Witchgraph
Remember when cars, especially Toyotas, suddenly had a mind of their own, started accelerating, leaving their drivers helpless and hapless? It was in the beginning of 2010. The media cited scores of allegedly killed people. Source: The NHTSA complaint database. When complaints skyrocketed, the media wrote about a dramatic increase of complaints. Now, have a look at the graph above.
This graph was compiled by Edmunds. It is a simple report. It shows the number of all complaints about all cars of any manufacturer per month. We see that in February 2010 the number of complaints exploded, it was high in March, and then consolidated at a slightly higher level than at the end of 2009. In a straight line analysis, the complaints should be approximately where they are.
Then why the jump in February and March 2010? It was the height of the witch-hunt. The height of the fakery on ABC News. It was the fools hearings on the hill.
When that was over, suddenly, as if driven by ghosts, the cars behaved again. After Toyota had been declared ghost-free by the NHTSA in February 2011, there was even a little dip in the reports. Then, all fell back to normal.
For those who are still desperate to read something into this crowd-sourced list, here a little table, also courtesy of Edmunds. It shows the YTD complaints trough August 2011, along with the rolling 12 month market share, for the top ten recipients of complaints. As you can see, things are pretty much as they should be. People seem to complain a lot about Chrysler though…
BrandYTDShareFord3,30315.9%Chevrolet2,82014.0%Toyota2,09211.2%Honda1,1578.4%Nissan1,4847.3%Dodge1,7575.4%Hyundai7885.0%Jeep1,5473.1%Volkswagen5812.4%Chrysler8421.6%Witch-hunts had been with us since ancient times. In Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Saudi Arabia, people are still tried and sentenced for witchcraft. The graph you are looking at shows that witch-hunts are alive and well in America.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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There are witch-hunts and there are witch-hunts. Just recently, there was a furore over "Unintended Acceleration" in the Philippines with regards to a diesel engined Mitsubishi... the diesel Montero Sport (a seven seat version of the Triton pick-up). Classic SUA cases, most of them, older driver, "decades of experience", gets in, starts the vehicle, and it accelerates "wildly out of control even with the brakes held down". Having driven the car and experienced the absolutely fantastic levels of electronic throttle lag and the complete lack of low-rpm boost from the turbo, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that they were stepping on the gas instead of the brakes before shifting into "D" and were caught unawares when it finally started accelerating, five to ten seconds after they stepped on the "brakes." Interestingly, in Thailand, where the vehicle is produced (under the nameplate "Pajero Sport" and where they sell tens of thousands more of them, there is no similar uproar.
Only in the US where lawyers chase any siren do these things happen.