Autoline on Autoblog with John McElroy
Unintended Accleration? Beware of TV Network Fraud
You've already seen the ABC News piece about a college professor rigging up a Toyota Avalon so he could induce a short circuit that would cause unintended acceleration. It's a frightening demonstration. And as detailed yesterday, it's also bad journalism.
We've seen this sort of thing happen before. Sometimes the major TV networks, despite all their gravitas and prestige, seem to toss their ethics out the window if they get the chance to show a gory story that involves automotive accidents.
There have been several instances in the past when investigative reports from network television showed horrific safety crashes that made the vehicles involved look dangerous. But it later turned out that those tests were fraudulent. Is ABC engaging in the same tactics?
John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as an auto industry insider to Autoblog readers.
Back in 1987, CBS's 60 Minutes famously hired a plaintiff's witness, William Rosenbluth, who claimed he could cause an Audi to experience unintended acceleration. But he had to disassemble the transmission, drill holes in it and attach a tank of compressed air to make it happen-something that would never occur in the real world. But 60 Minutes never mentioned these facts, and presented Rosenbluth's test as proof that Audi had a defect. It single handedly nearly destroyed Audi in the American market. It took the company 20 years to recover.
In 1993, NBC's Dateline even more famously rigged up a Chevy pickup with explosives to make it "blow up real good" in front of the cameras. It presented this as proof that GM had defective pick-ups. GM hired investigators who ultimately found that the Dateline test was nothing but a fraud. Dateline was forced to publicly apologize.
Worse, ABC had no input or rebuttal from Toyota. It left out the company's version of this event, or maybe never even asked for it. Toyota says it met with Mr. Gilbert, he showed them a test, and they pointed out how this could not cause unintended acceleration. Now the company claims Gilbert showed a different type of test to ABC News. Toyota says it welcomes the chance to evaluate what he's doing and it invites ABC to bring its cameras back for that demonstration.
ABC also featured Sean Kane of Safety Research and Strategies on its report of the Avalon's unintended acceleration. He was presented as a safety advocate, but Mr. Kane makes his living by selling data and information to plaintiff attorneys, the very people who are going to be suing Toyota. Sean Kane has a vested interest in seeing Toyota sued, but ABC never mentioned that fact.
Plaintiff's witnesses like Sean Kane or William Rosenbluth make decent money testifying against car companies. They earn several hundred dollars an hour, whether they're on the stand or waiting around to be called to the stand. Presenting people like this as independent news sources, without identifying them for what they really are, violates all journalistic principles. Or at least it should.
Now, it could well turn out that Toyota does indeed have an electronics problem that causes unintended acceleration. But don't jump to conclusions based on last night's report from ABC News.
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We've seen this sort of thing happen before. Sometimes the major TV networks, despite all their gravitas and prestige, seem to toss their ethics out the window if they get the chance to show a gory story that involves automotive accidents.
There have been several instances in the past when investigative reports from network television showed horrific safety crashes that made the vehicles involved look dangerous. But it later turned out that those tests were fraudulent. Is ABC engaging in the same tactics?
John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as an auto industry insider to Autoblog readers.
Back in 1987, CBS's 60 Minutes famously hired a plaintiff's witness, William Rosenbluth, who claimed he could cause an Audi to experience unintended acceleration. But he had to disassemble the transmission, drill holes in it and attach a tank of compressed air to make it happen-something that would never occur in the real world. But 60 Minutes never mentioned these facts, and presented Rosenbluth's test as proof that Audi had a defect. It single handedly nearly destroyed Audi in the American market. It took the company 20 years to recover.
In 1993, NBC's Dateline even more famously rigged up a Chevy pickup with explosives to make it "blow up real good" in front of the cameras. It presented this as proof that GM had defective pick-ups. GM hired investigators who ultimately found that the Dateline test was nothing but a fraud. Dateline was forced to publicly apologize.
ABC never really explained how this short circuit demonstration worked.
