I am an engineer, and I don't think in the picture he paints. An essay is obviously opinion meant to sway opinion, that is not how Gladwell writes.
Both Toyota and GM acted maliciously in covering up flaws in the products they sold. For Gladwell to spin the folksy, aww shucks it is just the floor mats, you still have breaks is just as disingenuous as GM telling teenagers not to hang so much shit from their key chain.
> Jean Bookout and her friend and passenger Barbara Schwarz were exiting Interstate Highway 69 in Oklahoma, when she lost throttle control of her 2005 Camry. When the service brakes would not stop her speeding sedan, she threw the parking brake, leaving a 150-foot skid mark from right rear tire, and a 25-foot skid mark from the left. The Camry, however, continued speeding down the ramp and across the road at the bottom, crashing into an embankment. Schwarz died of her injuries; Bookout spent five months recovering from head and back injuries.
I am also a (software) engineer. I work on stuff that's much like the throttle controller on the Toyota without being directly automotive.
I don't think it's an opinion piece. It's just not journalism. People find Gladwell infuriating because he somewhat defies categorization and tries to take a very neutral, nonjudgemental tone. I said "essay" because that's as close as I could get.
I don't buy "acted maliciously". I don't agree that it was covered up. Malice implies intent; there was no intent. Indeed, that's the problem. There really isn't, to my knowledge, a fixed protocol for these things outside of whatever management or PR protocol you follow and then possibly the courts.
Toyota as an entity believed that it was acting responsibly.
From the article:
"The engineers were right. A series of exhaustive investigations by federal regulators, with help from NASA engineers, established that the perception of an electronic failure was almost certainly illusory. The problem was caused either by the fact that some people put in poorly fitted, nonstandard floor mats or by the fact that drivers were pressing the accelerator thinking that it was the brake."
For one, Gladwell isn't the one saying it was the floor mats. The team of Federal regulators, with help from NASA engineers said that. Toyota took this seriously and launched an investigation.
Prior to Micheal Barr's analysis, I'd say it was formally undecided whether there was a software problem. Even then, the defects found were not a smoking gun.
This is new territory. The Barr Group is one of the first of its kind.
"Gladwell" is a synonym for "ignorant glibness". He doesn't understand anything he writes, and keeps right on going just as if he does. (Continued execution past a stack overflow.) Everything he writes should be assumed to be on the way to "not even wrong".
Floor mats was a sort of strawman erected ( by someone other than Gladwell ) in the history of the subject.
He's illuminating the schism between how engineers think and how ... people ... who are not engineers .... think. Always a fun topic, IMO.