Real Reason for the Recall (Humor)

As a first try of negotiations with the NHTSA, toyota legal was going to issue a licensing agreement instead of a software up date to the ecu.

A draft of the agreement is below

"Driver Agreement: The car you are driving is a high tech device and as such requires some operator inputs that are different than on low tech cars. Any thoughts that brake feel is not like conventional cars, is not correct. It is an improvement. The car knows what you are wanting to do better than you do, and may momentarily release your brakes when it notices that you may accidentally be hitting the brake pedal instead of the accelerator. Further if you have a three letter nickname or may get one, the prius includes an accelerating cruze control. It is laser guided and you must agree to being able to handle the car in excess of 90 miles per hour if you have a three leter nickname. Lack of braking and sudden acceleration are part of the "driving fun" of having a toyota. Oh what a feeling. By clicking ok you agree that any accidents in using your toyota are driver error. This constitutes an agreement to only say good things about your prius to the media, to not report characteristics as safety issues to the safety agencies, and not to sue or have your surviving relatives sue toyota for any reason. You agree that any accidents while using your toyota are caused by your driving abililty. THe car, car company, an dealership have no liability."


Management agreed that this was the best step forward. Marketing and Engineering also were on board. Unfortunately the bean counters objected. They calculated that adding the touch screen with ok instructions would cost the company too much money. The plan of marketting to educated the drivers on how to talk to the press about improvements was also deemed too expensive. Some how these dweebs one out, and forced engineering to remove part of the "fun to drive" factor from the cars. This resulted in a software change that makes the prius brake less exitingly like low tech ordinary cars with antilock braking. How is that moving forward?

I hate those acountants.

 

Didn't think I needed the smileys, but there seems to be a lot of frayed nerves.

I guess I should put my serious opinion out there.

The recall is a good thing and fixing mistakes will only improve customer satisfaction and public trust in toyota.

The public distrust and media frenzy will go away much faster for toyota when it man's up and fixes mistakes. Mr. Toyoda did an excellent editorial yesterday. Toyota UK on the same day was talking about it all being driver error and probably not a problem in Europe. It looks like there are still practices in toyota that undermine repairing public trust. I am exagerating these ofcourse, but those folks need to get on board and treat customer problems (whether real or imagined) with more respect.