[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by clintjm

Toyota had the means... its called the mass media.
Sugar coating headlines do not make people take the time to watch or read it.

But blowing them out of proportion is also only going to get people to panic rather than looking at the situation calmly and taking proper action.

The information provided about how to stop the recalled vehicles is Toyota specific. Why would they confuse people in the same report how to stop different vehicles in different situations with different problems.

No it isn`t. Toyota vehicles aren`t so amazingly different that directions on how to stop one is different than that for others. Even the push button ignition isn`t unique to Toyota. Stopping a car that has an acceleration issue - or one with failed brakes - falls into the common sense category of information. Everyone should know this - it shouldn`t be directed only at Toyotas. But fear mongering is what sells...

Cruise control taking your car to excess speed without the driver asking for it is a safety issue - despite what Steve might have been quoted as saying.
Why do you demonize someone with a reputable reputation as crying wolf?

I`m not demonizing him. I never said it wasn`t a safety issue - but apparently that is a subject of opinion. It`s a known issue with electronic cruise control systems and should be fixed. The thing is, it`s not limited to Toyota or the Prius. BMW has the same issue in some of their cars. (FIL does, and was told by the dealer that it`s a "sporty driving feature"...)
And by the way - you are asking for it to take you to excessive speed. The problem is that the system makes it really easy for you to accidentally ask for that, but not easy (short of hitting the brakes) to change the speed setting to a lower one. It`s a design flaw, no doubt, but not a "runaway Toyota!"

Lack of immediate attention IS ignoring the problem. I'm not saying call for a recall on one or two cases, but seriously, determine what the real problem is and don't have CEO come out and say it is a definite on the floor mats, there isn't a safety issue, case closed. There is not a defense to Toyota lack of *immediate* attention and the fact they said case closed when they said floor mats. ABC had to drag Toyota to the fact, not Toyota.

Lack of immediate recall isn`t lack of immediate attention. I guess the wording on that could be better... You can have action and attention behind the scenes without calling for a recall day one if you don`t know what the problem is. I tried to explain this. You don`t come out and say "Yeah, it looks like there is a problem but we don`t know yet what it is! Sorry!" - you wait until you do know the problem and then announce it. Corporate culture sucks, but it`s not just Toyota. If every company announced every complaint they received without knowing for sure what caused it, without checking it was really their fault, etc, there would be so much crap flooding the air that no one would bother listening.
It would have been better if they`d figured out the other problem first, or the two issues at the same time. But it would have been silly of them to say "Yeah, this isn`t the issue, but we`re just going to recall mats anyway." Unfortunately this has come back to bite them.

Please direct me to these reports or links.

The "single program" bit was referring specifically to the "conspiracy to kill Americans" silliness. The rest - do a search on Google. Shouldn`t be too hard to find enough examples. I`m not going to go through my history to hunt down the specific articles I have read since this fiasco started.
Of course, if you agree that every single Toyota on the road is an out of control death trap, then I guess you might not think anything of the articles.