Free Republic

“The whole aim of practical politics,” wrote H.L. Mencken, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Last year’s hobgoblin was swine flu. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warned of as many as 90,000 excess flu deaths, and the federal government declared two national emergencies. Yet, with the U.S. flu season ending, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate we’ve had perhaps a third the usual number of flu deaths. This year’s hobgoblin is Toyota. You...

Consumer Reports magazine is lifting a "Don't Buy" recommendation for a Lexus sport utility vehicle that failed an emergency handling test. The magazine said Friday that the 2010 Lexus GX 460 luxury SUV passed the test after a dealership updated software that runs its electronic stability control system. Toyota Motor Corp. recalled about 10,000 of the SUVs in the United States in April after the magazine told readers not to buy them. The automaker also stopped selling them. Consumer Reports said the rear of the GX 460 slid sideways when testers lifted their feet off the gas pedal during a...

Toyota chased General Motors for years until finally passing the General to become the world's largest automaker, and now...disaster. Reports of runaway Toyotas are all over the news. The ghost of 1980's Audi is haunting Toyota. Now, we have to find out if the problem is with the car or the driver. Walter Olson at National Review and Richard A. Schmidt at the New York Times surprisingly have the same opinion: They both believe it is primarily driver error. They blame the runaway car problem on older drivers. The over-60 generation is taking it on the chin this year --...

Auto Safety: As a Toyota Prius with a stuck accelerator races down a California freeway, no one mourns the victims of the fuel economy standards imposed by Congress. Forced into smaller cars, thousands have died. We can barely imagine the panic felt by James Sikes, 61, as his Toyota Prius accelerated uncontrollably while he drove down Interstate 8 in San Diego County. We can imagine the continuation of the grandstanding by the owners of "government motors" as they further browbeat a competitor of government-run GM and Chrysler. We do not minimize the safety issues here that need to be addressed,...