Toyota Bashing -

All of the recent Toyota bashing seems to me to be an example of our hands-free, plug and play, hedonistic lifestyle. We expect everything to work the first time - out of the box and without any thought or learning curve on our part. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with expecting things to work right, but we are becoming more and more infantilized as our technology advances. Years ago, a driver filled his own washer fluid, often changed his own oil and filters, rotated his own tires, adjusted the carburetor and basically knew a fair bit about his vehicle.

Okay, today vehicles have no carburetors and you can barely GET TO anything under the hood, but the Toyota incident has shown that many of today’s drivers don’t have any idea what to do when their vehicle unexpectedly accelerates. ABSOLUTELY unwanted acceleration is a serious design flaw that should be fixed immediately. But shouldn’t every driver of a 3000 pound machine know what to do in an emergency situation, whether driving a Toyota or not?

Shouldn’t every driver have been taught how to put the vehicle into neutral while driving? How to shut the vehicle off, if absolutely necessary, if the engine races out of control? Shouldn’t such an education be part of every driving license test in order to protect our fellow members of our society? We cannot ASSUME that a machine with thousands of moving parts will ALWAYS function flawlessly. WE need to be educated and prepared for things to go wrong… and hope that they never do.

This incident should be an eye opener to all of us that we are ultimately responsible for our driving and our vehicle’s behavior on the road. Each of us should have an idea of how to stop a runaway vehicle, or what to do when our brakes fail, or how to handle a vehicle when a tire blows. Each of us is responsible for the safety of others when our vehicle becomes a danger to others.

An automobile is not a point and shoot camera and should not be treated like one.

Toyota may be responsible for a design flaw or a defective part in its vehicles. But YOU and I are also responsible if we are not prepared to handle an emergency situation that should NOT be beyond our control.