i stop for brakes

August 20th, 2010

There was a little article in the paper about a week ago that broke my heart. My heart breaks a lot, and you might be surprised what will do it. This was a piece that topped the news for less than a day.

“Driver error caused Toyota’s ‘runaway’ cars.” That was the indisputable conclusion from the government’s initial probe into the unintended acceleration scare that convulsed the country and crippled the company earlier this year.

If there wasn’t some mysterious electronic flaw, what caused all those incident reports that triggered the massive recalls and indignant congressional investigations? Sixty percent of the time, the report showed, cars kept going because there was a complete absence of braking. In another 25 percent of cases, brakes were only partially applied. We can deduce that the cars kept going because drivers kept pressing the accelerators.

Does that make you want to stop for a minute?

I’m on a roll! Read the rest of this rant and comment at The Smartly LA.

3 Comments »

  1. love this article! so so true… about fear going viral… how do we change it?

    Comment by rachael maddox — August 20, 2010 @ 3:16 pm

  2. Yes!

    Comment by Melanie J. — August 20, 2010 @ 9:29 pm

  3. Absolutely. Oh how many more example we have about deceiving ourselves out of fear? How many more do we need?
    What a great post, Karen. Thank you.

    Comment by Ines Anchondo — August 23, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

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