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You either laugh or you cry when you hear these things. Sometimes both. I was visiting my car dealer to replace a floor mat on my ancient car. You know, the acrylic mini-carpet that goes on top of the base rug in the car. They had it in stock, but ALL the floor mats were up in the attic gathering dust. They couldn't sell me one.

Oh?

My representative told me a story. There was a car owner with the same brand out in California who had a thing for floor mats. Not sure why, but one of them on the driver's side was not enough. Two were better, but just didn't have the right feel. Three came close to providing the necessary luxury experience, but not quite. Only when this owner had FOUR floor mats, one on top of the other on the driver's side, could he drive happily along California's freeways and winding coast roads, secure in the knowledge that his foot was finally, at long last, properly cushioned against the vicissitudes of driving.

So properly cushioned was the driver's foot, that one day, he was unable to extract his foot from the driver's pedal to face the relative discomfort of stepping on the brakes. The accumulated height of the four stacked floor mats caused the driver's right foot, basking in comfort, to be delayed in its mission to slow the car down, as the driver's foot caught in the floor mats.

When his luxury car crashed, it caused an amount of discomfort and inconvenience well out of proportion to the comfort created by four floor mats.

The rep explained that there was a suit pending over the damage caused by the floor mats.

And the car company responded by halting sale of the floor mats everywhere in the United States. An absurd chain of events and decisions on the other side of the country stood in the way of my replacing my floor mat.

I had gotten about to here with what I thought was a pretty good rant when it struck me that some fact-checking on the news delivered by my dealer rep couldn't hurt.

It turned out there was news on the subject, but not what I expected. Yes, the number four figured in the story; no, there were not four mats. Four was the number of family members killed when their car crashed at a speed of 120 miles per hour after the gas pedal got caught under one ill-fitting mat that may have jammed the accelerator. Worse, one of the passengers was on the phone with the police for about a minute telling the police that the accelerator was stuck under the mat. The call ended with a woman's scream.

An investigation after the crash revealed that the car was a loaner from their car dealer while the customer was having his car serviced at the dealership, and that there had been a wrong size all-weather mat which had a tendency to slide forward in the car. The driver of the doomed loaner car was an off-duty California highway patrolman.

From the Associated Press report: "Investigators with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have determined that a rubber all-weather floor mat found in the wreckage was slightly longer than the mat that belonged in the vehicle.

That could have snared or covered the accelerator pedal.

"We don't know if the all-weather floor mat was properly secured or not," he said. "We do know that it was a floor mat from a different model.""

There was a story in this incident, alright. But it certainly wasn't a story about an odd corporate response to idiosyncratic customer behavior with consequences. That story morphed, to my horror, into a tragedy involving a random stroke of misfortune for one family.

What happened might have happened with any car company. But one wonders how many of the company's employees have the true story of the incident; my company rep likely represents a number of employees who had wrong information, probably through no fault of their own. And these are people who should at least know about the core of the accident. But urban legends are sometimes built on far less.

This type of incident, and the subsequent misinformation, happens every day. Whether it's a car accident, death panels for health care, persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era, or the belief that the sun revolves around the earth, it's all based on one simple error, easily correctable.

So THIS is what this story is about: truth is tough enough to find when you have to interpret the facts correctly. Truth is almost impossible to get at if you don't even have the facts straight, and making sure you have the facts is tricky enough.

You can't believe everything you hear.

Doug Friedenberg is a specialist in finance solutions for businesses. His background includes eight years at Morgan Stanley, and six years in hedge fund management. His company http://www.jigsaw-capital.com provides arranges and specializes in a number of business finance strategies.

Is all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive better for winter weather?

I'm a little confused as to what the difference is between all wheel drive and 4 wheel drive. Is one better than the other in snow? I'm shopping for a new vehicle and need something reliable to get me to work during stormy winter weather. Any suggestions? Thanks!

A set of tires dedicated for winter use only such as the Bridgestone Blizzak or Michelin X-Ice are orders of magnitude better than any 4WD or AWD system. Having the engine turn all four wheels only helps with acceleration - it doesn't help you stop (indeed, the extra weight increases stopping distances) or turn to avoid hitting that curb or parked truck.

Get a regular FWD car and invest in two sets of tires - the tires that came with the car for "3-season" use and a set of the aforementioned dedicated winter tires for November-April. It's cheaper than AWD or 4WD, you'll get better gas mileage and its safer.

Just my humble opinion, valued at precisely $0.02

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