Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

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Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby phasmoid » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:02 pm

OK so Toyota may be is some serious shit here as the extent of this recall becomes known. Is it feasible that this issue has been cultivated and hyped to help place American auto manufacturers in a better competitive space? Here is my sketchy anecdotal non-case:

1. No doubt some Toyota vehicles DO have a serious deal that warrants a recall, but is this really any worse than the other recall worthy issues that all car manufacturers have to manage?

2. The G is now dependent on domestic auto companies to be profitable to pay back the bailout funds. The inability to do so would not only hurt the auto companies image/brand, but also the Obama administrations assurances that this policy will pan out in the end.

3. The American car brand is generally perceived as inferior to Japanese cars.

4. Let's capitalize on a common event for all auto companies (recalls) and hype it with the most damaging spin and maximum coverage to create a place for Uncle Sam in the market space.

Opinions please.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Chimborazo » Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:26 pm

I think Toyota's quality has decreased in the past few years, judging by what I've read and heard from other Toyota owners. They're expensive too. Due to these two things, along with the fact that Chrysler sucks donkey dick and I'll never buy a GM product, I'm limited to either a Ford F150 or Nissan Titan when my Tundra dies. I haven't researched the Titans much, but as of now the F150 is the more likely candidate. Ford may have a lot of shortcomings, but the F series is not one of them...they know how to make trucks.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Sri Lanky » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:32 pm

The only conspiracy is the fact that we are being driven by the dictatorship of cars.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby pyrohydra » Fri Jan 29, 2010 7:33 pm

Coincidence?

Honda recalls cars in fire danger

The Honda Jazz model is also known as Honda Fit in some countries
Honda has announced the recall of 646,000 cars globally to fix a switch defect that could cause a fire.

The recall includes Jazz models, also known as Fit in some countries, built in Japan, China, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia and India, Honda said.

Three cases of fires due to the defect have so far been reported - two in the US and one in South Africa.

In September, two-year-old Vanilla Nurse was killed in Cape Town when the car she was sleeping in caught fire.

The total number of recalls includes 619,000 Jazz, or Fit, models globally and 27,000 City models in Asia.

In the US, 140,000 vehicles are being recalled. Just over 171,000 Jazz cars in Britain will be recalled in March.

In a statement, Honda said a defective master switch could cause water to enter the power window switch and could, in some cases, cause a fire.

On Thursday, carmaker Toyota announced the recall of vehicles in the US, Europe and China over concerns about accelerator pedals getting stuck on floor mats.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Penta » Thu Feb 04, 2010 2:16 pm

How do you stop a car with a jammed accelerator?


A runaway car is a nightmare scenario for any driver

By Tom de Castella

The recall of thousands of Toyotas with potentially faulty pedals raises a terrifying hypothetical scenario - what should you do if the accelerator on your car jams?
It's a driver's worst nightmare. You try to slow down but find the accelerator pedal is stuck - you're in a runaway car.
The world's largest carmaker Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles across Europe and the US due either to the risk of accelerator pedals becoming stuck on the floor mat or jamming on their own.
Toyota insists the jamming problem is very rare and that it has only received 26 reports of any kind of problem in Europe. But stories have surfaced in recent days of Toyota drivers who have briefly experienced being out of control of their car.

In the case of the accelerator sticking, the immediate response for a lot of people would be to unjam the accelerator when the proper reaction is in fact to try to stop the car
Andrew Howard
AA
A recording of an emergency call from a family of four who died driving a Lexus in California paints a horrifying picture.
The caller says: "We're in a Lexus…and we're going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck…we're in trouble…there's no brakes…we're approaching the intersection…hold on…hold on and pray…pray."
It seems almost like a sequence from a film.
But however unlikely the scenario is, there is a practical question - how would you react if your accelerator became stuck?
The most important thing to do is to stay calm and not do anything rash, says Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA.
"The brakes will still work, the clutch will still work. The biggest problem is staying cool - as we've seen from the snowy weather people tend to panic when things start to go wrong. In a few seconds you can go into a skid and hit a tree."
Some drivers might be panicked into an unwise course of action.
HOW TO STOP A CAR IF ACCELERATOR JAMS

