The Blame Game

In 2009 there was this bizarre thing that happened called the Toyota Sudden Acceleration Scandal. What started this was when a man driving a Toyota car with 2 other passengers in it called 911 saying his car suddenly started to accelerate and he couldn’t get it to stop. They eventually went through an intersection where they crashed into another car, spun out, and went into a ravine. All passengers were killed in the crash. This phone call went viral on media outlets causing other people to come forward with horrifying stories of their accelerators getting stuck in their Toyota as well.

In this podcast Malcom Gladwell describes how so many different entities, including the government, weighed in with their opinions on how this was all Toyota’s fault. People blamed an over sized floor mat as the reason the 911 callers accelerator got stuck down. Other people theorized that the coding in some cars could be bad causing the car to keep accelerating. A good point that Gladwell brings up that not many other sources do is that almost all the cars that these events were happening in were loner cars or cars the driver wasn’t familiar with. This point is important because it leads into the fact that most of these sudden accelerations can simply be explained by human error. In these incidents people panic causing them not to think straight so when they think they’re pressing the break to stop they’re actually pressing the accelerator all the way down. There’s a black box in cars that even say that this is the case. That almost everyone in these situations didn’t even try to hit the break.

So even with these facts why do people still believe that it’s all Toyota’s fault? Well as with all incidents that happen the blame has to be placed somewhere so naturally the media and government placed it all on Toyota. I mean at the time the media couldn’t have accused the person driving the car of human error. Because this person died the media could’ve been ridiculed for even suggesting that so they placed the blame on a much easier target. Toyota. Without facts or proper evidence the media blamed this company for releasing these cars. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder even chimed in saying how much Toyota was at fault. As a result of all this blame Toyota took a huge hit financially. Facts slowly started to surface showing that Toyota might not be at fault but it was too late. The damage was already caused by the media. This bizarre case shows how the media can exaggerate stories to make it seem one way instead of reporting in a balanced way. This is so dangerous because a lot of people take what the media says at face value and doesn’t do more in depth research. This particular case shows how influential the media can be which is scary to think about all the other ways they have influenced people’s thinking.