Reuters

 

then what caused the unintended acceleration? lead foot?

 

How true. And since the floor mat issue was a problem caused by user misuse, and the sticky accelerator return had nothing to do with unintended acceleration, I guess 12 million vehicles were recalled because of media hysteria. What a waste.

 

Driver error? Misplaced floor mats?
Not a waste, this was a perfectly orchestrated corporate assasination. The powers that be sought to irreparably harm the good name and reputation of a successful business in favor of domestic, politically connected group. It pays to have friends in high places and the UAW's investments paid dividends...big time. They tried to destroy Toyota while giving Ford (#2 in UI last year and #1 over the last decade) a free pass.

 

Trust me when I say I would be the last person to defend the lying, cheating, self-dealing scumbags that try to pass as our current political "leadership", but this wasn't so much an assassination as spineless weasels reacting and over-reacting so as to score a few political points and hold on to thing they value above all else; their precious power.

This is the Firestone tire fiasco repeated. A few blow-outs under very specific circumstances and we all now have mandatory TPMS systems in our cars. If I want to get a set of steel wheels and dedicated snows for my Insight I have to spend the extra 200 bucks to get TPMS sensors and installation or else live with the TPMS light on all the time.

Another over-reaction. As I recall the blow-out fiasco was Firestone tires on Ford SUV's. Were the political scum trying to destroy Ford that time?

My two cents....

 

I don't recall the political / economic environment at the time of the Firestone issue, but at one time UAW/Detroit ruled the roost.
By the time of Toyota's UA debacle, the non-union manufacturers were dominant and the union shops were failing. In addition, the jackals running the show (congress) were a wholly owned subsidiary of the UAW.
This administration's hallmark seems to be accuse without any substantiation (it's curious that their leader was a former law professor).
A little bit of Google research showed that Ford had a significantly higher number of UA incidents than Toyota over a 4-5 year period, yet the dems didn't want to screw with a union manufacturer.

 

Why are they supposed to apologize?

 

Isn't that what one should do when they been wrong, so very wrong? Toyota was vilified by the news media, politicians, and a gaggle of so-called consumer advocates. They hurled some pretty damming accusations at Toyota, causing billions in costs and lost revenue to the company. None of them, it turns out, were true.

 

disregard/

 

Toyota might have cause of action for one or more lawsuits. Perhaps something about "defamation". Settlements of defamation suits often include apologies.

They also need to crank up the PR engine, and make sure everyone in the world knows about this. Perhaps the TV time and print space that was spend defaming the company, could be matched by new TV time and print space for that campaign.

They might even turn it into a positive. Toyota NOW has the strongest safety and reliability program in the world. They could highlight that.