Did Toyota Plant a Wall Street Journal Story?
After all the recall news and fears of run-away Toyota Prius Hybrids (whether those claims be fact or fiction) it seemed like the media was calming down. And with reports that one of the more talked about incidents was quite possibly “driver error” – well Toyota may just be off the hook…or are they? Could
it be that Toyota actually planted that story in the Wall Street Journal? Is Toyota in on a high level automotive conspiracy that even the WSJ isn’t immune from? Will they tell us whatever they chose, leading us to believe it’s fact instead of fiction? Where’s Mulder & Scully!?! And we need the real ones, not the Kimberly Kane adult movie spoof versions! (Although, she’s a really good Scully too).
According to Jalopnik, “An unnamed spokesperson at NHTSA, the U.S. agency responsible for examining Toyota unintended acceleration problems, claims last week’s Wall Street Journal story asserting “driver error” was the main cause, was planted by Toyota.” Though the blog and pretty much anyone else involved say that, even though the story was planted, it probably was indeed driver error.
You see, somewhere around 99% of these “Sudden Acceleration” accidents are caused by the driver, not the vehicle itself. So, Toyota might have jumped the gun, sending this bit of info to the Wall Street Journal, but that doesn’t mean it’s false – just in poor taste. This too, is how Toyota (and any other smart company) gets out of paying off a lot of wrongful death lawsuits.
Also from Jalopnik: “A Wall Street Journal article from this past week claimed that initial findings from the US Department of Transportation (DOT), of which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a part, stated that drivers have been to blame for the unintended acceleration by pressing the wrong pedals.”
However, NHTSA, the body responsible for examining the Toyota pedal problems in the US, has firmly rebutted claims the story came from the safety organization. An anonymous NHTSA spokeswoman even went so far as to claim “that story was planted by Toyota” to the publication just-auto. She went on,”Toyota is the source – yes we know that for definite. It is [the] Toyota PR machine. We knew they were going to put it out.”
Stay tuned folks, because like Mulder we all want to believe.
Source: Jalopnik
I think the accusation that Toyota “planted” a story is a political move by NHTSA. Ray LaHood has demonstrated that he’s not above playing politics with Toyota…he’s said that people should “stop driving” their Toyotas, that he’s going to “hold Toyota’s feet to the fire,” that he would have fined them “billions,” etc.
Here’s how I think it went down: NHTSA didn’t want the public to find out that Toyota is essentially off the hook. Instead, they wanted to continue the investigation permanently until they can’t possibly put it off any longer…then release some long report that tries to bury this revelation.
Besides, let’s be honest for a moment: How dumb does a journalist have to be to print a story that’s handed to them by a major corporation? There’s no chance that the WSJ ran this without checking with sources at NHTSA…it’s just more crappy Chicago politics.