This Toyota is just fine, thank you (Feb. 6)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
We are a people who just can’t keep things in perspective. Take the big Toyota crisis, for example. With all the news stories about some models of Toyotas’ gas pedals sticking, you would expect to find the ditches laden with Toyota cadavers along every freeway, the results of sudden-speed-up crashes; you would expect to find Toyota rear ends sticking out of the windows of bakeries and butcher shops where they had barged in, either after their accelerators stuck or their brakes failed.
But, no. While dealing with a sticking accelerator or failing brakes no doubt causes drivers to break into a sweat, it just hasn’t happened all that much. And Toyota is trying its best to take care of the problem.
What started out as concern over a design problem grew into the Hurricane Katrina of recalls. Toyota even stopped selling its cars. And you have to give Toyota credit for that. (They’ll need it later.)
But the vast majority of Toyotas on the road right now are performing just fine.
Mrs. Doud, for example, thinks her Toyota runs like Jackie Joyner-Kersee. She can’t find anything wrong with it, except that sometimes she has to have it washed and vacuumed. It doesn’t wash and vacuum itself.
Her model and year of Toyota has not been recalled. If it had, she would have taken it to the Toyota dealer and told them to call her when they were through with it. Then she would have just gone on driving it.
Whatever the faults with Toyotas, or with any cars, there is nothing any manufacturer can do to make their products perfectly safe.
That is especially true when it comes to the part of the vehicle over which they have no control, which is the driver.
Drivers who drive drunk, or play with their cell phones, or try to eat lunch or put on makeup while driving are far more dangerous than any manufacturing problem. Next to them, sticking accelerators are sought-after accessories.
