In the summer and fall of 2009, hundreds of Toyota owners came forward with an
alarming allegation: Their cars were suddenly and uncontrollably accelerating. Toyota
was forced to recall 10 million vehicles, pay a fine of more than $1 billion, and settle
countless lawsuits. The consensus was that there was something badly wrong with the
world’s most popular cars.
However, Revisionist History’s podcast argues that most of the sudden acceleration accidents have some pretty clear patterns: the drivers tend to be older, shorter, tend to be people who are driving an unfamiliar car. The driver knows which one is the brake pedal and which one is the accelerator pedal, he just gets in a state where he feels like acting he’s acting normally and he’s not. Somewhere between intention and action, there’s a glitch. The driver puts the foot on accelerator, thinking it’s the brake, he wants to stop the car, but in fact he’s speeding it up. And this is the “Impulse Variability Theory”: Your brain requests a very specific action, but your body fails to deliver exactly what it told to do. It was the human error that caused the accident.
Besides, when high profile case happened, people get focus on one brand like Toyota, but that’s just the effect of publicity, it happens to a lot of big brands.
Use the above argument to analyze what happened in this case. You can seek out any additional information if you wish. But your main focus should be to bring in as many of the concepts from the ppt that you think are relevant in explaining how this case evolved. Finally, think about what you would recommend to people who find themselves driving an unfamiliar car to avoid the tragic consequences described.