It’s like déjà vu all over again.
One of the driving forces behind this column lies in the amazing ability of our mainstream media outlets to get their facts dead wrong.
Let’s be real here. The news organizations that contribute the bulk of our national news stories that we, the news consumers, use to inform ourselves are well-funded outfits populated with professional journalists whose sole job is to organize their facts and report them to us.
So, Toyota’s been in the news a lot lately.
Right up front, you need to know one thing — there are not, nor have there ever been, any “runaway” Toyotas.
Oh, there have been instances of sticking throttles and, in some cases, even though the drivers claim to have been pushing on the brake with both feet, the cars still accelerated out of control. There have been accidents and there have been fatalities.
But there have not been any cases where the cars sped away uncontrollably in spite of the driver slamming on the brakes.
Some of you may remember a similar story from the 1980s, when it was claimed that turbocharged Audi sedans were plagued with the same malady. In that case, hatchet journalism ended up almost driving Audi right out of the North American car market.
Now, the sticky Toyota throttles aren’t a non-issue by any means. But this deal is going to cost Toyota millions more than it should, partly because it has failed to be blunt and plain spoken about the so-called problem, but mostly because our legions of professional journalists remain curiously incurious about the nuts and bolts of this issue.
Here’s the long and the short of it — Toyota doesn’t sell a car that can overpower its own brakes.
Here’s how easy this deal would have been to do some investigative journalism on — you can rent a V6 Camry at any airport rental counter.
From the rental counter to a relatively quiet stretch of two-lane highway is no more than an hour or so in any part of Canada or the U.S.
Once there, it’s a simple matter to run the car up to 105 (65 mph) to 113 km/h (70 mph), stomp on the throttle with one foot and then firmly apply the brakes with the other. (If you’re afraid to do that, throw away your drivers licence right now, and give all your car keys to your kid sister.)
Had any major news outlet done exactly that, they would have discovered what a major automotive magazine has discovered, and what they discovered and documented is exactly what they thought in the first place.
From 113 km/h (70 mph), a V6 Toyota took about three metres to come to a complete stop with the throttle wide open than it took to grind to a stop with no throttle added. In fact, at full throttle, the braking performance of the Toyota was still better than a competing model’s stopping ability under normal conditions.
Had the bright journalistic minds of the 1980s done the same thing with a turbocharged Audi, they’d have made an identical discovery.
The hard truth is that where runaways have occurred, there appears to be no other explanation than the panicked drivers have been pressing on the gas instead of the brake.
Unfortunately, though, this just leads us to the bigger question. This little story has been covered by dozens of major news organizations who have all got an easily checked central fact of the story dead wrong.
In my own reading of the news, I see this on a very regular basis just in the areas where I have a little more than basic knowledge.
My question is “How much more of the news is completely dead wrong?”
Bill Greenwood is a local freelance columnist.