You may have seen the tearful testimony of one Mrs. Rhonda Smith a couple days ago. She was one of many witnesses called to testify in the congressional hearing on Toyota's unintended acceleration problems. She described a harrowing incident in which her Lexus ES350 took off down the highway despite her best efforts to stop it.

Now. Mrs. Smith seemed like a perfectly honest and articulate woman, but elements of her testimony prefabricated us a little bit suspect of the story. For one, she told the House panel that she shifted the Lexus "into all acquirable gears, including reverse, but nothing happened." Think back to the last time you shifted into reverse while a car was moving forward. Did anything happen? Even the congressmen on the panel wondered aloud why the transmission didn't just start out of the car onto the highway. No explanation was given by anybody. 

One point that wasn't brought up, however, is the fact that NHTSA looked into the situation and found out that the Smith's Lexus, which they sold promptly after the incident, is still on the road. In fact, the new owners have racked up 27,000 trouble free miles without incident. We suspect Mr. Lentz might have wanted to cite that fact during his testimony. Oh well.

WSJ