Back to the ABC News report. First off, ABC never really explained how this short circuit demonstration worked. It showed professor Dave Gilbert, from the automotive department at the University of Southern Illinois, with what looked like a volt meter with wires sticking out of it. He said that he could use that to induce a short circuit that would cause the car go to full-throttle acceleration, yet leave no error code that a mechanic could later trace. Maybe a more detailed technical explanation would be too much for a mass TV audience to understand, but ABC wants us to swallow Gilbert's demonstration with next to no details of what he was really doing.Worse, ABC had no input or rebuttal from Toyota. It left out the company's version of this event, or maybe never even asked for it. Toyota says it met with Mr. Gilbert, he showed them a test, and they pointed out how this could not cause unintended acceleration. Now the company claims Gilbert showed a different type of test to ABC News. Toyota says it welcomes the chance to evaluate what he's doing and it invites ABC to bring its cameras back for that demonstration.
ABC also featured Sean Kane of Safety Research and Strategies on its report of the Avalon's unintended acceleration. He was presented as a safety advocate, but Mr. Kane makes his living by selling data and information to plaintiff attorneys, the very people who are going to be suing Toyota. Sean Kane has a vested interest in seeing Toyota sued, but ABC never mentioned that fact.
Plaintiff's witnesses like Sean Kane or William Rosenbluth make decent money testifying against car companies. They earn several hundred dollars an hour, whether they're on the stand or waiting around to be called to the stand. Presenting people like this as independent news sources, without identifying them for what they really are, violates all journalistic principles. Or at least it should.
Now, it could well turn out that Toyota does indeed have an electronics problem that causes unintended acceleration. But don't jump to conclusions based on last night's report from ABC News.
Autoline Detroit
Airs every Sunday at 10:30AM on Detroit Public Television.
Autoline Detroit Podcast
Click here to subscribe in iTunes
Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
why not the LS2LS7? 12:27AM (2/25/2010)
He said under oath that the test does not product acceleration on other cars (non-Toyotas). Also, I'm sure in his court case he is hired for he will produce information about what results his mods produce in other vehicles.
Rich A. Jensen 4:30PM (2/24/2010)
"I could design a test to fail for a Ford. Then perform that exact test on every other vehicle and it would pass."
Probably true.
But how much more finagling would it take? All Gilbert had to do was connect the two sensors by a 'short'.
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Some time back LS2LS7 gave the specs for the CTS pedal. The CTS pedal is not implicated in SUA fatalities. The Denso pedal is.
Reply
why not the LS2LS7? 12:24AM (2/25/2010)
Rich, my understanding is that all the pedals are pretty similar in their electrical connections and outputs. The CTS pedal was just given as an example, to show that the output probably was not a rotary shaft (quadrature) encoder signaling.
Rich A. Jensen 7:54AM (2/25/2010)
Thanks, I'm not an electrical engineering expert. My experience is in general process design.
If you haven't seen it yet, Dr. Gilbert's prepared testimony is available here, and is well worth the read:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1903:response-by-toyota-and-nhtsa-to-incidents-of-sudden-unintended-acceleration&catid=133:subcommittee-on-oversight-and-investigations&Itemid=73
According to my understanding of what he submitted, he cross connected the two sensors, and when he adjusted the voltage of the cross connection to 5 volts (which, I'm guessing, means that he reduced the resistance he was applying to the cross connection to zero), the throttle snapped wide open and the computer didn't return an error.
Under questioning, he explained that the two sensors are on a single chip/board (forget is term) and fed by a single power supply.
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Also, the 'vibe' I got from Inaba's testimony yesterday, an offhand remark of Toyoda's that may not have been translated properly, Toyota's press release, and their inability to duplicate sudden wide-open-throttle in testing, is that Toyota doesn't induce failures when doing defect analysis. That is, apparently they did not try to 'force' a scenario where the throttle was wide open, the system was compromised, and no error code was returned.
I would think that with such a low error occurrence, Toyota would've worked backwards (e.g. simulated the fault and THEN looked for confirmation of the cause in an affected vehicle) instead of (apparently) trying to get the vehicles to display the behavior in a lab setting.
Avinash machado 12:59AM (2/26/2010)
Quite unethical.
Reply