Posted on 03/15/2010 7:03:12 AM PDT by libstripper
You know those unseen and undetectable gremlins that hide in Toyota’s electronic throttle controls? Turns out they have it in for elderly drivers. The Los Angeles Times has compiled a list of 56 fatal incidents over 19 years purportedly involving unintended Toyota acceleration, and according to my Overlawyered co-blogger Ted Frank — in a Thursday analysis refined and extended the next day by Megan McArdle of The Atlantic — the age of the driver can be publicly ascertained in a little more than half the instances. That median age turns out to be 60 — that is to say, half the drivers were that old or older. By contrast, only 16 percent of general auto fatalities in 2008 occurred with a driver 60 or older behind the wheel. Whatever is causing Avalons, Highlanders, and Tundras to misbehave is largely bypassing drivers in their twenties and thirties and instead homing in on drivers old enough to remember the Eisenhower era.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Well, if this age thing has any merit, what the he!! is keeping all those Buicks on the road?
;)
Guardrails...
But, as with AGW, no heads will roll.
LOL. The front windows of 7-11’s
A better gauge of the distance between the real problem and the media/Obama hype against Toyota is the fact that during the same period that the 56 fatal accidents occurred (supposedly due to mechanical malfunction), 21,000 critical accidents, many including fatalities, occurred with at least one of the cars involved a Toyota and where the causes of the accident were driver error.
The driver, more than any mechanical failure, is the largest factor in most accidents.
...older driver profile of "victims" of sudden acceleration...older people being talked into driving much smaller "green" vehicles. I'm wondering whether a smaller vehicle like a Prius also means smaller gas & brake pedals AND a smaller distance between the pedals. Combine this with older drivers used to bigger sedans and viola, sudden acceleration syndrome.
Happens here in Florida, quite a bit. An older driver runs into a building or a person, pressing hard on the gas thinking it’s the brake.
One particularly sad story a few years ago was that of an older gentleman who pinned his wife against the wall of their carport. Killed her.
The frightened looks, the screaming, the hand waving of these desperate drivers is clear evidence they want and need your help. The folks at GM thank you! and remember, union gas pedals don't stick!
Buicks, Cadillacs, and Lincolns have been traditionally owned by old fogies who drive slowly like parade floats so that the lower classes will see them and be properly impressed.
The one car Buick made in the last 12 years or so that I would own is the Regal GS. I owned a 2001 version. I kick myself for selling it every time I see one going down the road. It had a supercharged 3.8 liter. I had a lead foot, and that thing still got me 23 miles per gallon commuting. To put it in perspective, my current Hyundai Elantra four-banger barely gets me above 30 MPG (maybe 32, if I'm lucky), for the exact same commute. The Buick was a blast, and the young punks at the carwash always wanted to see the supercharger (they'd ask if the "Supercharged" tag on the back was real).
Who the f@#k cares.
Toyota has had plently of recalls over the years and still enjoyed a reputation that far exceeded its real quality index.
Now (like GM with the Corvair, Ford with the Pinto, Audi with the 80, et al), it's getting its turn at bat - probably unfairly, but that's the way it goes in the automotive big leagues.
Now their reputation will get back in equalibrium with its real quality index.
Suck it up, already.. Hard to understand why so many here arewanting to give Toyota a pass..
Anyone with half a brain would know by now that Buick has consistently been rated at or near the top of the quality scale for the past many years..
It’s the “witch hunt” thing we would really like to see go away. Thanks to the internet, it will.
>>Anyone with half a brain would know by now that Buick has consistently been rated at or near the top of the quality scale for the past many years..<<
I’m not talking about the car. Have you ever looked inside a Buick? I swear they have an age restriction. You have to be at least 50 years old to own one and be a strong supporter of a return to the 55mph speed limit. At least it appears that way.
Buicks are to old people what Corvettes are to men in mid-life crisis.
You don't think that witch hunts went on against GM & Ford over the years???
Now that Toyota's the largerst - and has enjoyed a reputation for quality far above what it really deserved, why shouldn't we let them enjoy the same treatment that GM, Ford and the other domestics have had to put up with?
Are we that un-American now that we have to root for the foreign team, everytime?
>>You don’t think that witch hunts went on against GM & Ford over the years???<<
Yep. Look at the truck gas tank ignited by a bottle rocket. The difference now is that we have a voice. We don’t have to sit in our living rooms and complain. It needs to end.
For me, this story is not about Toyota at all. It is about witch hunts and a worthless press. Remember how everyone likes to say, sarcastically, “oh, it MUST be true since you read it on an internet blog.”
Yet this is the last part of the Forbes article, and the REAL story regarding this thing:
“Journalism schools are supposed to teach that skepticism is paramount. ‘If your mother says it, check it out,’ goes the old adage. Yet comments on Web sites across the country reveal that practically everyone thought the Prius incident was a hoax—though they couldn’t prove it—except for the media.
They have been as determined to not investigate Sikes’ claims as Sikes was to not stop his car. It’s a Toyota media feeding frenzy and the media aren’t about to let little things like incredible stories and readily-refutable claims get in the way.”
I mea the entire stimulus package is a result of a created crisis, the Sept 17 2007 electronic bank run on the Fed to the tune of 500 billion dollars in 4 hours. Yet the fed or Treasury won't tell us who the banks were or why it was done.
Houston, we have a problem:
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