http://frogsonthemoon.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-you-really-care-about-saving-lives.html

I had not thought about it but I agree that it is probably good for the Toyota recall to be in the news because as you said, “if it serves as a reminder of the risks of the road” even if the coverage is overly nuts regarding a specific part that may fail and lead to an accident.

Part of the problem I have with the coverage of this story is that it seems neither the regulators or Toyota really have a clear understanding of how often this happened, how many accidents were really a result of this problem, etc. Despite all the coverage, we don’t really know how these accidents occurred and if this really caused the problems. There needs to be more focus on the real causes of accidents in the media.

1 – Regarding the incident with the California cop and the 911 call. Take the 911 call out of the equation. Question what information may or may not be recovered from the “little black box” in cars that save the past 5 seconds of data when air bags deploy.

I see a situation where it would, could, and very likely end up being a situation where we would be talking about a careless and self-empowered off-duty cop who decided that laws didn’t apply to him. He went way too fast and lost control.

2 – Another reason why I think Leonard and Tom are way off base is that are now more than a number of media articles and videos coming out with people claiming that this accelerator problem occured or started while the vehicle was at a stop, coming to a stop, or just coming from a stop. Kind of throws that whole slow down and drive more safely diatribe above out the window, no?

And as far as the brakes will hold the car bit, that has been challenged in a number of those same videos and articles. As a former mechanic, I can tell you that A LOT of people drive around with beyond worn out brakes. I really don’t believe that some cars, especially with large V6 engines will be held back with worn out brakes. New brakes probably so, but not worn out.

Since you mentioned it, I’m not going to worry that much about going off topic on this site.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see Mac computers get their comeuppance in the near future, especially in regards to their safety against viruses/worms/trojans.

As evident by Shane Macaulay’s win last year at a hacker’s convention, and a multitude of other tech articles, Mac are inherently a lot easier to hack than Window’s PCs.

The reason that we don’t see many infected Macs is because Macs have traditionally held a small market share. This makes it unprofitable for virus makers to work on hacks to turn Macs into spambots, or to infect a sizeable enough number of Macs for the purposes of stealing personal information.

However, with the Mac market share increasing I can definitely see the day coming where some Mac users are going to have a startling wake up.

However, you are sort of getting to a point: the frequency of runaway vehicles is so tiny that, I bet, most have not experienced it. Yet, that is the point of this entry. Despite the infrequency and resulting small fraction of deaths, there is the hysteria going on. I even remember driver’s ed making a big deal about this, while not even paying lip service to watching for pedestrians, how to act when bicyclists are in the road, etc.

This experience leads me to question the logic of your assertion that improving my driving safety generally ought to make me indifferent to mechanical defects in my vehicle that target my safety specifically.

Or do you intend to be an apologist for Toyota?

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/25.82.html#subj1.1

Ever.

It just isn’t done.

Hypocritically posted via Time-Warner.