[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by clintjm

Believe it or not, some people just don't know what to do when I car behaves this way.

Toyota delayed and doesn't have the means of doing this.

Not having the means and delaying are completely different things. But there is also a difference between conveying information and fear mongering.

Frankly Toyota should get some of these headlines and simply expect this. ALL OF THEM ARE TRUE!!!

"how to protect yourself in a runaway Toyota" IS very valid ... BECAUSE THESE CARS ARE DANGEROUS.

How about "How to protect yourself in a runaway VEHICLE"? Because you know, my friend was in a wreck with a stuck pedal in a Ford - years and years ago, but the point is the information shouldn`t be Toyota specific. It ISN`T. (She cut the engine, the power steering and power brakes went off and she couldn`t control or stop the car.)

Either way, I find it kind of silly to have seen reports acting like EVERY Toyota car on the road is a cage of death, and that everyone who even looks in the direction of one is going to be run down. Media thrives on fear and shock. No different in this case.

Well you know what, Toyota ignored first, then ID'd the problem wrong, then reacted slowly when they did know the problem while still selling vehicles. And as you can see from the above article about Steve from Apple computer cruise control malfunction, there may be another problem. I love the part where he could not get through to Toyota to tell them what happened so he had to go to the media.

Lack of immediate action does NOT equal "ignoring". That`s the reaction of the dealers. If there is a POSSIBLE problem, not confirmed, not known if it`s a complete and total fluke - you don`t announce it. You try to figure it out as quickly as possible and take action. They didn`t ID the problem wrong - they were just extremely unlucky that there were two separate problems happening at the same time. They identified ONE of them before the other (the floor mat issue) and took action on it first. Should they have ignored that problem and waited until they knew the other? That would be stupidity.

With Steve, I really have to cringe as he is doing something that will cause an issue with almost ALL the electronic cruise control systems out there. The car does not instantly speed up when you push the button - the Prius isn`t a sports car, it takes a few seconds to react. Push the button again, and again, impatiently because the car isn`t hitting the speed you want... and what do you know, you want the car to go 80, but you`ve knocked the setting up to 95... And then the car starts picking up speed, and you panic because it`s more than you wanted. Just pressing the down button, again, will not immediately slow the car down as it doesn`t brake for you... If you`ve picked up momentum speed continues to rise temporarily even without the engine.

Either way, even Steve admitted there was no real safety issue because - as normal - braking works and turns the cruise control off. The cruise control safety radar also worked normally.

I also love the fact that he complains about not being given special priority service based on who he is. Even though he says HIS phone dropped the calls, etc. What an ego!
Guess you also missed the follow up where it turns out he actually had gotten through and that Toyota has his car now and is running it through tons of tests.

SO WHAT. Toyota deserves it. They had a chance to find the problem during the floor mat investigation, they blew it off and more people died until ABC enlarged their investigation.

They DID find the problem. The investigation didn`t stop. They just took action on the problem they found FIRST - the floor mats. I`m sure they were crossing their fingers that it was the only issue, but they certainly didn`t stop at the floor mats. I really do not get this big uproar about acting on the first problem they found, first, when they found it... and then acting on the second problem they found - second, when they found it. Should they have waited and ignored the first problem until they had found all of them? Should they have let other people potentially die because they hadn`t found ALL the problems yet?

People are dead, families ruined and having them BBQed in the media would be nice to see.
Same for ANY product manufacturer that kills people and how they reacted.

Exactly. This is EXACTLY why a company doesn`t make an announcement until it`s SURE of what is going on. You can`t go back later and say "Turns out that possible danger we mentioned was a complete fluke" or "we later found out that the driver had poured glue down the shaft!" That doesn`t make the top page - even if it turns out there was no problem the damage of one announcement is bad enough.
Let`s say it was just one single batch of cars from one single manufacturing day - if you announce that you recognize a dangerous issue in your cars - but don`t yet know for sure what it is... Do you think people are going to be around to hear you announce a couple of weeks/months later that you found it was only 500 cars that had the potential problem and all the rest are totally safe?

You exagurate with bad taste that there is main stream media out there that are claiming there are conspiracies out there to "kill Americans" in a political nationalized sense. Please direct me to this main stream media source so I can read the comments on it.

Remember, I`m in Japan. Clips of US news are just what I see clipped on TV here. I`m sure it`s just one tiny program, with one crazy newscaster... but it`s still stupidity. And there are people out there who will happily slurp up the latest fear craze.