U.S. judge finalizing deal in Toyota acceleration cases

We Americans have become a nation of crybabies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLt5_F5tHEY

False NHTSA complaints found in Kane's report to Congress

Sources familiar with the NHTSA / Toyota investigations have reported to Carquestions that all of the investigations of the past two weeks (more than 8) have all resulted in a finding of "driver error" and no vehicle defects have been found

The fault is with the driver and the American legal system. The government was willing to do anything to save GM .

Most of what is going with Toyota here has to do with politics. Toyota is at fault for being slow and complacent to respond initially, but the government has yet to reproduce the "sudden acceleration" issue claimed by so many people. How is that possible that Toyota is being fined $1 billion?

Toyota should pay for their arrogance. They stonewalled the investigation into their cars right when the problem started. Had they cooperated perhaps they would have gotten a lighter sentence. They openly admitted that the car was too complex to really know what was going on which is why NASA had to get involved. Now we need NASA to test all of their cars, apparently.

Toyota isn't what it used to be. GM just passed them in quality on the JD Power report. Millions of cars recalled. No wonder Japan is forced to weaken the yen.

They openly admitted that the car was too complex to really know what was going on which is why NASA had to get involved. Now we need NASA to test all of their cars, apparently.

NHTSA basically came to a conclusion that there was no fault within the mechanism but instead of stating that it was due to driver error, they passed the buck to NASA. The moment they did this, many here had indicated this, a politically correct way of stating, " it's the drivers fault"

The engineering behind autos aren't that complicated where an expert within the field can't figure out the glitches.

Due to the messed up legal system in U.S. in regards to tort, the lawyers got together and started to recruit these "I stepped on my gas instead of my breaks on my Toyota ,drivers" which isn't too hard in a class action case where all you need to do is sign a single piece of paper and hope I get a check in the mail.

Or I could be wrong in that although NASA could not figure this out, Toyota was actually able to figure it out where there are no mass "sudden acceleration" problems now. Perhaps Toyota is more advanced than NASA where they should be the ones engineering space programs.

Show me a proof NHTSA. The proposed fine may be admitted to rebut NHTSA but the U.S. government never found anything wrong with its vehicles. Toyota just delayed the announcement by 4 months, not 15 years like GM. The government has no evidence that the throttle has a 'dangerous defect' and finesToyota for non-conclusive evidence. Does this make any sense? Toyota has no higher incident rate than any of the other automakers, and there has been no effort by U.S. government to identify a mechanical or electrical cause for a defect. To the contrary, all but a few regrettable accidents are likely due to driver error compounded by a desire to cash in on the 'dangerous defect' assumption.

I hope the poor guy in Minneapolis is out of jail after his car accerlerated out of control and they gave him a 20-plus year sentence...Last week I was narrowly missed by a little old lady in a mini Chevy in my condo parking garage after it roared like a NASCAR racing car our of control (impossible for her to have caused that much power in so short of time...

In the United States, those who have more power and money wins.

Last week I was narrowly missed by a little old lady in a mini Chevy in my condo parking garage after it roared like a NASCAR racing car our of control (impossible for her to have caused that much power in so short of time...

Roared like a NASCAR racing car? A mini Chevy? Really? How did it do that?

Can you explain what you mean by it being impossible for HER to have caused that much power?

United States is all politics, how can you blame a Faulty accelerator after a crash? Thats why they will add black boxes to the car computer. lets see what happens next.

Pay off Toyota!

@superlib how gullible can you get. any manufacturer can spend huge amounts on improving the quality of there products. especially when they are saved and all there debts are erased in the form of a huge taxpayer funded bailout. US will do whatever it takes to discredit a non American brand to benefit of the American one. GM is just a fake American brand putting themselves into massive debt to compete all the while knowing theyll be saved from the shame of bankrupcy. $49.5 billion bailout by the US gov, only $23.1 billion paid back. US taxpayer loses bigtime again

Toyota should follow Ford and Jeep routine. It did not wait 4 or 5 people are killed and announced recall to replace or change whatever problem it thinks (the custom of Japanese automakers in USA) and get sued.

In regards to the mini Chevy and little old lady, she only moved the car in a small circle about triple its width and in only about five seconds---even if she stepped on the accelorator by mistake, it would not have roared like it did out of control. It would have lunged but not roared...

wtfjapan: how gullible can you get. any manufacturer can spend huge amounts on improving the quality of there products. especially when they are saved and all there debts are erased in the form of a huge taxpayer funded bailout.

It also helps when your company actually has a level playing field against other companies that do not have to pay things like health care costs and other legacy costs. Strange that GM is now doing very well when the comparisons are more apple-to-apple, isn't it?

