With the United States government now deeply involved in the automotive industry, I guess it was only a matter of time before they began to intervene to prop up their favored firms—and knock down any competitor. Hence the hysteria over supposed sudden acceleration problems in Toyotas, which are manufactured overseas or in non-unionized American plants.
I've let this story go for a bit, so to catch up, I'm linking to a few good pieces from Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran. The main link below discusses the dubious basis for the claims about sudden acceleration—a problem that has historically been found to be caused by driver error. In these cases, the driver accidentally presses down on the accelerator but believes he is stepping on the brake, then he declares that the car just lurched forward on its own and he couldn't stop it.
Corcoran also describes the media's complicity in misreporting Toyota's quality record, and he points out how the current hysteria will reinforce that problem by producing a "snowball effect" where Toyota owners suddenly file complaints about every little problem they can imagine.
But the federal government will not be able to honestly weigh all of these factors, because it now has a vested interest in propping up the US automakers and their unionized employees.
"The War on Toyota," Terence Corcoran, National Post, February 3
There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world’s greatest automaker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesmen such as US Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of US economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war….
California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.
Yesterday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood’s cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply “stop driving” their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing….
At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem…. All of the reports are anecdotal accounts of out-of-control vehicles for reasons that nobody can ever adequately explain….
Of the millions of cars on the road, only a few hundred anecdotal reports exist, making it far more likely that other things are happening, including driver mistakes and even fluke occurrences that no amount of corporate fixing can avoid. Usually the stories fade and the auto companies move on, although Audi famously became victim of a SUA [Sudden Unintended Acceleration] craze a couple of decades ago, losing massive market share even though no problem was ever identified beyond driver error.
Toyota’s experience looks like it could become even worse that Audi’s, mainly because bashing Toyota serves the national economic interest of the United States, US auto makers, union leaders and others whose economic ideas tend toward nationalism.
Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of "The Intellectual Activist (TIA)" and contributor to "The Freedom Fighter's Journal."
I've let this story go for a bit, so to catch up, I'm linking to a few good pieces from Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran. The main link below discusses the dubious basis for the claims about sudden acceleration—a problem that has historically been found to be caused by driver error. In these cases, the driver accidentally presses down on the accelerator but believes he is stepping on the brake, then he declares that the car just lurched forward on its own and he couldn't stop it.
Corcoran also describes the media's complicity in misreporting Toyota's quality record, and he points out how the current hysteria will reinforce that problem by producing a "snowball effect" where Toyota owners suddenly file complaints about every little problem they can imagine.
But the federal government will not be able to honestly weigh all of these factors, because it now has a vested interest in propping up the US automakers and their unionized employees.
"The War on Toyota," Terence Corcoran, National Post, February 3
There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world’s greatest automaker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesmen such as US Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of US economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war….
California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.
Yesterday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood’s cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply “stop driving” their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing….
At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem…. All of the reports are anecdotal accounts of out-of-control vehicles for reasons that nobody can ever adequately explain….
Of the millions of cars on the road, only a few hundred anecdotal reports exist, making it far more likely that other things are happening, including driver mistakes and even fluke occurrences that no amount of corporate fixing can avoid. Usually the stories fade and the auto companies move on, although Audi famously became victim of a SUA [Sudden Unintended Acceleration] craze a couple of decades ago, losing massive market share even though no problem was ever identified beyond driver error.
Toyota’s experience looks like it could become even worse that Audi’s, mainly because bashing Toyota serves the national economic interest of the United States, US auto makers, union leaders and others whose economic ideas tend toward nationalism.
Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of "The Intellectual Activist (TIA)" and contributor to "The Freedom Fighter's Journal."
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