10 ms·
Toyota, The Media Owe You an Apology
- cafard 16y agoTake a seat in the waiting room next to Audi.
- stcredzero 16y agoA part of the problem is that so many of the people in news seemingly didn't even pay attention in grade school science classes. I remember one local newsroom's momentary collective embarrassment when it became obvious that one of their number a) had no concept of how fast orbital velocity is b) apparently had an Aristotelian concept of momentum and c) held the 19th century belief that just going a certain speed could somehow harm or stress the human body. In the US, a lot of news which has technical content is presented by people who don't understand it.
- ynniv 16y agoIt's only a problem if you want quality news. CBS wants advertising revenue, so they will produce content that attracts viewers who will buy advertised products. What they are currently doing produces their desired output. The only real problem is that this bad news becomes "common knowledge", and it is difficult to separate independently derived common knowledge (probably true, or somehow indicative of innate human behavior) from mass media common knowledge (probably false, and ripe for exploitation by a small number of people).
- stcredzero 16y agoThe only real problem is that this bad news becomes "common knowledge" This is a real pernicious problem. For about a decade, the tech fields as a whole underestimated the performance of JIT VM, overestimated the importance of FLOPS, and failed to consider the cost of I/O. Countless Pointy Haired Bosses made misguided decisions on this basis. Hordes of programmers decided not to seriously consider whole families of languages on this basis as well. Always suspect the "common knowledge." The level of common knowledge is like the level of defensive driving on the freeways. About 1/2 the people out there are below average. (If you know about any subject in depth, take stock of how badly misunderstood it is by the general public. Most likely, it's just as bad everywhere else. Information asymmetry! Now go out and profit!)
- CWuestefeld 16y agoAlways suspect the "common knowledge." Not just this, but if anyone uses "common sense" as an argument, run away in fear. As far as I can tell, "common sense" is just code for one of (A) "I'm too lazy to provide a rational explanation"; (B) "I don't think you're worth explaining to"; (C) "I don't think you're capable of understanding"; or (D) "I don't have a real explanation, but I still need to assert the truth of my claim."
- dennisgorelik 16y agoIs it a good time to buy TM?
- whatusername 16y agoHere's a fun recent one from Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3132384.htm http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3132384.htm Media Watch is a brilliant show.
- jacques_chester 16y agoI prefer Front Line myself. That Michael Moore fellow (no relation to the documentarist) is very trustworthy.
- techiferous 16y ago"so many of the people in news seemingly didn't even pay attention in grade school science classes." I've noticed this, too. For example, I once read on CNN that a satellite was orbiting "one trillion miles" away from Earth. But even more egregious than that numerical error (which was later corrected) was an article a few years ago on how young people's thumbs are "mutating". Basically, the idea was that people were using their thumbs to type on cell phones. Somehow CNN made a genetics story out of it.
- stcredzero 16y agoMaybe that guy on CNN was paying attention in biology, but he was passing notes to the cute redhead when the teacher was covering Lamarckian evolution right at the moment he explained it was wrong.
- sliverstorm 16y agohad no concept of how fast orbital velocity is Umm... what do you mean by that? I consider myself fairly well versed in science, but I certainly can't rattle off the average orbital speed of a GPS satellite.
- stcredzero 16y agoYes, but you know full well that current fighter jets can't get very near it. That was one of his obvious mistakes.
- eru 16y agoI could probably work it out in a few minutes on the back of an envelope. You just have to know the radius of earth (around 6000 km), the strength of gravity at surface level, that gravity of a sphere is the same as that of a point mass, and that gravity drops off as the inverse square of distance. Add in some integration, and a guess about how big an orbit is (just choose infinite size for an upper bound, if you aren't sure), and you are set to go.
- eli 16y agoMaybe true, but they also spent months illegally withholding crash data from government regulators. Let's call it even.
- dschobel 16y agoWhat's your source? All I found are civil suits against Toyota asking for the EDR data but nothing criminal for "withholding crash data from the government regulators".
- eli 16y agoSorry, my wording was confusing. I meant they were hiding the fact that people were getting into accidents from "sticky gas pedals" not that they were hiding actual EDR crash data. "Toyota Motor Corporation agreed to pay a $16.375 million fine - the largest fine permitted by law - for failing to notify the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of a dangerous pedal defect for almost four months" http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10 http://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/DOT-71-10
- potatolicious 16y agoThis seems to conflict with mukyu's post above: "As with the report on Tuesday, the preliminary examination given to Congress in August found no evidence of flawed electronics in vehicles that crashed. That examination found only one instance in which an accelerator pedal became trapped under a floor mat and none in which a pedal became stuck or sprang back too slowly."
