Do Recalls Really Make Us Safer?
Bad drivers are far more dangerous than bum Toyotas.
Slate.com
By Tom Vanderbilt
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010, at 6:52 PM ET

Have you heard about the operational crisis in the modern car? Recent news accounts are awash with evidence: cars that suddenly accelerate out of control, that careen through signalized intersections, weave across lanes with fatal consequences, spin wildly into people’s houses, and cannot stop in time to avoid killing (nonjaywalking) pedestrians.

What went wrong with the car in each of these cases? The driver. The recent coverage of the Toyota recall—which has occasioned any number of Do you feel safe driving your Toyota? polls—hints that the single greatest source of danger on the road has become the car itself. The reports have prompted some suggestions that the modern car is too computerized, too complicated. But the reality is that “vehicle factors”—which is how researchers generally classify mechanical malfunctions when assigning crash causality—cause an extremely small number of crashes in this country, coming in well below the leading categories of driver and highway factors. (Injury-reduction professionals, I should note, would rarely cite a single factor in determining the cause of a crash, preferring a matrix approach that examines how the various factors intermingle. An icy road or a speeding driver or faulty steering in and of themselves do not guarantee a crash or an injury, but each of those factors may come into play.)

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