1. Use the footbrake, not the handbrake
2. Depress the clutch
3. Look for a route to the side of the road, and steer there carefully
4. Only switch the engine off, if the clutch cannot be used instead
5. If footbrake has failed, you can use very gentle handbrake before changing down a gear
Source: Stephen Mead

"In the case of the accelerator sticking, the immediate response for a lot of people would be to unjam the accelerator when the proper reaction is in fact to try to stop the car," says Mr Howard. "That is the difficulty here - human nature makes it so hard to sort out these things."
For most people the place where they are driving fastest is on the motorway.
"Imagine you're driving down the inside lane of the M4 at 70 mph," says Stephen Mead, assistant chief examiner at the Institute of Advanced Motoring.
"The car ahead brakes, so you take your foot off the pedal but nothing happens. What should you do?"
It's easier said than done but Mead insists that by following a few simple steps you can quickly bring the car to a stop, saving your own and other people's lives.
If the accelerator is stuck, you should first firmly depress the foot brake, he says. This will override the accelerator.
It must be the footbrake and not the handbrake, which could cause the brake pads to burn out and potentially put the car into a spin.

KEEP FOCUSED
Don't panic
Don't try and free the accelerator pedal
Don't waste time putting on hazard lights
Source: Stephen Mead
Next, the driver needs to depress the clutch, effectively stopping the engine from powering the car. The equivalent in an automatic car is to put the gearstick into neutral.
Continue braking and keep an eye out, forward and back, for an "escape route" to the hard shoulder. Do not try to steer straight across in one quick swerve - this could be dangerous, and destabilise the vehicle at such a speed.
In a short time - perhaps 10 seconds - you can bring the car to a halt, he says.
But what happens if the accelerator isn't the only faulty part of the car? It is very unlikely these days that the brakes will fail, as modern cars have dual brakes. There are typically two pistons controlling the brakes - if one fails you should still be able to stop the car, Mr Mead says.
But in the event the brakes do completely fail, you can still help by depressing the clutch.
Vanessa Guyll, technical specialist at the AA, argues it is easier to use the clutch to disengage the gears than to turn the key to switch the engine off.
It may be difficult at high speeds to put the car into a lower gear. So Mr Mead suggests a very gentle use of the handbrake to slow the car enough to slip it into a lower gear. You can now take it down through the gears, reducing your speed.
But what if the clutch has failed as well as the accelerator and brakes?
"Turn off the ignition but it's vital you leave the key there," Mr Mead says. "If you remove the key from the ignition, the steering lock will go on and that's the last thing you want."

Toyota has become the world's biggest car maker
If in addition to all the above, the key is also stuck, you are in the realms of the mindbogglingly unlikely.
"Then the fates are really against you," Mr Mead says. There is no ideal solution here as nothing is going to be painless, he warns. You can try and phone the police or take the car onto a grass verge or onto an HGV escape lane.
The last two are both dangerous ways of trying to slow down a car. Hitting the escape lane, designed to stop a 44-tonne truck by sinking its axle into gravel, would rip the front suspension off a car and be like hitting a brick wall, he warns.
If all else fails and there is something ahead of you that you need to avoid this might be your only option.
But all of this assumes you are on the motorway. Mr Howard says much of the same advice would apply at lower speeds on city roads, or minor roads in the countryside.
The speeds may be lower but there could be greater dangers in terms of junctions, pedestrian crossings, trees, sign and lamp posts, and closely-spaced cars.
"I'd rather it happened on the motorway in some ways," says Mr Howard. "It's not as if a few miles an hour change matters much. I wouldn't want to be approaching a zebra crossing when this happened."
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Postby el3so » Thu Feb 04, 2010 10:19 pm

Hitting the warning lights would be instantaneous/automatic. Over here it is one of the only ways to let other drivers know something is out of the normal.
Penta wrote: Next, the driver needs to depress the clutch, effectively stopping the engine from powering the car. The equivalent in an automatic car is to put the gearstick into neutral.
By all means do not do this if your vehicle is going downhill and be careful with (sharp) bends.

