JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION

Arecibo's past comments

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  AreciboMar. 14, 2010 - 02:58AM JST

  Branded,

  You've completely missed the point. This exact issue has happened on multiple continents, so Toyota isn't "engineering... many defective cars for the US market." Except for small differences to account for local safety laws, the cars are identical worldwide. They use mostly the same parts manufactured from countries outsourced worldwide, like every manufacturer. They often assemble different models in different countries in the same geographic region, then cross-ship them to their dealers. And finally, again, the underlying acceleration problem IS happening everywhere, not just in the United States.

  The real question is, why does the United States have so many so-called "uncontrollable" acceleration problems compared to the rest of the world? Considering we're using, by and large, the same parts - which is why the problem is fairly widespread in the first place - why are Americans seemingly the only ones who are taken on 30-minute joyrides? Why are Europeans able to brake their cars to a stop safely during these exact same problems? Why are fatalities wholly disproportionately skewed toward Americans even though the problems are identical worldwide? These aren't rhetorical questions. Why, when given the same vehicles as everyone else, are Americans unable to cope with issues drivers from other countries are able to? I live in Canada, where the vehicles are literally identical except for dash metrics - why have Canadian drivers been able to handle the several dozen reports of unintended acceleration over the past several years without fatality? Your answer will, of course, run along the lines of, "There's something they're doing to American cars they aren't doing everywhere else," and that's simply false.

  Of course, you clearly have no idea about Toyota's mindset - they don't run like an American company. They have an open process that allows employees at any level to take initiative and halt production of vehicles if they perceive any safety issues - no permission required, so higher-ups can't simply "squash" problems. This would be why they've been able to keep consumer satisfaction so high in past years when American companies have been repeatedly and thoroughly vilified for their shoddy workmanship and design. They shorten development cycles to allow safety issues to be more quickly integrated into the manufacturing process. They were making billions when American companies were flopping around, so there was no financial reason to not be safety-conscious. They have done everything that the American companies should have, but were too entrenched in the "win at any cost" corporate mindset to change their process.

  It's clear that you're simply easily manipulated by the latest overhyped, underscrutinized news stories that enrage the average, ignorant person. Luckily, Toyota is much too large to fail in the ways that American car companies can (and should). Every decade needs its witch hunt - in the 70s, it was the Pinto, which wasn't as accident-prone as was once thought, though if you want to measure it in the same way as we're doing with Toyota, they killed about as many people as Toyota has per year. In the 80s, it was Audi with claims of identical "unintended acceleration" issues, later proven false - after the media had already branded it as a fact in everyone's minds. So far, we haven't reached the 119 deaths which occurred in the 90s in Fords due to rollover problems they were aware of when testing vehicles. In the 2000s, we have Toyota - subject to a problem that, while serious, is being blown out of proportion due to American drivers' complete inability to handle emergency situations, and a love of sensationalism over skepticism.

  In a sense, I hope you get your Toyotaless world - and that every other company you get enraged over and want to fail does as well. You'll find you'll be riding a horse everywhere in no time.

  Posted in: U.S. House panel wants Toyota acceleration details

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