US will do whatever it takes to discredit a non American brand to benefit of the American one.

heheh and it's such a disadvantage for Toyota that Japan would neeeeever do that.... ;)

Look, Toyota isn't the company it was before. Analysts questioned if the company could keep the same level of quality while growing so fast. The answer is obvious. Still a great car company, but it's been taken down a notch. The government manipulation of the yen should help them get some more free cash, tho. Kind of like a back door bailout.

@superlib The government manipulation of the yen should help them get some more free cash, tho. Kind of like a back door bailout. LOL. some people just want to see what they want. and what do you think the $1Trillion/year $85Billion/month for the last 4 years of quantitive easing does to the US currency!? when the US does it and causes the imbalance in exchange rates it OK, when Japan does basically the same thing to try and reverse constant deflation they call it currency manipulation. cant get much more hypocritical than that. LOL

Awwww....four years of a strong yen after decades and decades of a weak yen. My heart really goes out to them!

@superlib yes bit like my heart goes out to the city of Detroit, now officially bankrupt. who hosted all those US carmakers that would also be bankrupt without the US taxpayer bailouts. bit like letting your parents die after all those years they brought you up. US gov only cares about big business and will suck it citizens dry to ensure they stay afloat. Has any CEO in GM or Ford ever been sent to prision!?. never going to happen.

How come you never hear about this throttling problem in Japan? Only in the U.S.?

Toyota has fallen a notch. Seriously, get over it.

actually theres no denying Toyota has had problems but its still the best selling car manufacturer in the world today, even with the problems. oh and it certainly wont be going bankrupt and needing saving anytime soon. LOL

actually theres no denying Toyota has had problems

Good point. Now get over it.

wtfjapanJul. 20, 2013 - 11:58PM JST US will do whatever it takes to discredit a non American brand to benefit of the American one. GM is just a fake American brand putting themselves into massive debt to compete all the while knowing theyll be saved from the shame of bankrupcy.

U.S. will do whatever it takes to discredit a non American brand? Then let me ask you this question: How would you stop this Lexus ES350 during the sudden accelation? The floor mat caused sudden accelation in San Diego case. In that vehicle, in order to shut this Lexus engine off, you have to push the button for three seconds straight while the car is going full blast (which amount to distance of over 500-600 feet). Did the driver of the rented Lexus knew ahead that in order to shut the engine off, you to push red button for three seconds? Of course not. If you try to put in neutral on this gate automatic transmission, you cannot shift to neutal while running. it's locked. If you applied the brakes, it will eventually heat up so much to the point where brake does not work. What would you have done? More you look at this Lexus ES350, Toyota engineers designed this car very poorly with no safety in mind.

yes Toyota has had problems, but it sure pales in comparison to bankruptcy. you need to get over the fact GM has been a total failure, and was only saved because it had to beg for money, very sad indeed, @sfjp330 acceleration issues were beacause of floor mats, NASA themselves couldnt find any problems in the source code software that runs these systems. Americans tend to forget that there manufactures also had many problem in the past eg expolding fuel tanks. and have caused far more deaths that Toyota ever has. just another round of Japan bashing like back in the 80s when Japanese cars were very cheap and popular in the US. If If the US cant match another countries products they try to discredit them. funny thing is 70% of all Japanese cars sold in the US are made in the US. might be quailty problem with US employees. LOL

wtf: yes Toyota has had problems

Agreed.

acceleration issues were beacause of floor mats

Design flaw.

just another round of Japan bashing

You've already said that Toyota has had problems recently and this particular incident was cause by a design flaw. Believe it or not, the world is not out to get Toyota. They had some very high profile deaths in the cars, like the highway patrol man whose family was killed while he was on the phone with 911. Toyota was very slow to move when people wanted to get information from them and their internal memos didn't help, either.

Now you can run away screaming while yelling "GM" at the top of your lungs.

SuperLib Jul. 25, 2013 - 03:44AM JST Now you can run away screaming while yelling "GM" at the top of your lungs.

If the U.S. government is going to have any credibility in regulating the auto industry, it needs to get out of the auto industry. We are now supposed to believe, then, that the Obama administrations only interest in sticking it to Toyota is to protect U.S. consumers from an alleged defect that has yet to be fully proven? Even after the UAW donated millions to The One’s campaign? Even though the government has a major stake in GM? Even when the president’s Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, brags about how they went to Toyota’s headquarters in Japan to “wake them up?”Even after Lahood smears Toyota as “safety deaf” and threatens that they’re “not done with Toyota?”

@superlib.... GOVERNMENT MOTORS!!!!!!! or TAXPAYER MOTORS!!!! to be more precise. lol

its actually sad to think that every car that was sold by GM leading up to bankruptcy was actually making a loss. if i was a CEO of a national image company like GM id probably run it at a loss to compete also. because i know the US Gov would never let it fail. oh and dodge jail time also.

Toyota should be fine. Try to get some sleep.

yes Toyota will be just fine, theyll continues to make huge profits and probably even increase its lead over the competition. Id say there will be another round of bashing come its way the longer GM stays in second place.