<VV> Toyota - no Vair

[Tony Underwood]

At 04:21 PM 8/11/2010, kenpepke at juno.com wrote:

>Uh, yes ... there are a lot of dumb drivers. However, the article 
>indicates of the reported incidences more than half might be driver 
>error.  That would lead one to realize something less than half were 
>NOT driver error.  That is a lot of vehicle errors, even for 
>Toyota.  Years of junkyard experience tells me that Toyota quality 
>has been add by their advertising department from the beginning.
>Ken P
>
> >From the attached article:
>And in more than half of the crashes blamed on sudden acceleration 
>analyzed by the government, data from the vehicles� 
>�black boxes� show the driver was not stepping on the 
>brake at the time of the accident�indicating that driver 
>error may have been at fault.


I keep recalling the Toyota pilot whose car ran away, cop car got 
after him, followed, figured what was happening and managed to get 
ahead of the Toyota and use the cruiser's brakes to stop both 
vehicles, Toyota driver got out and refused to get back in, saying he 
was never driving a Toyota again.

Went to court, Toyota said their black box in the car indicated the 
driver was stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake...


Cop countered with testimony that he watched the brake lights of the 
car flashing continuously in a manner that suggested the driver was 
pumping the brake pedal.    It also brought back some reflections of 
a previous crash of a Lexus that killed a police officer and several 
of his family members after his car ran away and crashed.   This was 
the cop who phoned 911 telling them to try and clear a path ahead of 
him, in the headlong dash through traffic for over a mile before his 
car left the road at appx 100 mph and crashed.

Toyota suggested that the cop's crash was also caused by the officer 
accidentally stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake... for 
over a mile.   That driver was, in several hundred postings in 
various automotive forums among bloggers, nominated for a "Darwin 
Award" following Toyota's announcement regarding "accidentally" 
pressing the gas instead of brake.    Yeahright.   This was a police 
officer who I suspect knew the difference between a gas pedal and a 
brake pedal.




Maybe there are NOT so many dumb drivers out there.   Maybe Toyota 
techs were lying their asses off or the "black box" was reading the 
wrong data or misinterpreting it.   Meanwhile, Toyota countered each 
incident with an excuse from floor mats to gas pedals to driver 
error...  yet nobody else was having these issues except 
Toyota.   Independent software experts were sending in reports of 
defects they had found in the Toyota electronics/software... and of 
course Toyota insisted * in the news reports * that there was nothing 
wrong with their electronics or software, saying the pedal was at 
fault although some Toyotas kept having issues after pedal 
replacement... and cars that came in for the gas pedal "fix" after 
those initial reports were quietly getting new electronics and 
software at the dealerships while they were repairing the pedal issue...


The pedal is a contract part, not a Toyota part... and several other 
car makers use the same pedal assembly.   None of them had any 
runaway issues.


Fnck Toyota and the whore they rode in on.   They brought this onto 
themselves in their mad rush to be #1, and the recalls continue to 
this day.   Like I'd said several times along the way, for some years 
now, if I won a free Toyota in a contest I'd sell it and buy a 
Ford.    Toyota's underhanded business practices for the last 20 
years are coming back to haunt them and it's about time.

Karma's a bitch.

I'll keep my 'Vairs thanks.   I TRUST them.    I'd been watching 
Toyota for some years now, after reading up ( and viewing documentary 
research films and interviews) on some underhanded stunts they did 
that caused a lot of trouble for domestic industry... up to and 
including the sneaky Prius subsidies that a lot of people never found 
out about to this day, although they sure as HELL should know about it.

Toyota's got a lot of damage control to do, and I don't feel sorry 
for them one damned bit.




tony..

PS:   a driver who had been convicted of reckless driving and 
manslaughter was recently released from prison where he'd been 
serving time for striking and killing pedestrians when his Toyota had 
run away and could not be stopped, yet the court didn't believe his 
story when he testified in court that the throttle had stuck wide 
open and the brakes wouldn't work...  before all the rest of the 
runaway Toyota reports had begun surfacing in media.