According to the theory, to blame is not the floor mat; nor the accelerator pedals; nor the drivers for that matter. To blame is, experts say, electromagnetic interference (EMI).
In a press conference held yesterday in Washington, a group of "paid experts," as Toyota calls them, threw the EMI bomb on Toyota's hood. According to them, being poorly shielded against EMI, Toyota vehicles are subject to all types of invisible attacks that screw up the car's electronics.
From TV and radio stations to cell phones, through just about any item which operates on or with electricity, evil EMI beams see Toyota cars like sitting ducks... Curiously, from the gazillion ways in which they could affect a Toyota car, the evil beams, having sat down at their war council, decided to force the cars into accelerating.
They do not make the sensors give false readings, they don't make the turn signal engage when the driver activates the wipers... No... They accelerate. Kill. Destroy. And only Toyotas.
Toyota was pretty upset with what they perceive as being a "staging". The carmaker released a press statement in which they attack both the theories and the theoreticians.
"The trial lawyer who organized today’s media event in Washington D.C. and arranged for paid experts and one of his clients to appear with him has been suing auto manufacturers in unintended acceleration cases since 1994."
"There has been a great deal of confusion, speculation and misinformation about unintended acceleration in the past several weeks – much of it fueled by unsupported claims by trial lawyers and their paid advocates. Toyota believes that judgments about unintended acceleration, an industry-wide issue, should be based on scientifically reliable evidence."
We must admit, none of us here at autoevolution are EMI experts. Yet, out of all the theories on the Toyota acceleration issue, we find this to be the farthest from the truth. Why ?
A meta-theoretical principle called Occam's razor says that in the case of any given problem, the simplest solution is usually the correct one. Extrapolating, we might say that in the case of any given glitch, the simplest possible cause is probably the right one.
We know, the above reasoning is not exactly the scientific proof you were looking for. Yet, we tend to agree with Occam rather than EMI theories, cosmic rays theories, a GM conspiracy... The problem? Toyotas accelerate on their own. The simplest cause, in our view? An electronic glitch. A rare electronic glitch.
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