Runaway Cars: Driver Error Or Car Malfunction?

In the mid-1980s the car company Audi had a problem. Some customers were reporting a mysterious defect in the Audi 5000. Their cars, they said, were uncontrollably surging forward. There had been accidents. Deaths.

Audi denied the cars were the issue, and so the U.S. government undertook an enormous study of sudden acceleration.

Joan Claybrook, the former head of the advocacy group Public Citizen, says that when this report on sudden acceleration finally came out in 1989, its conclusions were unwavering: The problem was driver error. People, not cars, were to blame.

And so for 30 years, Claybrook says, whenever potential cases of sudden acceleration came up they were mostly — and in her view tragically — dismissed. It was just assumed that the person had panicked and pressed the wrong pedal.

Then came Mark Saylor.

Mark Saylor was an off-duty police officer who experienced a deadly episode of sudden acceleration while driving north on Highway 125 in California with his wife, child and brother-in-law. The brother-in-law called 911 and reported their situation. The call was recorded and, after Saylor and his family were killed, released to the public.

All across America, people listened to this call of Saylor and his family speeding to their deaths and instantly changed their view of driver error. Saylor was clearly calm enough to make a phone call and explain his problem.

And so the narrative changed overnight: Now cars, not people, were to blame. That was the story in hearing rooms of Congress, on the 24-hour cable networks and the headline in the papers.

But some experts say that though there may in fact be real defects in Toyotas and other cars, it's likely that at least some of the episodes of sudden acceleration that have made the news recently are the product of human error.

According to the research, they say, human beings have a long history of pushing the wrong pedal.


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Sen. Harry Reid's wife, daughter hurt in car accident

Reporting from Washington — The wife and daughter of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were seriously injured in a car wreck Thursday when their vehicle was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer on a Washington-area interstate, a spokesman said.

Landra Reid and her adult daughter, Lana Reid Barringer, were hospitalized with what doctors described as non-life-threatening injuries, according to a statement from Jon Summers, a spokesman for the Nevada Democrat.
 Landra Reid, 69, suffered the more serious injuries, including a broken back, neck and nose. Lana Reid Barringer, 48, suffered a neck injury and facial lacerations. Both were conscious, and neither had lost feeling in their extremities, the statement said. The daughter was released from the hospital Thursday night, the Associated Press reported.

Reid was told of the accident while participating in a conference call with reporters from rural Nevada, Summers said. He immediately went to the hospital, but later returned to the Capitol to continue negotiations on the healthcare bill.

"Sen. Reid has been to the hospital and appreciates the support he and his family are receiving from Nevadans and his colleagues in the Senate," the statement said. Reid returned to the hospital Thursday night.

Harry Reid, 70, and Landra Reid were high school sweethearts and have been married since 1959. They have five grown children, including son Rory Reid, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor in Nevada.

The four-vehicle chain-reaction crash occurred on Interstate 95 in Fairfax County about 1 p.m., according to a news release from the Virginia State Police. Lana Reid Barringer, a mother of three from McLean, Va., was driving a Honda Odyssey van, with her mother as a passenger, when they were rear-ended by the trailer carrying rolls of plastic, police said. The van crashed into a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which in turn struck a Chevrolet Cobalt.

Everyone involved was wearing seat belts, police said. Two others were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The driver of the tractor-trailer, who was unhurt, was identified by state police as Alan W. Snader, 59, of Ohio. He was charged with reckless driving.

Landra Reid has lived through danger before. In 1981, when her husband was a Nevada gaming commissioner and the mob was a presence in Las Vegas, she noticed something wrong with the family station wagon, she has said. She called an associate of her husband, who called police. The car had been rigged with a bomb, police said.



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