Essentially anyone still driving them has absolutely no appreciation for the life of other drivers, or pedestrians, or shop owners, or any other thing you could plow into.
You should be able to rip these people out of these cars and beat them with a club.
Self Defense.
I imagine these people a financially stuck with the bad design.
They should address their death wish and their utter disregard for the life around them, BEFORE they address how to get to work to earn a living.
What I don’t understand is why the people who experienced the unexpected acceleration didn’t just shift into neutral. In the cases where people have done that, they have survived. We know about it because they’ll call people crying saying they are going to die and are then told what to do.
There are a lot of death machines on the road, but it isn’t due to manufacturing practices. It is due to people not knowing how to drive!
Let’s just paper-napkin this one. I’ll use the first figures I find and they can give us an idea as to what we are working with. In 2005, there were 42,636 fatalities due to car crashes in America. Toyota currently has a 16% market share. Let’s assume that the market share translates to vehicles on the road, and assume all fatalities were at fault. So, that is 6,822 people that died driving a Toyota, that year. Unexpected acceleration has resulted in around 13 casualties before the recall earlier this year. Let’s assume that that rate continued, 13 fatalities per month, 156/year. That would still only represent a 2% increase in the fatalities involving a Toyota. But that assumption is clearly a bad one, since there have been 34 fatalities due to unexpected acceleration since around 1992. But let’s make the math easy and put that at 4 fatalities per year. That accounts for 0.06% of the Toyota fatalities.
Apparently you haven’t paid attention to the reports then.
In most cases, because the gear selection is regulated electronically, shifting into neutral was locked out. In the most recent case with the Prius, which I’ve driven, that is again the case.
The number of deaths caused in your number game isn’t germane; they aren’t at fault instances of the driver, but the vehicle itself. When the product, not the human is at fault, it becomes an issue. Like say, oh I don’t know, toys coming out of China that are loaded with toxins, to levels which could either cause lifelong debilitation or death of children. Did anyone die from it? Not that I am aware of, but the case remains the product took the control away from the consumer by its corrupted nature.
The only reason they’re making all this hype is to promote the selling of american cars. Toyota is safe, like you said Xunz, disengaging the transmission will stop the car.
Every car always carries with it the risk of something like this happening. If you are so worried about it, dont get on the road. When you get in your car you accept the fact that some circumstance or set of conditions might arise with either you or your vehicle which may, inadvertently, kill someone else. If you want certainty that you wont hurt another person with a car, then dont drive a car. I will assume you do drive, in which case, you are merely a hypocrite.
It is always funny when someone needs a cause so badly, needs to be a hero and attack something based on absolutely no authority, personal investment or real understanding of the issue at all.
Oh, so you have an enemy now, and you get to lash out against them in your moral self-righteousness despite the fact that you really dont care at all about this issue, no you are not bothered by the fact that people still drive Toyotas, you just want to feel important, like you matter, like you have the right to judge someone else. Congratulations, once again, youre a hypocrite. I hope it feels good.
Compared to the epic failures of our food resource distribution, and indeed our economic system in general, a handful of people dying because they were conned into buying a Prius (that is actually worse for the environment than a normal car) is hardly worth getting worked up about.
One might say ‘why is even one person in the world still dying of cholera?’ The numbers are much, much higher, but I suppose there’s no money or nationalism in curing other people’s cholera, whereas demanding that the nasty Japanese stop selling superior cars to the Americans and humiliating them on their own patch because of a handful of accidents is a very clever PR move.
Toyota, as well as Honda and Nissan, along with their luxury line cars are as “American” as GM, Chrysler and Ford.
You guys might want to get informed about the nature of the automobile industry in America; they are all cross-partnered and more of their products are made here. Not withstanding, the number of supplier and logistic companies that benefit from “foreign” cars made in the U.S.
Reminds me of the problem with Volvo bendy-buses we had here recently where the electronically controlled brakes occasionally took a long time to activate. They were all recalled and new software installed. I’m sure that’s Toyota’s plan too.