In looking for a reference to NBC's rigging of a GM pickup for a fiery crash test ("the hidden rockets, the over-filled tank, the loose gas cap") I came across this in an author's archive: http://www.walterolson.com/articles/crashtests.html
Network malfeasance in car safety reporting would seem to go back at least to the '70s:
"The tank with its attached hose was apparently sitting right on the front passenger seat of the doctored Audi, but the 60 Minutes cameras managed not to pick it up. It might have been for the same reason the Jeep weights were tucked away in the wheel wells, rather than being placed visibly on top. Or why the Dateline rockets were strapped out of sight underneath the truck rather than conspicuously on its side, and were detonated by remote control rather than by a visible wire. Doing it otherwise would only have gotten viewers confused."
I was rather shocked when some of my friends went to go work with the big networks about what's staged and what's real. It's not an uncommon, for example, to interview someone with the camera on them 100% of the time, and then the interviewer re-asks the questions after the person leaves. Almost any ethical journalist will try to make sure those questions are exactly the same, but with so much in intonation, pacing, and more, it struck me as fundamentally altering the tone if not the substance story, even when the intentions of all involved were the best.
I could accept that explanation for short "hops," but some of the Toyota incidents lasted for minutes/miles - surely that's long enough to realize you're on the wrong pedal?
Unfamiliarity may explain why some drivers were unable to switch off the car, though. I would not have known how myself. CHP Officer Mark Saylor was driving a rental car and might not have been familiar with the system either.
Yes, I remember reading that the "off" button in the rental car required depressing for 3 full seconds and evidently didn't have logic to recognize e.g. several quick presses in succession.
In general, if there are indeed flaws in whatever in these Toyotas and not all these incidents are operator error, there has been a serious failure in human factors design. E.g. Toyota is now programming the system so that pressing the breaks will disengage the throttle.
Of course, any one of a number of problems might pay no attention to the off button and so on of an excessively "fly by wire: design.
I wonder if anyone actually thought they were looking at a tachometer in a Toyota with a jammed accelerator as the car and its occupants, convenient videographer and all, hurtled toward an uncertain fate... unlikely in my estimation.
I always assume that the junk I see on TV is either staged or a representative example.
A very respectable news program once made a story about my mum who was meeting one of her journalists for the first time, just after he'd been released from jail.
It took them over 30 minutes and at least 12 shots to film their first meeting, where he walked up some stairs and they shook hands.
The forgot to mention they'd actually met for the first time the night before and stayed at our house.
A very respectable news anchor in the US aired some memos supposedly written by a presidential candidate's superior officer in the 1970s. Upon investigation, it was discovered the memos were written in Microsoft Word using the default settings, and probably run through a fax machine or copier a few times to make them look "old". They were most definitely not typed on a 1970s era typewriter.
Once this was pointed out, it took the aforementioned newsman a week before he was forced to conclude the memos were inauthentic. The exact statement used was "fake but accurate".
The "fake but accurate" standard for journalism is problematic. Either show us the real thing, or describe to us the real thing and explain why you can't show it. Trying to slide by with carefully staged shots ends up looking really bad, and costs the organizations a ton of credibility.
I totally don't understand Toyota now. Why are they complaining about this, drawing attention to the problem? ABC comes back and says "yes, we had to fake the shot, because when the accelerator is jammed down the car starts to shake dramatically and it's so terrifying that we couldn't get a good camera shot". PR fail.
Why aren't Toyota simply saying 'if a Toyota - or any other make of car - accelerates as if the accelerator was jammed, you can simply stop it with the brakes, or by putting the car into neutral, or by turning the key in the ignition'?
Saying "these are the steps" might be seen as admission that the problem is widespread or likely to affect you.
By the way, if there really is a software problem (which Toyota has denied so far) then your steps will not help. The key is a button, and the brakes and the shifter are just inputs to the computer. Your steps would help if it's just the floor mats or a malfunctioning accelerator switch.
Thanks for providing a possible explanation. A recall is also an admission that the problem is widespread, so I think that horse has bolted, but it's possibly the reason Toyota are behaving so oddly (at least in my world view).
If it is a software problem, it's certainly possible that e.g. the brake pedal might not work. I think it's likely that one of the three would work, because the code is likely to be broken into modules, and I think it unlikely that all 3 modules would be affected by one bug. Anyway, what's the harm in telling people to try the 3 step process? Right now, people think they're doomed if their car accelerates - I'm thinking that some people are panicking because of this and making bad situations a lot worse.
Take the case of the Prius driver in California the other day: he called 911, a police car was dispatched, to tell him exactly the same steps through a megaphone, and - sure enough - the car stopped. Why not tell people in advance so they don't have to make a cellphone call at 90mph?
Well, if your company makes a product that mangles children's toes, and the media creates a video that shows your product burning children's legs off, you might want to complain.
(I am not proud of that analogy, but it's been a long day.)
Except then you're talking about the damage your product does. Suppose you're selling guns (kills a comparable number of people to cars), and you have a PR problem because kids are shooting their toes off. Your gun has a lock, and you suspect that your customers aren't locking it properly, but the customers are claiming that the lock is magically becoming unlocked. ABC shows a video with a child shooting their whole leg off. Maybe it's not even a real child but a reenactment with a mannequin, because TV people are funny like that when it comes to shooting children.
You could talk about how that's not fair, because we're only supposed to be talking about kids shooting their toes off and the video didn't even use real toes, but then you're just drawing attention to the fact that kids are eliminating their extremities with your product.
Or you use your time in the spotlight to talk about how it's a bad idea to keep a loaded gun around where children can find it easily, whatever the make, and that simple steps like keeping the gun unloaded or putting it on a high shelf will eliminate the whole problem.
Network malfeasance in car safety reporting would seem to go back at least to the '70s:
"The tank with its attached hose was apparently sitting right on the front passenger seat of the doctored Audi, but the 60 Minutes cameras managed not to pick it up. It might have been for the same reason the Jeep weights were tucked away in the wheel wells, rather than being placed visibly on top. Or why the Dateline rockets were strapped out of sight underneath the truck rather than conspicuously on its side, and were detonated by remote control rather than by a visible wire. Doing it otherwise would only have gotten viewers confused."