Is Your Toyota Really Trying to Kill You?

I don't own a Toyota, never have, though I have driven several different models on occasion, the longest being a rented Camry for a week while on vacation

Some Toyotas do have problems that qualify as safety defects. Toyota has admitted as much and has taken steps to remedy them. So I don't write this as a Toyota partisan.

But in the last dozen years, nearly half a million Americans have died in their cars -- about 40,000 every year (the rate for Canadians is proportionally slightly lower, possibly because of a higher rate of seatbelt use). So even if there have been deaths attributable to mechanical defects in Toyotas, they represent a tiny fraction of the total. That doesn't mean these deaths are acceptable; just that "death by Toyota" is relatively insignificant in the overall carnage caused by the automobile. The vast majority of collisions are the result of driver error.

Pedal misapplication has been blamed, and that's certainly possible, even probable in short duration parking lot/driveway situations. But I suspect there might be something else contributing to the events lasting several minutes, over several miles.

Some people (including me), when hearing of Toyotas racing out of control for miles on the interstate, ask, "Why not just shift into neutral?"

The commonly supplied answer (if the media think of this possible remedy at all) is that the driver is panicking and it does not occur to him/her. Fair enough; I'd be panicking too.

That the company grew too fast and took its eye off the quality ball has been admitted by senior Toyota management. But is there another reason why a company with a longstanding reputation for building quality vehicles is suddenly beset by a seemingly endless litany of mechanical woes?

Quite possibly because of its reputation for quality. With apologies to my Toyota-owning friends, Toyotas are not stylish or engaging to drive. What they are is dependable. And they are bought by people precisely for that reason.

Unfortunately many of those same people also don't really care about cars or driving. They consider their cars road-going appliances. If we had decent public transit, many of these people would choose not to own a car at all. Some of them should not.

They depend on Toyota's reputation for quality, not their own skill and knowledge, to protect them when piloting 1,500 kgs. of metal at 120 km./hr. It would not surprise me that the reason people call the Highway Patrol instead of shifting into neutral is because a) they don't know neutral exists; b) they don't know what N means; c) they don't understand enough about automobiles to know that transmissions connect the engine to the wheels.

Many Toyota drivers, of course, take driving seriously. But if the number of drivers texting, chatting on cellphones, watching DVD's, and yes, probably even blogging, is any indication of the general level of driving awareness, then is it any wonder that with a few hundred million drivers and tens of millions of Toyotas on the road, some of them are unprepared for an emergency?

But unless and until the authorities put more emphasis on emergency collision avoidance than parallel parking when it comes to driver testing, and the police target inattentive and aggressive driving and not just speeding, other makes will surely suffer the same fate as Toyota.