There is a long history of American automakers and their cohorts in the media and elsewhere who use these scandals to scare buyers away from Japanese makes. See what they did to Suzuki with the Jimny in the eighties for the most egregious example. I watched this “scandal” closely at the time, and it smelled like a rat all along. Fortunately, these tactics are ineffective, but there will always be anecdotal persistence on discussion threads like this. Nothing in any credible source materials proved this issue. Settling lawsuits is not an admission of guilt; it’s Japan Inc rolling their eyes, pulling out their pocket books, and making a pragmatic cost/benefit analysis. The lengths to which the case for the unintended acceleration flaw went is proof enough of what their aims were. If you want a counterpoint to the study you cited, here’s one from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when American media and automakers pulled the same stunt to slander German makers in the 1980s: https://www.autosafety.org/sites/default/files/1989%20NHTSA%...
Putting aside other aspects of your bias, it's ironic that you insinuate that a "slander" happened, because the opposite effect occurred (as described by slide 9 in my second link). The US Transportation Secretary claimed that Toyota was exonerated, even though the report given by NASA did not support that claim.
The “slander” (not a legally accurate use of the term) referred to the media campaign, which was effective around 2010-12 and has lingering effects, as seen here.
You're trying to dismiss a series of technical reports on Toyota's software engineering defects - reports that directly acknowledge that it's impossible to prove causality beyond reasonable doubt because of the software engineering defects - on the basis of their similarity to an unrelated report from 1989, and because you "smell a rat".
