about a non-existent electronic defect withdraw their class actions and product-liability suits, much less apologize? How about AP and the news media? Don’t count on it. Earlier from me and from Walter.
Tagged as:
media bias,
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
Except that even a cursory reading of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s news release should have kept the magazine from jumping to any such conclusion. Michael Fumento explains.
Tagged as:
NHTSA,
product liability,
Toyota
- Doc self-injects with Botox, wins $15 million on failure-to-warn claim [Legal Blog Watch]
- Kindergarten teacher Tonya Craft acquitted in widely watched abuse-allegation case [Sullum and more, Greenfield, Popehat, A Public Defender, Lynch]
- Naughty Toyota, it defends itself when attacked [Fumento, Ted at PoL]
- Washington Post profiles economist/perennial blogroll favorite Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) with guest appearance by fashion business mentor/outspoken CPSIA critic Kathleen Fasanella;
- Business groups oppose nomination to federal judgeship of Rhode Island trial lawyer/political kingmaker Jack McConnell [ShopFloor]
- “CEI’s FTC Complaint Against GM: A Response to Walter Olson” [Fred Smith/Open Market, earlier]
- Bad: New York’s highest court limits assumption of risk defense [NYLJ, Mura, Rapp]
- Why we can’t represent you in your suit demanding removal of your microchip brain implant [Popehat]
Tagged as:
assumption of risk,
child abuse,
failure to warn,
New York,
Rhode Island,
Toyota
The quest to do something about the imagined Toyota crisis may result in a federal mandate for all cars to include “brake-override” features that cut off power when the driver hits the brake. Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Michael Fumento says many cars on the road do already have such a feature — but lawmakers don’t seem overly curious as to whether it’s made a difference.
Tagged as:
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
Michael Fumento warns that the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “has no category for ‘sudden acceleration,’ merely a ‘speed control’ category.” The result is that many complaints of lack of acceleration can wind up getting counted and cited as if they supported the trial lawyers’ case.
Tagged as:
NHTSA,
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
- Liquor commissioner of New Hampshire nabbed on DWI rap, refuses breathalyzer test [WMUR]
- Slumber party liability waivers are something we’ve reported on before. But home trampoline disclaimers? [Free-Range Kids]
- Website’s terms and conditions include giving up your immortal soul [Popehat]
- Scottish jury says charges “not proven” against lawyers in case of monetary demand for return of stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting [Guardian, earlier]
- If you’re going to shake down food makers with false claims of contaminants in their wares, it’s best to vary your story patterns [Tacoma News-Tribune, Seattle Times]
- “My task is simple: spew foundationless tripe that turns itself into a pre-trial settlement demand.” [The Namby Pamby, a lawyer blog I really should have linked before now] More: Daniel Fisher, Forbes.
- Why plaintiffs lawyers aren’t so thrilled about recent Toyota revelations: most are invested in blaming electronics, not stuck pedals or mats [WSJ Law Blog]
- Duck hunters sue guide over disappointing trip [Fred Hartman, Fort Bend, Texas, Herald]
Tagged as:
alcohol,
finger in the chili,
New Hampshire,
Texas,
Toyota
Is the Japanese company super-extra-resistant to discovery demands, or is it just behaving the way other automakers would, backed up by a Japanese legal environment that is less oriented than ours toward compulsory disclosure-on-demand managed by hostile lawyers? Michael Fumento: “it’s clear from the article that the ‘experts’ upon whom the journalists relied aren’t just lawyers, aren’t just trial lawyers, but are trial lawyers suing Toyota.”
Tagged as:
discovery,
Japan,
media bias,
Toyota
Revealing vignette from AP coverage last month:
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero has been pushing [Michigan Attorney General Mike] Cox to aggressively go after the Japanese automaker, saying in a statement last week that Cox should file a claim on behalf of all owners of Toyota vehicles in Michigan and seek to recover damages under state and federal consumer protection laws.
“If Mike Cox won’t stand up for Michigan consumers and hold Toyota accountable for these reprehensible actions, he isn’t doing his job,” Bernero said. The Lansing mayor heads the Mayors and Municipalities Automotive Coalition, an advocacy group for communities that depend on the domestic auto industry.
Tagged as:
Michigan,
Toyota
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.
Tagged as:
AAJ,
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
- 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”
Tagged as:
sudden acceleration,
Toyota
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, posted documents purporting to show that Toyota held onto safety documents it was supposed to turn over to opponents in litigation. Turns out the documents had been shoddily snipped, edited and mischaracterized to advance the charges against the automaker. [Christine Tierney, Detroit News via Henry Payne, NRO; more background on whistleblower controversy, The Recorder last year]
Tagged as:
Toyota,
U.S. House of Representatives
