The Toyota Witch Hunt

My advise is to take your foot off the pedal when you want to slow down. :madgrin:

 

The business week article is very good. Thanks for the post. It's funny that smith was using two floor mats, one on top of the other, in her car.

Tons of engineering goes into a car with very smart people working on it to design and produce it and you get one person doing something stupid like using two floor mats to negate all the smarts that went into the car. As much as I try not to, but my rule of thumb is becoming more and more to assume that most people, the majority out there is stupid.

Another good point in the article is that congress could have hired their own investigator or asked the guy who looked at the smith's car to testify.....but no, that would make too much sense. Congress wanted a witch hunt and created one and supported by the quack gilbert testimony.

 

Would subjecting the suspect Toyota models to some sort of independent testing help resolve some of the concerns?

At this point, do consumers trust Toyota's explanations for the reported problems and whether the recalls actually do fix the sudden acceleration problem and would Toyota trust the US Government to provide an unbiased assessment? After all, maybe most if not all of the problems might be traceable to the drivers and not the cars. Wouldn't an independent expert lab prove this and put all of this nonsense to bed?

 

This wouldn't help Toyota. This is the same as accuse all victims as lier.

What Toyota should do is put reports on each investigation on their website to proof that those complaints had been investigated and were not problems in Toyota part. Do not worry how technical they are, just let the public take their time to digest them. This is the best way to solve the problem. (Unless Toyota had never investigate!)

 

Is there such a thing as an independent expert lab that has no bias? I don't think such exists.

There are still people who believe we never landed on the Moon, who believe the earth is flat, that JFK was killed by the CIA, that we didn't install Allende in Chile, that Audis really did have sudden acceleration issues in the 80s...

 

As noted in the article, telling someone that you can't find an answer to their problem or telling someone that they're wrong is NOT the same thing as calling them a liar. It's amazing how many people fail to understand that.

 

It's hard to see how for example in "Smith case" how her account could really be fully accurate. Since she said that she tried applying the emergency brake but nothing happened. As the emergency brake is totally independent from the accelerator and any electronics then it's hard to see how she could have gone 6 miles with the rear wheels locked and then subsequent inspection of her car turn up no problems.

I know this because my other car is a manual and one time in the Prius I accidentally went for the clutch (which of course it doesn't have ) and slammed on the emergency brake instead. I can tell you for sure that it locked up the back wheels straight away and I came to a very abrupt (and highly embarrassing) rubber burning stop.

BTW. I haven't done that trick again since that day, I always remember which car I'm driving now. Oh the shame .

 

Just because your Prius wheels locked does not mean that the parking brake will lock the rear wheels of all vehicles under all conditions. I've owned several vehicles in which the parking brake was barely able to keep the vehicle from moving on a moderate incline, so they would not have locked the wheels at say, 60 or 70 mph. The brakes would first have to overcome the rotational inertia of the tire/wheel combination and then whatever traction the tires have with the ground. If they cannot do this, the wheels will continue to turn and the brakes will heat up rapidly. Also, if the pads/shoes are worn or the brake is not adjusted properly, less than maximum braking force will be applied.

 

This assumption is what will bring down Toyota. There are difference between "Tried and can't find" and "won't find so don't try".

 

Yes and they'd overheat and this should show up in the subsequent inpection of the car. It shouldn't get a clean bill of health, so something still doesn't add up there.

 

Toyota tried to find out what Ms. Smith's car's problem was, as was noted by Mr. Wharton. They told her they couldn't find the problem. She says they said she was a liar.

 

Show us the report, let us decide.

 

See Post #1 and the article in Business Week referenced.

 

Full report still no show! Part of the report re-tell by an auto column writer!? How about the part that the brakes all burnt out?

 

See? You bunch of heathens better get right! ... because believers never have bad stuff happen, or die, right? Um never mind.
:madgrin:
forgive me Lord, I couldn't resist ... but did you ever notice ... everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to check-out.


.

 

Yup. Toyota broke it, but God fixed it.

More like Mrs. Smith didn't pay her tithing this month so God decided to put the fear of God back in her. Except now she thinks that Toyota did it.

 

And then it might just be poor story telling. Long before the Christian
era, the ancient Greeks identified this literary device:

A deus ex machina (The "c" in machina is pronounced like
"K.") literally, in Latin, "god from the machine" is a plot device
whereby a previously intractable problem is suddenly and abruptly
solved with a contrived introduction of a new character, ability, or
object. It is generally considered to be a poor storytelling technique
because it undermines the story's internal logic.

From Wikipedia

Perhaps the contemporary version would be Deus ex Toyota.

Clearly, "Nihil novi sub sole," also Latin;

"There is nothing new under the sun."

 

Ms. Smith's brakes weren't burnt out according to her testimony and any other report I've read.

I happen to agree with Mr. Wharton (the whole point of this thread) who seems to have a good handle on what we do know vs. what a bunch of greedy lawyers and plaintiffs want us to believe. You can believe who and what you want to believe.

 

The author is the anti-science online opinion guy that wrote this.

Is Global Warming a "Crock of S*%t?" - BusinessWeek

I've never seen him in the print version. I don't know what the real facts are, and Toyota seems to think that letting an owner look at the black box information would give trade secrets to competitors.

Toyota at a minimum, should allow owners a view of their own data when they report an incident. Many owners have complained that when things were checked out by the dealer, the dealer did nothing. Others have gone to other shops and found things wrong. Ms Smith originally just wanted to get toyota to buy the car back, an understandable thing. They took took her to a biased arbiter. Don't wave your rights to the big corporation that has a history of trying to bury safety investigations.

No witch hunt. Greedy safety deaf businessmen. Show boating congressmen. Dishonest dealers. Greedy unscrupulous lawyers.

If Toyota knew in 2006 that dealers were putting unsafe floor mats in the car, why didn't they go public so that owners and dealers would know what to do? Why did Toyota hide the sticky throttle reports from Europe. Let's stop this which hunt, toyota funded media hype.