Toyota Blunder: An Industry Wake Up Call

Toyota has found itself in hot water due to problems occurring with their vehicles, but it has recently been brought to the public’s attention that the automotive giant knew about these problems since 2002.

This is an unfortunate but necessary wake up call for the automobile industry.

At the time of discovery, Toyota issued a technical service bulletin to all Toyota dealers across the country explaining that “some 2002 model year Camry vehicles may exhibit a surging during light throttle input at speeds between 38-42 mph.” In other words, the cars continuously accelerate without the driver’s control. You can view the document here: http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/03/22/toyota.tsb.pdf

The document from 2002 stated that the problem occurring with the Toyota model could be fixed with a computer adjustment. When the issue arose in recent months, however, Toyota suggested the problem was occurring because of faulty floor mats.

Under different circumstances, their approach to this situation might have gone much more smoothly. Unfortunately, with the death toll directly resulting from these Toyota malfunctions reaching 52, they now have too much blood on their hands to avoid it.

Estimates say that Toyota, when all is said and done, will be forced to spend over $6 billion to recover from their mistakes. With around 8 million cars affected, just the cost of providing the fix for recalled vehicles will probably exceed $4 billion. Combine that cost with the hundreds of individual lawsuits that may be combined to create one Class Action litigation and you can clearly understand Toyota’s predicament.

Luckily, Toyota is the top automotive company in the world and has the resources to deal with such an epically horrible situation. Unfortunately, they haven’t used those resources to the best of their ability. According to reports, many of the Toyota vehicles that have been supposedly fixed are experiencing the same exact problems, sometimes worse than before.

Toyota rushed with their recall solution in order to save face, and they are going to pay for it. Obviously, they experienced this problem many years ago but chose to avoid the possibility of it becoming public knowledge. Once they attempted to hide the problem again but found it was too massive, they had no choice but to recall the vehicles. Since their priority seems to be with sales numbers instead of customer survival rates, Toyota rapidly released a solution that doesn’t even fix the problem at hand.

It is borderline humorous that Toyota has accused some of their own customers of falsifying reports that their cars had the common issues. Even if a few people falsify reports during this incident, which feels inevitable, does Toyota think that is enough to drag attention away from their own mistakes? Many new stories have been discussing these accusations from Toyota, but does it really matter? With the amount of recalls taking place, it will not help Toyota to divert even a fraction of the attention onto a few customers who might be falsifying reports.

Toyota, in order to save the customers it has and might gain in the future, needs to place its attention, even their media attention, on fixing the problems with their recalled vehicles. They seem very concerned with their future profits and less concerned with the ticking Toyota time bomb driving behind me.

A person very close to me in my life owns a 2009 Toyota Camry, and each time she drives somewhere, I am seriously worried for her safety. When I am in the passenger seat of that Camry, I imagine what those poor victims must have felt while accelerating out of control and it disturbs me; it must have literally felt like torture, and more people are bound to experience this.

I have learned the correct way to stop her Toyota if the unwanted acceleration occurs, and you can too; here is a link to STEP-BY-STEP VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO STOP YOUR RANDOMLY ACCELERATING TOYOTA: http://www.toyota.com/recall/videos/stoppingprocedure.html
Since the Toyota fix doesn’t seem to be working 100% of the time, anyone who owns a Toyota should read and understand these guidelines for their own safety!

Out of all the things I have heard throughout this Toyota debacle, the most painful was hearing an actual phone call from a woman stuck in an accelerating vehicle, while it was happening. To place a human being in that situation, with loved ones in the car and other people all around, is disgraceful. Car companies need to step back from their precious industry and realize that their attention to detail is the difference between the life and death of their customers.

APPROXIMATELY 40,000 PEOPLE DIE EVERY YEAR FROM AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS.

This major Toyota blunder should be a wake up call for our world. We don’t really talk about it much until 52 people are killed by a specific vehicle malfunction, but operating cars is one of the most abundantly dangerous activities we choose to partake in on a daily basis. If a person was to look at the statistics of automobile deaths per year without knowing what the statistics were regarding, they would logically assume the deaths were related to some kind of physical disease. While it isn’t physically related to human health, driving has definitely become a disease. Safe driving by each individual can go a long way towards a solution, but it won’t mean anything if the vehicles we drive are not trustworthy.

Maybe complaints like these only come to a head when there is someone obvious to blame, like Toyota, but it seems like driving vehicles has become a necessary evil on earth.