Congress To Design Your Brakes

Executives of Toyota America are now bleating in the press for more transparency from Japan about "quality issues." It seems as if they are trying to avoid accountability for the current issues. Customer complaints on American-made Toyotas originate here, and they are either reported through dealers or directly to Toyota America phone numbers. The NHSTA regulates the handling of these complaints. It's a pretty clear cut issue, and much simpler than the broader issue of quality.

Customer complaints about braking, sudden acceleration and the like entail the technician hooking up a handheld unit to the on board computer and downloading the error codes; the technician then checks the codes against the service bulletins issued by the company. I think that one mistake Toyota is making, at the behest of its lawyers probably, is not being more candid about what error codes it has or has not found in the reported complaints to date. One Toyota official somewhere stated that they had been unable to recreate the "situation" that generated a sudden acceleration incident. This statement is problematical because it suggests that the dealer's tech found a code that related to the sudden acceleration problem, and was unable to recreate sudden acceleration. If such a code exists, it must be in some service bulletin. Why not just report the facts?

Right now, the biggest problem is the dearth of facts. The only numbers tossed around are complaint numbers. We know that self-reporting systems typically under-report the number of real problems. Per mile-driven, it seems as if the number of sudden acceleration complaints for Toyotas is relatively small, but it would be nice to benchmark these against the same complaints for midsize sedans from all other makers. The NHSTA must have all this data. Meanwhile, the press reports a large number of compaints about sudden acceleration, but it seems as if 80 percent of these came after the announcement of the recall, so they should be viewed with caution.

Senator Jay Rockefeller chided the NHSTA for not being expert enough on sudden acceleration issues. If they don't have engineers who can work with the industry to understand this problem, then heaven help us. However, Congress is expert enough to recommend smart brake pedals being installed on all new vehicles. Congress can't balance a budget, but they can design our brakes!

Now, suddenly we have large recalls coming from other makers like Nissan also. Is everyone afraid of legislative scrutiny? The auto industry here is being its own worst enemy, and instead of increasing advertising to get minor changes in share, they should really work together to get to the bottom of complaint reporting, analysis, and data sharing with the Federal government. In the end, candor and real transparency will benefit consumers and the industry.