Page 188 - Toyota Under Fire

RESPONSE AND THE ROAD TO RECOVER Y

However, there was a general trend in the industry of increasing
recalls, as other automakers evidently felt pressure to recall any
problem lest they get on the wrong side of the NHTSA and the
media. Among the five largest automakers in the United States
(other than Toyota), we see that the number of recalls went from
47 in 2009 to 80 in 2010 and that the number of vehicles recalled
climbed from 8.4 million to almost 11 million. These statistics
do not support the notion of a general decline in Toyota quality
over the decade, leading to steadily increasing recalls; rather, 2009
and 2010 were an anomaly where sociopolitical factors were at
least as important as design and engineering issues.
The reason that sticky pedals led to so many vehicles being
recalled was that the same pedal design was used on many differ-
ent types of vehicles, by Toyota and other automakers. Regardless
of how many vehicles used the pedal, it is only one defect, one er-
ror in design. The other recall that affected more than 5 million
vehicles, related to pedal entrapment from stacking floor mats or
failure to fasten them down, is difficult to truly blame on Toyota.
As Edmunds.com’s Anwyl says, “That’s not really a vehicle defect.
You can argue it’s a design issue . . . but there’s nothing obviously
wrong with the car; and it happens with other [manufacturers’]
cars too.” For instance, in June 2010 the NHTSA opened an in-
vestigation into floor mat entrapment problems in the 2010 Ford
Fusion and Mercury Milan, in part based on an Edmunds.com
tester experiencing the problem himself.* Ford’s official response
was that the instructions on the all-weather floor mats state that

* Philip Reed, “Unintended Acceleration Reported in Edmunds.com Vehicle,”
May 25, 2010; http://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/unintended-acceleration
-reported-in-edmundscom-vehicle.html. Interestingly, as of February 2011, the
investigation has not been resolved, so there does not seem to have been a sense
of urgency.

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