Lunacy on the op-ed page

I think it's ridiculous that the New York Times ran this op-ed piece wherein the author suggests that the rash of Toyotas crashing are because the drivers mix up the gas and brake pedals. (Now, I can understand this being the case in some situations, but as you see by reading his piece, he is suggesting that it is the bulk of the reason why this huge amount of crashes have happened.) On one level, this could be a plausible explanation, but since the Times was the paper that broke through with the great original reporting, including the story where it detailed the 911 call from an experienced highway patrolman who couldn't get his car to stop, I would guess that this writer is totally off-base. So why did the Times, whose own original reporting showed the problem in the first place, give voice to this over-simplifying author? There's op-ed, and then there's lunacy. Good journalism exists to establish facts, in order to keep the deducing citizens from having to deal with such lunacy.