- eli 16y agoEven if the cars turn out to all be fine (and we don't know that yet), Toyota certainly couldn't have known that at the time. It is totally unacceptable (and illegal) to hide a potentially fatal problem with your products, even if you think it's probably not widespread.
- 16y ago
- Jun8 16y agoIt's not that Toyota didn't have any problems with the cars, they just found that there was no electronic malfunction. From CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/autos/nhtsa_nasa_toyota_final_report/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/autos/nhtsa_nasa_toyota_fina...): "Toyota recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in 2008 and 2009 for defects related to gas pedals -- including sticky pedals and floor mat obstruction -- as a result of complaints of unwanted acceleration."
- anonymous246 16y agoAre you sure Toyota didn't do that gratuitously as a PR exercise? Because I'm not.
- Jun8 16y ago8M cars to recall (and the resulting hit to prestige) is a huge cost, compared to the PR gain they had on this issue.
- steve19 16y agoThe alternative was doing nothing and being raped by the media for killing people and doing nothing about it. What choice did Toyota have? Better to be seen doing something even if the problem did not exist.
- eli 16y agoWell, isn't that kinda what they did? The fine wasn't for having unsafe cars. It was for getting reports that their cars were unsafe and hiding them from regulators
- mseebach 16y agoCompared to the cost of finding out that the cars actually were defective and killing people? PR-cost plus settling the class action suit.
- mukyu 16y ago
- protomyth 16y agoAfter what Consumer Reports pulled with Suzuki and the media reporting on that, I am pretty sure Toyota shouldn't hold their breath.
- CamperBob 16y agoCan't forget the Ford pickups that 'Dateline' discovered have a tendency to explode when you attach model rocket engines to the gas tank.
- electromagnetic 16y ago> Ford pickups ... have a tendency to explode when you attach model rocket engines to the gas tank. And I was told it was a fail safe mechanism so that the gas tank didn't explode unexpectedly, some people will lie to you to sell you anything!
- stcredzero 16y agoHeh. Actually, the Mythbusters guys have tried to get gas tanks to explode, with seemingly everything short of strapping rocket engines directly to the thing. It done burn good, but no 'splode.
- tomjen3 16y agoThats not really fair. It didn't burn until they shot it with tracer/incendiary rounds. Normal bullets don't come anywhere near setting the gas on fire.
- stcredzero 16y agoThe more I learn, the more the humble gas tank looks like really awesome tech! I mean, you can put a shitload of energy in the thing, and for all that it's surprisingly robust.
- protomyth 16y ago
- techiferous 16y agoBy the way, what's so scary about a gas pedal getting stuck? Can't you just put the car in neutral?
- brianpan 16y agoThe gas pedal getting "stuck" is a result of the scary, not the cause. About to hit something unexpectedly->slam foot down on wrong pedal->omg the car accelerated when it should have stopped!
- InclinedPlane 16y agoSome people respond poorly in emergencies. The fight-or-flight response causes their brains to lock up and they freak out, instead of making rational decisions. They'll burn out the breaks trying to break normally, for example, or just do nothing until they run into something. Even though in such a situation any combination of fully breaking, shutting off the engine, picking the accelerator pedal up with the edge of your shoe, using the emergency brake, or shifting into neutral would probably be more than sufficient.
- LogicHoleFlaw 16y agoThing is, just jamming on the brakes will stop your car, every time. Your brakes are much more powerful than your accelerator. The problem is when a driver thinks their foot is on the brake, when it is actually on the accelerator. So mashing their foot to the ground just exacerbates (i.e. causes in the first place) the problem. The panic response is very difficult to overcome.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoIndeed, that was the first thing I listed. In an emergency you should condition yourself to jam on the brakes. That will stop the car, even if the accelerator is running. However, some people will try to apply the brakes gradually (as you would when coming to a stop normally). And in that case the brakes won't respond as one might expect. If the brakes don't seem to work, push harder until they do.
- schwit 16y agoThe media also owes an apology to Richard Jewel and the Duke lacrosse team.