Penta wrote: It may be difficult at high speeds to put the car into a lower gear.
This can/will damage your engine. Just saying.
Penta wrote: But what if the clutch has failed as well as the accelerator and brakes?
"Turn off the ignition but it's vital you leave the key there," Mr Mead says. "If you remove the key from the ignition, the steering lock will go on and that's the last thing you want."
Yep.
But turning off the ignition also means you cut the juice from the power-steering. Be prepared for it. Dunno if this happens in all cars. Probably not in

Penta wrote: If in addition to all the above, the key is also stuck, you are in the realms of the mindbogglingly unlikely. "Then the fates are really against you," Captain Obvious says.

Keep looking. Try to avoid head-on collisions. Keep looking. Try to avoid immovable obstacles. Keep looking. Know that eventually gas will run out. Keep looking.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Yeahsure » Sat Feb 06, 2010 7:29 pm

Ironically FoxNews was bruiting a similar line today. I've owned 3 Corollas, the only problems I've had have been other vehicles (usually pick up trucks) running into them. If GM built something with similar reliability and quality it would've been game, set, match long ago.

I question exactly WHERE the troubled vehicles have been assembled: within or outside the US?
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby HockeyGuy » Thu Feb 11, 2010 3:54 am

This a perfectly executed Black PR campaign.

If anyone follows the stats and recalls over the years, you'll see Chrysler over the last few years have had recalls over 300k, but no one gives a shit as the cars themselves are poorly made.

Who gets to benefit from this?

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/02/peda ... n-january/

The numbers don't lie:
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/02/02/by-t ... l-edition/
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby ktrout » Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:39 am

I would agree that there's a fair amount of nationalistic grandstanding/political hay making here, but it sounds like there's a real issue. If there's no longer any mechanical connection between the driver and the brakes/steering/drivetrain I think that's a fundamentally dodgy situation. We can't really expect these cars to be maintained like aircraft. If someone can control or stop a vehicle remotely isn't that a new assassination/K&R tool as well. At the very least let me keep a real brake pedal.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Dabbi » Wed Feb 24, 2010 12:25 pm

It is just fucking insane that a company could get away with designing the brake system in their car like that. I'm no big fan of electrical inputs but at least they could build a separate system for the brakes.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Chimborazo » Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:21 pm

pyrohydra wrote:Honda recalls cars in fire danger


Honda also has an airbag recall. A woman I know was killed on Christmas Eve when her airbag deployed in a low speed collision and a piece of debris from the thing cut her carotid artery. A friend of mine was on the first medic unit to get there, and he told me she was DOA by then. Her three children were uninjured.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby el3so » Wed Feb 24, 2010 9:53 pm

Chimborazo wrote: A woman I know was killed on Christmas Eve when her airbag deployed in a low speed collision and a piece of debris from the thing cut her carotid artery. A friend of mine was on the first medic unit to get there, and he told me she was DOA by then. Her three children were uninjured.

Sheesh, Chim, that makes for one hell of a sob story. Sorry about their and your loss.
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Re: Toyota Trouble; Conspiracy?

Postby Chimborazo » Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:45 pm

I actually didn't know her that well, but it's a sad story. One of the kids kept asking my buddy if their mommy was going to be at the hospital when they got there (the other unit transported the body). The police went to get her husband, and when he got to the ER he refused to see the body or the children and asked why they were lying to him about his wife dying. It took about an hour to convince him that they weren't lying to him.
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