Toyota was clearly the Bad Guy. It was the prototypical Heartless Big Company which couldn’t care less that thousands of Americans were either injured or killed in Toyota vehicles with clear and present defects resulting in sticking throttles.

Americans were slaughtered by the hundreds in traffic deaths involving runaway Toyota vehicles. The freeways and surface streets ran red with American blood at the hands of an uncaring foreign corporate giant. Giant. A heartless giant named:

Toyota (insert theme from Jaws here)!

Except for one little problem — which has the NHTSA and the federal government secretly pissed off to the nth degree: it looks as though the bulk of the problems were not the fault of Toyota.

There. I wrote it. I am now awaiting the shower of federal government arrows raining down through the roof of my wife’s house. Waiting. Waiting.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren’t engaged at the time of the crash, people familiar with the findings said.

The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.

Some are now indicating that Toyota itself “planted” the story with the WSJ. If so, that still does not negate the findings themselves.

Interesting, is it not?