- cookiecaper 16y agoThe Toyota thing was obvious propaganda, constructed just as a story was needed to boost sales from American automakers. The businessmen that run these monolithic media corporations, for whom news is only a small part of the total holdings, need friends with political power. The politicians need someone to make them look good. It's a mutually beneficial relationship; the businessmen get a fast track to DMCA et al, the politicians get a fast track to making their choices from earlier look good (bailing out American autos, in this case).
- keen 16y agoCould it not be as simple as the media taking any opportunity to scare people? Fear is a powerful motivator; if a story scares people, they will watch.
- DevX101 16y agoCall me a cynic, but the fact that this witchhunt happened during the very short timeframe where the government owned GM and had a significant incentive to show returns on the 'bailout' investment makes me think there was more to the regulatory investigation than public safety.
- threejay 16y agoI mentioned this multiple times in the midst of the whole fiasco but always felt like a kook for even bringing it up.
- sunchild 16y agoMe too. I'm also here to say "told you so" to the many, many people who refused to listen. Fortunately, Toyota knew how fickle Americans are, and weathered the storm patiently. After all, we do buy their cars in the end!
- stcredzero 16y agoI think Toyota actually believes in something powerful called value. There have been times when I've thought some companies and people believe, "It's all bullshit and perception!" There have been times when people have told me that flat-out and have tried to motivate me to follow them under that assumption. "Whited sepulchre" comes to mind.
- jsz0 16y agoSame here. I'm not a conspiracy nut but let's face it -- it would only take a dozen or so well placed back channel e-mails to get things rolling. Suddenly everyone else is obligated to talk about it because it's the big story. Full echo chamber effect. My guess would be more of a commercially driven agenda though especially for the commercial news media that pays the bills with auto advertising. Throughout the witch hunt I'm sure their ad buys from Toyota didn't suffer at all and they helped secure their long term US interests. Win-win situation.
- 16y ago
- mckoss 16y agoGreat article. Will CBS apologize? Will they learn anything from this? Since they don't seem to have suffered financially from their irresponsible reporting, I am afraid the won't change a thing.
- currymesurprise 16y agoPeople generally agree that there was not a malfunction in the electronics. But whatever happened with Woz's car? He claimed he could reproduce an uncontrolled acceleration bug in the electronics. (However, this is unrelated to the alleged malfunction affecting other people.) Last I heard, he turned over his car to Toyota, and that's it. Anyone know more details?
- Symmetry 16y agoWoz was able to find some bad hysteresis in the cruise control system. It looked from my reading like the speed control system was over-damped, but I don't really see what it had to do with the media reports - given that you can exit cruise control just by touching the breaks or accelerator and AFAIK nobody reporting unexpected acceleration had been hitting the "faster" button on their cruise control.
- atlantic 16y agoUncontrolled acceleration is a real phenomenon, although I don't think it is Toyota-specific. This happened to me half a dozen times when I owned an Opel Corsa. While going uphill in low gear for long periods (usually in mountainous terrain, in the French Alps), the car would suddenly bound forwards for no reason, and keep going on a steep uphill even if I took my foot off the accelerator. I had a couple of near-misses with oncoming cars and rock walls. I don't know how this works if you have automatic transmission, but the principle must be the same. If you drive at very low speeds for prolonged periods, especially on uphills, the effect would probably be replicated. Presumably, this effect would hit learners more than experienced drivers, since the former have a tendency to stick to low speeds and/or low gears. I don't have an explanation, but from the accompanying noise I know it was something taking place within in the combustion engine itself. It was not a problem with the brakes or transmission.
- wazoox 16y agoYou probably had a diesel engine and too much oil in the carter. This may be a case of self-ignition of oil. Anyway, pressing hard on the brake would have stopped you.
- siika2000 16y ago> After all, brakes always override the throttle Huh? Is this only in cars with automatic transmission or something? Since with a manual transmission you couldn't get going uphill if this were true.
- siika2000 16y agoCould the downvoter answer the question? In none of the cars I've driven does the "brake always override the throttle". Yes, brake is more powerful than the the engine, but that is hardly "overriding" in the sense that I understand it.
- chrisbennet 16y agoYou're interpreting "override" as a boolean (either/or) relationship when the poster was describing an analog relationship. The "stop" signal of the brakes outweighs/overrides the "go" signal of the throttle by some low multiple. If I had to guess, the brakes on an average car can consume 3-4 times as much horsespower as the engine produces. Porsche used to describe some of their brakes as "2000 hp brakes".
- silverlake 16y ago1. Buy shares in companies hit by media hysteria. 2. Wait for hysteria to pass. 3. Profit!