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U.S. Transportation Secretary LaHood says Toyota slow to respond

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Branded: If you bothered to actually follow the link and read the article, you would know that it is a website called "Autoblog" which I view fairly often, and is comprised mainly of a UAW and D3 fan-base (check out the comments and you will agree).

The article that I refer to is an RSS feed that uses data from a Consumer Reports article, but again, if you read it, you would have noticed that it uses the CR data to actually highlight the fact that Toyota has the largest share of unintended acceleration cases in a set period of time (41% of complaints were for Toyota vehicles, when their market share was only 16%). I was simply pointing out the fact that other car makers also have several complaints of the same problem, yet Toyota is the only one having to shut down sales. For example, Ford is close behind Toyota with 28% of the complaints with probably less than half that amount of market share....

you know what? Why am I even explaining this to you? I have asked you COUNTLESS times to read people's posts carefully because you continually fail to do so. I have seen some of your other posts on JT and they're all very consistent... 90% of them bash other countries and brag about how great America is.

I am not trying to misdirect attention from Toyota to other car makers. What I am saying is this: If Toyota's vehicles are deemed "unsafe" to even be on the road in the US due to unintended acceleration, then EVERY OTHER CAR MAKER who has complaints of the SAME PROBLEM should be dealt with in the same way. Let me say that again, THE SAME PROBLEM.

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Branded at 02:24 AM JST - 4th FebruaryIn the meantime- try "The New Ford Taurus" "Taurus quality is unsurpassed by Honda Accord, Maxima, and Toyota Avalon" ! Hey just "roll over for info".

Conclusion is politics is all noise and little action.

Heck, if Ford is so good, then why can't Ford make their own version of Taurus. The Ford Taurus technology are really made from Swedish Volvo based on Volvo P2 platform, which also supports the Volvo S60, S80, XC70, and XC90 SUVs.

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BTW- Tahoochi, you have posted an address to a site that you say discusses acceleration problems with automobiles "other" than Toyota. That website is "Consumer Reports" isn't it ! What do you know about the history of that institution ? That they were possibly "in the pockets" of Toyota executives for years ? That they were giviing out "automatic" seals of approvals - that is until- 2007 ! When the Toyota Tundra suddenly had ??? Acceleration issues ! Wow ! We got some skunks in the chicken coop and the whole barnyard needs a cleaning ! In the meantime- try "The New Ford Taurus" "Taurus quality is unsurpassed by Honda Accord, Maxima, and Toyota Avalon" ! Hey just "roll over for info".

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Make no mistake, this is a new administration ! Seems the Japanese never knew how good they had it under the Bush administration. Relations with Japan were very good and there was little interference with trade issues. However, Obama is the new sherrif in town and his transportation secretary obviously has his mighty whiteys in a knot over the Japanese auto industry. For those of you wanting to dig up old issues with GM, Chrysler, Ford- whatever ? Forget it ! New administration- new focus ! Lets see how long it takes Hatoyama to figure it out. Some of you have also been alluding to the American beef issue in your posts here- I sense you "get it" and one has to wonder if that is next on the table. In the meantime keep your heads down- this "Lahood" guy is on a mission. He has now told Toyota owners to stop driving their recalled cars until they have been repaired. Wow ! He is basically telling them to stay off the roads, maybe even warning them of legal action should they become involved in an accident. After all, the transportation secretary has made a public statement about not driving your defective cars on public roads- if you do so, you do so with the complete understanding that the cars aren't safe. I guarantee you every lawyer fro Frisco to Boston will use that one ! My suggestion- try a Chevy Silverado ! "The most dependable pickups on the road" !

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GM had the same thing, they were also slow to respond in 2004. Chrysler too had a recall as well.

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The Toyota denial comes after U.S. highway safety officials rebuked the company for falsely claiming government inspectors had found "no defects exist" in the suspect cars other than loose floor mats.

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Tahoochi - You're welcome. And, hate to flog a dead horse but Toyota have behaved as if the people in the US have no idea what the Toyota execs (Japanese that is) say when out of American ear shot. Claims are repeatedly made to district service managers - locals, who then feed the claims to Japanese minders. The minders have US work visas that list their jobs as field quality assurance engineers - ie they're supposed to convey the English claim to the home office in Japanese - the home office/Nagoya, is then supposed to devise a remedy a.s.a.p. - in liaison with the US regulators... The problem is those QA engineers are completely unable to explain the meaning of what was reported to them by US district service engineers. I have enough inside experience to have called this crisis more than five years ago. With no field service report from the J-QA to the US regulators, the regulators start to get a little annoyed especially since there is never a hint of rectifying the problem of zero communication with home... As I noted somewhere earlier, Toyota have raised safety issues with regulators regarding US makers products! Now that don't rub well with the same regulators who keep asking, "Is your feedback from Nagoya here yet?" Add to that the J-press' regular gloating about how Toyota is kicking the pants off the US makers in cost effeciency... we have the makings of a ticking pyrotechnique. Trust me sir but I stopped posting for the last two years on this forum because nobody believed what I said about this Toyota problem. If you see their reported costs for the year you'll note a huge budget for such recalls yet they never did them.

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unscrejects at 03:14 PM JST - 3rd February

 The industry - a recall is ordered for safety related defects regardless of ability to fix. And it is not at manufacturer's discretion

Thanks unscrejects. That makes sense. But why then isn't LaHood ordering all of the other automakers to issue recalls and stop their sales due to unintended acceleration cases? I know, I know, we're talking about Toyota here, not Ford or GM, but doesn't it make you wonder? Here's the article which makes me wonder (pretty interesting stuff):

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/12/08/consumer-reports-over-40-percent-of-sudden-acceleration/

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The industry - a recall is ordered for safety related defects regardless of ability to fix. And it is not at manufacturer's discretion. Toyota as I have repeatidly pointed out on this site (going back as far as 2005 - even posting as 111774) was hiding safety related claims. They've saved themselves billions while the big three were being hammered by claims Toyota people made. Talk about sinister... Folks remember that Toyota execs were arrested for covering up this particular fault in Japan in 2005?

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LaHood was probably talking in very fast English over here in Japan, and that does not go over well nor understood well.

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Good points by Tahoochi. It's also possible that they knew there was no fix, but felt it was so important to get the cars off the road that they forced the recall, as well as the sales and production stops, and ignored the standard procedure.

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GJDailleult at 09:12 AM JST - 3rd February

There is a lot of talk about the real problem being with the electronics, makes me think maybe Toyota weren't slow to respond as much as didn't know how. Not much point recalling cars if you don't know how to fix the problem

I read in the Asahi newspaper this morning that Toyota is taking flack about their slow response, however, it also noted that normally, a recall is issued AFTER the company has a feasible fix and the parts are available for the fix. So did the government force Toyota to issue a recall assuming Toyota had a fix but they actually didn't have one yet?

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Who would have thought it....

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I stand vindicated!

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Let all U.S. Toyota drivers be Kamikaze pilot .Revenge for victims of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Never too late to revenge.

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There is a lot of talk about the real problem being with the electronics, makes me think maybe Toyota weren't slow to respond as much as didn't know how. Not much point recalling cars if you don't know how to fix the problem, maybe they were just hoping it would magically go away. Because if the problem really is with the computers and electronics, that sounds like something without an easy, mechanical fix, and more like re-engineering and re-design. The survival of the company would be at stake, so they had better hope they are right and the problem is really with the pedal and the floor mat, at least they have a chance to recover from that.

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