The truth about Toyota: They make safe cars.

A Toyota employee, wearing a button, is seen on Capitol Hill in
Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010, during the House Oversight
and Investigations subcommittee hearing on Toyota.
(AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

The congressional circus being held in Washington this week is hell-bent on smearing the manufacturer of one of the world’s safest automobiles. Many of these vehicles are made right here in the Bluegrass State, by Kentucky workers. Toyota has recalled 8.5 million vehicles to fix acceleration problems in several models and braking issues in the 2010 hybrid Prius. But congressional ringmaster Henry Waxman (Democrat, Calif.) has insisted upon pillorying James Lentz, president and chief operating Officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. (see video, below)

Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, "there is no evidence that Toyota or the government agency NHTSA took a serious look at the possibility that electronic defects could be causing the problem." He based his attack on Toyota upon a report from Sean Kane, president of Massachusetts-based Safety Research & Strategies Inc. The 51-page report alleges that at 2,262 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported sudden acceleration that resulted in 815 crashes, 341 injuries and 19 deaths since 1999. About half of the complaints involved vehicles not included in any current Toyota recalls, according to the report.

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat, Calif., asks a question
on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 24,
2010, during the House Oversight and Investigations
subcommittee hearing. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

Kane insists that the report wasn’t produced as a direct result of funding from a particular lawsuit against Toyota, but lawyers often pay him a consulting fee to review individual crashes, listen to depositions, advise lawyers on questions and strategies, and produce analyses of crash trends using National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. In the report released last week, Mr. Kane thanked a group of lawyers who have pending cases against Toyota for sponsoring some of his research into unintended acceleration in Toyotas.

But what is the truth of the matter? Writing in Business Week, reporter Ed Wallace reveals that “Fuzzy findings, media manipulation, and tort lawyers scare the public and destroy millions in shareholder and resale value.” In The Real Scandal Behind the Toyota Recall, Wallace observes that Toyota “…investigated the complaints, found a number of small problems and said that's the only problems they could find, and moved relatively fast to fix those issues. The only way Toyota could be in trouble now is if, in a Nixonian moment, it was discovered that they'd lied or covered up another defect. The likelihood of that happening is low.”

In this photo made Feb. 18, 2010, Toyota employee
Linda Patrick installs an accelerator into a new Camry in
Georgetown, Ky. Toyota says it received a subpoena
from a federal grand jury requesting documents related
to unintended acceleration of its vehicles and the braking
system of its Prius hybrid.(AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

Even a partisan source such as the Detroit News has reported: “Experts say the number of fatalities linked to reports of uncontrolled acceleration of Toyota vehicles — 15 when the first recall was announced, and now 34 — isn’t a big number for a company that sells close to 2 million cars and trucks a year in the United States. Most independent auto experts and investigators say unintended acceleration is most often caused by driver error; the driver, in a moment of panic, or in an unfamiliar vehicle, may accidentally step on the wrong pedal.”

Mike Dushane has an informative piece in the current issue of Car and Driver, titled “Toyota Recall: Scandal, Media Circus, and Stupid Drivers.” He offers drivers some sound advice: “If your car starts accelerating unexpectedly, hit the brake (it's the one to the left of the gas) and shift into neutral. After you do this, the engine may race loudly but the car won't accelerate. Pull off the road, brake to a stop, shift to park, and shut off the car. This is a simple solution we guarantee will save your life in any car that suffers from unintended acceleration.”  

President and CEO of Toyota Motor Corporation Akio
Toyoda, left, and President and CEO Toyota Motor
North America, Inc. Yoshimi Inaba, testify on Capitol
Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010, before
the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform hearing on Toyota. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Dushane goes on to suggest: “(I)f you look past the media circus, the numbers don't reveal a meaningful problem. Every man, woman, and child in the U.S. has approximately a one-in-8000 chance of perishing in a car accident every year. Over a decade, that's about one in 800. Given the millions of cars included in the Toyota recalls and the fewer than 20 alleged deaths over the past decade, the alleged fatality rate is about one death per 200,000 recalled Toyotas. Even if all the alleged deaths really are resultant from vehicle defects—highly unlikely—and even if all the worst things people are speculating about Toyotas are true, and you're driving one, and you aren't smart or calm enough to shift to neutral if the thing surges, you're still approximately 250 times likelier to die in one of these cars for reasons having nothing to do with unintended acceleration. So if you can muster the courage to get into a car and drive, the additional alleged risk of driving a Toyota is virtually negligible.”

A Toyota RAV4 SUV is parked on Capitol Hill in Washington,
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010, where the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee is holding hearings regarding
Toyota. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) 

Writing in the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran observes: “There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world's greatest auto maker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesman such as U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of U.S. economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war.”

Corcoran continues: “The White House has denied any such motivation on the part of the United States. But that denial lacks credibility. While it may be technically true that President Obama’s team didn’t explicitly reach a decision to target Toyota, nobody in this crowd needs a presidential order to turn the Japanese auto giant’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) problem into a national industrial advantage for the United States. The owners of union-dominated Government Motors can spot a strategic economic opportunity without waiting for the memo from head office. California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.”  

The Truth About Cars

Bertel Schmitt, writing in The Truth About Cars, reveals a detailed study of NHTSA customer complaints made by the Edmunds company. “Edmunds went through the pain of sifting through NHTSA’s complaint database from 2001 through Feb. 3, 2010 . After the counting was done, Edmunds came to a startling conclusion: The deluge of complaints is a myth, to put it charitably. ‘Fabrication’ would be a better word,” says Schmitt. Amongst 20 brands, “Toyota ranks 17th among automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold,” says Edmunds. NHTSA’s own data shows: Only drivers of Mercedes Benz, Porsches and Smarts have less to kvetch than Toyota owners.

The Edmunds report

According to the Edmunds study, the most complaints in the database—25.3 percent of the total—concern GM cars. Relativized by GM’s large market share, this lands GM on place 11. Ford, where quality is job one, gets more complaints per car than the cross-town rival. Chrysler, the other ward of the state, ranks 7th. Volvo, supposedly the pinnacle of safety, created even more complaints per car: Place 6.

“No one should overlook the issues raised by the Toyota recalls, but it is important to keep things in perspective,” said Edmunds’ CEO Jeremy Anwyl. “A broader view shows that consumer complaints reflect an industry issue, not just a Toyota issue.  

Schmitt concludes: “Edmunds and NHTSA’s own data prove that there is a witch hunt and mass hysteria that are not born out by hard facts. Whether the witch hunt and mass hysteria have been created, or are just exploited by other interests, is left as an exercise to the student. Conspiracy theories? Henry Kissinger pointed out that even the paranoid have enemies. By the dubious virtue of being the world’s largest auto maker, Toyota has no shortage of enemies. And a lot of reason for paranoia.”

Watch the video: Rep. Henry Waxman (D. Calif) at Wednesday’s hearing

Learn more:  Official Toyota recall web site
 

Watch the video: Toyota Restore TV Commercial

Watch the video: Safety Features of Electronic Throttle Control Systems (ETCS)

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