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Death Tolls: VW's Dieselgate vs GM's Ignition Problems vs Toyota's Unintended Acceleration

At first, everyone thought that Volkswagen's Dieselgate saga mainly concerned the trust of the carmaker's current and future customers, but some of the details go far deeper, and in much darker places. In fact, some studies have actually shown that there could even be an increasing death toll closely related to the extra NOx that the affected Volkswagen cars have spewed into the atmosphere.
VW, GM and Toyota Logos 1 photo
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, though, and maybe look a bit closer at the figures before jumping to conclusions. Before we do that, it would probably be an even better idea to see how two other culprits fared in a morbid battle for the biggest death toll caused by their actions. Yes, this story is about to get a bit macabre, but someone was going to do it eventually.

Yes, carmakers sometimes make surprisingly conscious decisions that either directly or indirectly cause a lot of pain and suffering to various individuals, that is a known fact that we all have become accustomed to over time. Not all of those decisions result in actual human casualties, though, so when it does happen it obviously translates into a pretty dire situation.

Toyota's Unintended Acceleration Predicament: 37 Official Deaths

Back in 2014, Toyota Motor Corporation was hit with a $1.2 billion Justice Department fine as a result of one of the biggest automotive deceptions in history, at least up to that moment. The Japanese carmaker had continuously lied to the U.S. Congress, various regulators and the public about a number of technical glitches in some of its vehicles for over a decade.

Innocent lies or truth-spinning are one thing, but you have to realize Toyota went as far as covering up thousand of cases of unintended acceleration problems in some of its cars. Unintended acceleration might sound fun, in theory, especially if you're not the sharpest tool in the shed, but in reality it cost Toyota billions of dollars and it converted in nearly 400 wrongful-death and personal injury cases.

It has never been clear, at least publicly, how many of those nearly 400 cases were deadly casualties, but the last official death toll in 2014 was 37, a smaller but not less important number. As it happens, Toyota either concealed or made deceptive statements about two different problems with its cars, both of which could be held responsible for the hundreds of accidents caused by sudden bursts of unintended acceleration.

Although the first problems had emerged in the early 2000s, Toyota made the first recall related to the matter in late 2007. Over 9 million cars were eventually recalled, with most having their floormats replaced, while others in connection with parts in the acceleration pedals or with Engine Control Modules. MY 2004-2010 Toyota Corolla, Camry, Avalon, Matrix, Highlander, Prius, RAV4, Tacoma, Tundra and some Lexus models derived from Toyotas were affected. That said, the official death toll remains at 37, although unofficial reports are talking about a figure closer to 89 deaths.

GM's Ignition Switch Mess: 124 Official Deaths

While Toyota's unintended acceleration trouble officially resulted in the death of 37 people, it could be argued that some of the accidents resulting from a stuck accelerator pedal could have been avoided by more attentive drivers. GM's ignition switch scandal is an entirely different matter altogether.

Nearly 30 million cars wearing various GM nameplates were recalled worldwide in total, with the car giant having agreed to pay $900 million to end a criminal inquiry into the issue. It took over a decade for GM officials to admit that the faulty ignition switches the company had fitted to millions of vehicles, built from 2004 until 2014, had resulted in hundreds of car accidents with thousand of victims.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, GM eventually admitted “that it failed to disclose a safety defect to NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] and misled US consumers about that same defect.”

That defect was just a faulty piece part of the ignition switch system, and it was common to millions of vehicles that GM sold until 2014. Apparently, the “switch detent plunger,” which, in theory, was designed to prevent the ignition from accidentally turning off (while driving over a bump or because the driver's right knee hit the key by mistake), didn't supply enough torque. Not such a major biggie, right? Wrong, since the engine shutting off during driving would cause the airbags to no longer inflate in the event of a crash.

Speaking of crashes, they mainly happened because the power steering would no longer work with the engine shut off either, taking drivers by surprise. Anyone that has ever tried turning a modern car's steering wheel with the engine off will know that you need arm-wrestling hands to do it safely. Corroborate the problems mentioned above with the car driving on a busy highway and you have all the prerequisites for a nasty accident that you can't really avoid.

Apparently, GM head honchos had had meetings about the ignition problem as early as 2005 but did nothing about it until the deaths began piling up. There was a certain Lance Cooper, an attorney from Georgia, who brought the issue into the public domain after he sued GM on behalf of the family of a woman who had been killed in a crash connected to her car's faulty ignition switch.

Cooper almost single-handedly uncovered the car giant's deceit, after having obtained several thousand internal documents and the depositions of several GM engineers.

It all spiraled down from there, with GM being forced to admit to all those years of deception, recall almost 30 million cars from all over the world, and forfeit $900 million to the United States Government.

VW's Dieselgate Scandal: Death Toll is Not Yet Final

Deaths caused by elements such as pollution are obviously the hardest to compile, since there is no quantifiable correlation between the exact cars responsible for said pollution and the folks who suffered illnesses caused by it.

In case you haven't been living under an Internet-free rock during the month of October 2015, you probably know that Volkswagen has been caught after rigging no less than 11 million of its diesel cars with a so-called defeat device. Said device consisted mainly of a mysterious software that made each car perform as the regulators intended during emission testing procedures, while in real life driving the cars spewed up to 40 times more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than the numbers allowed by Government legislation.

The soot particles comprising NOx were thus many times increased, with the tricky bastards being directly responsible for approximately 50,000 deaths a year in the United States alone. You should also keep in mind that VW only sold about half a million tinkered TDI cars in the U.S., with global markets receiving another 10,5 million or so.

Adding up to that is the fact that NOx spewed into the atmosphere can travel hundreds of miles, so it's possible that Volkswagen's shenanigans may have impacted the health of hundreds of millions, if not billions of people worldwide. Soot particles cause heart problems and premature deaths, while nitrogen oxides are directly responsible for a number of respiratory illnesses, including asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema.

That said, a group of scientists working with The Associated Press carried out a statistical and computer analysis and concluded that VW's not-so-clean diesels caused between five and 20 deaths in the U.S. annually over the past seven years. When they based their calculations on the EPA's own open source computer model, which dictates that approximately 1,300 tons of NOx are responsible for one single death, the total death count from 2009 until 2015 ranged from 12 to 69, but the research only involved the United States. The New York Times estimated a higher total number, their calculations showing between 40 and 106 deaths in the land of the free.

There is no independent study made for other markets, where the rest of the millions of rigged TDI cars were sold, but considering that diesel cars sell like hot cakes in most European countries, it's pretty obvious that the global death toll is not only much larger but still ongoing as well. Care to make a bet on the next carmaker to shatter VW's death count?
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About the author: Alex Oagana
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Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project.
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