Page 138 - Toyota Under Fire

THE RECALL CRISIS

cidents as a result of the sticking pedals. The narrative put forth
by the media assumed that the unverified complaints that were
now flooding in were all real, documented, proven cases. With
Toyota’s recall, the story that Toyota vehicles were dangerous and
were killing people, while Toyota moved sluggishly and without
concern for customer safety, seemed to be validated.
The mismatch between public perceptions and Toyota’s view
is starkly illustrated in news articles published shortly after the re-
call. For instance, a January 30 article in the Los Angeles Times was
headlined, “Doubt Cast on Toyota’s Decision to Blame Sudden
Acceleration on Gas Pedal Defect.” In the article, Vartabedian
and Bensinger, the reporters responsible for most of the newspa-
per’s Toyota coverage, led off by writing,

Toyota Motor Corp.’s decision to blame its widening
sudden-acceleration problem on a gas pedal defect came
under attack Friday, with the pedal manufacturer flatly
denying that its products were at fault. Federal vehicle
safety records reviewed by the Times also cast doubt on
Toyota’s claims that sticky gas pedals were a significant
factor in the growing reports of runaway vehicles.

The most remarkable among several inaccuracies in just
the first two sentences of the article is the claim that Toyota was
blaming the sticking accelerator pedals for sudden acceleration
of the sort alleged by the Los Angeles Times. In fact, the Toyota
recall announcement goes out of its way to clarify that the ped-
als could not result in a runaway vehicle: “The condition is rare,
but can occur when the pedal mechanism becomes worn and, in
certain conditions, the accelerator pedal may become harder to
depress, slower to return or, in the worst case, stuck in a partially

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