Runaway Cars: Driver Error Or Car Malfunction?
Alix Spiegel of NPR reviews research performed by experts in the 80s that shows driver error contributes to sudden unintended acceleration.
Quotes from the story:
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.
According to the research, they say, human beings have a long history of pushing the wrong pedal.
Richard Schmidt, a human performance psychologist at UCLA, combed through all the accident reports in the state of North Carolina for a seven-year period. He found regular reports of pedal error.
The perseveration response you just keep repeating the same error over and over and over again is particularly likely to happen when people have misdiagnosed the problem. For instance, they might believe that they are hitting the brake when they are in fact hitting the gas. Because their basic analysis is wrong, under stress which tends to make creative thinking difficult and narrows your field of attention they are liable to repeat and repeat that wrong action in an attempt to fix it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124815144&ps=rs
