Some lawsuits make you wonder

I don't won't to appear insensitive, but when I read that a Missouri Court of Appeals had reversed a lower court's decision in a lawsuit about allegedly defective cruise controls in some GM vehicles (and about injuries one person suffered in an accident allegedly caused by this bad cruise control), I was a little skeptical. Not to say that I know for sure that the cruise control was not defective, it may well have been. But normally cruise controls don't work below a certain speed, and they also normally do not give you that fast of acceleration, especially at first. So when I read the story about this case, about how the plantiff said the cruise control caused the car to rapidly travel about 120 feet and hit a tree along the way, severly injuring the woman driving the car, I was a little skeptical. The first thought that went through my mind was that the unfortunate driver had hit the gas instead of the brake pedal, causing the car to accelerate rapidly. Most of these cases about unintended acceleration end up resulting from the driver hitting the gas instead of, or sometimes even along with, the brake. Normally if you have the brake on all the way, it is either difficult or even impossible (depends on the vehicle) for the car to accelerate that fast if your foot has the brake petal fully depressed.

It is sad, without a doubt, but just from what I have seen (and I acknowledge that I certainly do not have all of the facts here, just a general picture of the situation) and heard about this case (and others similar to it), driver error is almost always to blame. Not trying to give anyone a bad name, but it bugs me that a company almost had to pay out huge money for something that may have been the driver's fault.

You can read about the story here, from the Kansas City Star:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/13649290.htm