NYT: Toyota Still Doesn’t Get It

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25sun2.html

Published: July 24, 2010

All automakers in the United States are required to report flaws in their vehicles to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration within five business days of detection. Despite the law, Toyota has repeatedly failed to report potentially deadly problems.

The latest omission to be brought to light — and not by the automaker — regards problems with steering wheel relay rods, which transmit changes in direction from the steering gearbox to the wheels. In 2004, Toyota issued a recall of 330,000 vehicles in Japan after complaints about cracking rods. It told American regulators that, because of different driving conditions, the problem did not affect Toyota cars in the United States. It said it had not received a single complaint in this country.

In 2005, Toyota notified the N.H.T.S.A. and issued a voluntary recall of nearly one million vehicles here because the steering rod could break. This year, lawyers for an Idaho family whose son died when his Toyota truck rolled over unearthed about 40 complaints about steering rod problems in the United States before the date of the Japanese recall.

That information prompted the N.H.T.S.A. to investigate whether Toyota neglected to inform it about the problem. Last month a federal grand jury asked for information about the steering wheel problems.

Drivers here complained for years about bouts of uncontrolled acceleration before Toyota finally determined that accelerator pedals were getting stuck in floor mats and grudgingly started recalling vehicles in 2007. In April, the N.H.T.S.A. fined the company $16.4 million — the statutory maximum — for failing to notify it promptly about sticky accelerator pedals.

FULL story at link.

[Skink]

1. so it was the floor mats.

but they sat on the problem that they knew about.

[madrchsod]

2. i`ve read through a lot of forums and it seems...

toyota let the dealerships handle and or hide the problem. one big problem was not being able to correct/align the steering drift. it seems toyota had a lot of improperly welded front suspension towers.

my rent to own 94 camry is one of the best cars i`ve ever owned. so somewhere a long the line toyota really fucked up.

[northernlights]

3. I'll stick to Honda, tyvm

My current civic is 14 years old, 190K+ miles, purrs like a kitten and gets a solid 40 mpg. No major repairs, just routine maintenance, knock wood. I hope to have her till 250K or better, and then will replace with HONDA!

[divideandconquer]

4. Why not give union car a chance? There are many people with US cars that do just as well

Check out these high mileage Dodge Neons
<http://www.topix.com/forum/autos/dodge-neon/TFVHML2AIH51AA8CH>
Here's a 450,000 miles Neon
<http://www.allpar.com/cotm/2009/neon.html>
BTW, to this day Neon stock cars humiliate Civics and even Miatas at the race track.

[northernlights]

6. I checked the blog

um, the cars described there aren't doing nearly as well as my civic on maintenance or repairs. I didn't see anybody writing about mileage -- I trust they are not getting 40+ mpg.

Sorry, much as I would like to support the unions, I can't afford to. I've never made anything like union wages. I've been longterm unemployed without benefits for half of the last 8 years. I've now worked my way up in my current crap job to where I'm making almost as much as the entry level union workings bitching about how bad they have it on the home page.

The fact is, from my perspective, other than 5 years of my 35 years of working, union workers have enjoyed far higher salaries and far greater benefits than I ever have or am likely to have again.

And, to make matters worse, the few union workers I've known treated me like a turd they accidentally stepped in. The wife of one of them libeled me all over a forum I used to participate in.

I suppose this will net me a lot of bashing, and people will tell me I belong in freeperville. Funny, the sales pitch they try to use...

[NNN0LHI]

5. Consumers can always get a great deal from companies that use use prison labor

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45b/153.html

Some horror stories from Prison Labor/Prison Blues:

•Most of the workers at Michigan’s Brill Mfg. Co. furniture plant lost their $5.65 an hour jobs when state prison inmates getting 56 cents to 80 cents an hour were hired in their stead.

•Some 100 Texas state prisoners being held at a privately owned jail in Lockhart are now doing jobs taken from computer circuit board assembly workers in Austin, Tex., whose plant was closed. The prisoners get the federal minimum wage and no benefits. The work is for computer industry giants such as IBM, Dell and Compaq.

•In Ohio, before the United Auto Workers was able to stop it, prisoners in the Ross County jail were assembling auto parts for Honda. To this day, prisoners are making toys and rakes, doing data entry and other tasks.

•Prison inmates have stocked shelves at a Toys ’R’ Us retail store outside Chicago. Juvenile offenders take phone reservations for TWA near Santa Barbara. San Quentin convicts do data entry work for private companies.

•Prison officials in Pendleton, Ore., run the Oregon Corrections Industries trade company, Unigroup, which manufactures convict-made designer jeans labeled, of all things, “Prison Labor,” and other clothing. A recent ballot initiative in Oregon would force all prisoners to work—presumably in competition with honest citizens.

-------------------------

Perhaps some day you can be competing with prison labor in your job?

[old mark]

7. VW has many serious problems with their quality control for decades, but

they have not had the media attention that Toyota seems to attract. VW's don't cause accidents, they just stop working frequently and require very costly repairs that seem to only be effected by a VW dealer...

I am looking for a good used car sometime in the next few months, and I'm looking at GM's stuff...

We have a Hyundai Santa Fe, which it a great car, but I want to drive a US car again, so we will have both.


mark

[TexasObserver]

8. Toyota has committed homicide.

They are criminals who have conspired against consumers, some of whom ended up dead because of the criminal conspiracy of Toyota officials to hide from the government, from judges in cases, and from plaintiffs suing them the truth about their tragically dangerous problems.