IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 37

assist in diagnosing accidents
and problems after the fact. This
appeared to be an attempt on the
part of the automaker to control
the production of potentially damaging information, since dealers
and other interested parties could
not access the data without special equipment. After a four-fatality crash the day after Christmas
2009 in Texas appeared to be due
to unintended acceleration, things
spun out of even Toyota's control.
On January 26, 2010, they took the
extraordinary step of halting sales
of about half their models until the
mechanical accelerator fix could be
applied. It turns out that this was at
the request of the federal government, in a move that was probably
motivated by words to the effect
of, "if you don't do it by yourselves,
we'll make you do it." In the years
following the massive recalls, no
hardware or software smoking gun
was ever discovered, but numerous
mechanical problems with drive-bywire accelerator mechanisms getting jammed by floor mats were
found, and Toyota dealt with these
issues as well as it could. Evidence
emerged that other auto makes
were at least as likely as Toyota's
to have unintended acceleration
problems, and there is a consensus
that at least some of the incidents
were due to driver error - pushing the accelerator instead of the
brake pedal - augmented by panic,
which tends to cloud one's memory
of exactly where one's foot was at
the time.

june 2016

The phrase "damage control" can
regard. The automaker embarked
mean several things. If you're talkon a redesign of the affected
ing about something as straightforvehicles in which a simultaneous
ward as fighting a fire, it means
application of the brake and the
putting the fire out as fast
as you can to minimize
physical damage. But the
phrase has taken on a
darker meaning in recent
The phrase "damage control"
years. It has come to mean
has taken on a darker meaning
a strategy that an organization deploys in its public
in recent years.
(and government) relations
in order to convince outsiders that whatever really
happened, things are not that bad
accelerator leads to "brake to idle,"
after all. It is pretty clear that in the
which other companies had preinitial stages of the unintendedviously adopted. But perhaps the
acceleration scandal, Toyota had
strongest lesson Toyota learned
taken the second meaning all too
from the controversy is that custommuch to heart. In its misleading
er anxieties and fears are just as
minimizing of the seriousness of
real as defective mechanical parts.
recalls, in its failure to provide
Ignoring or minimizing such conmore than one data-reading device
cerns can allow a controversy to
for the entire U. S., and in its Johnsnowball until the damage done is
ny-come-lately reactions to serious,
all out of proportion to the actual
long-term problems, it showed a
documentable problems.
signal lack of judgment and conAuthor Information
cern for the safety of the driving
Karl D. Stephan is Professor at the
public. It took a courageous news
Ingram School of Engineering,
outlet to keep hammering on the
Texas State University, San Marcos,
issues and asking embarrassing
TX. Email: kdstephan@txstate.edu.
questions, as well as a government
agency that is arguably underAcknowledgment
staffed and underequipped to deal
This article is a revised version of
with the technical complexity of
a blog posted at engineeringethicstoday's automotive industry.
blog.blogspot.com on Mar. 6, 2010.
The worst thing that can happen
It has been updated to reflect curto a corporation (short of going out
rent knowledge of the controversy.
of business altogether) is to lose
money, and Toyota has already
been taken to the woodshed in that

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

http://blog.blogspot.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016