Toyota in the doghouse

Looking back at my blog, I'm actually surprised that I haven't talked before about the problems which Toyota have recently been facing. When the initial incident with Lexus exploded in the news after the 911 recording came to light, things looked bad for Toyota. But to be honest, at the time, I thought that it was likely a one off incident given Toyota's track record for quality (when I say one off incident, I mean that I thought it was only limited to the Lexus).

And then the issues around the brakes on the Prius started to surface. At this point, I have to admit that I was really glad that I had bought a Honda. With so many safety incidents involving different Toyota models, I can't help but think that, for either poor engineering or poor design or any other reason, the problem seems to be with Toyota itself rather than with a particular model of car. And if this is the case, then its likely that a lot of their other cars are going to have problems crop up sooner or later (if I was really cynical, I might even think that those problems have already cropped up but have been ignored by Toyota as they haven't gotten much media attention yet).

As you probably already know, Congress in the USA appear to be casting their eye over the recent troubles with Toyota. While doing my daily trawl of news, I came across this video on The Consumerist of an owner describing her near brush with death in a Lexus way back in 2006. Her account of her experience is really scary - not just with how close she came to death but also with how casually Toyota seem to have treated the problem.

At this stage, I should give the usual caveats. I have no idea if she is telling the truth and I have no idea if the incident really occured the way she described (for example, she may have panicked and not really have an idea of what she did or didn't do). All I have to go on is the news and what you see in that video.

However, looking at her in that video, it seems to me like her story has the ring of truth to it. Bear in mind, this isn't an isolated incident. There appear to have been many complaints about this issue from many people and a lot of the complaints seem to run in a similar vein. Also, although I'm sure she would have been terrified, I don't think she completely panicked as she had enough sense of mind to call her husband (this is based on my guess that if I panicked in a situation like that, I wouldn't be able to do anything other than wrestle with the car).

All in all, a real black eye for Toyota. The big 3 US auto companies must be laughing their asses off by now.