Page 263 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

were no electronics issues to be found: “Look, the reason we did
the study that we did is because if you went to the hearings that
I testified at in the House of Representatives and the Senate, just
about every member of Congress believed that we had not found
the problem. . . . And just about every member of Congress that
questioned me said, ‘It’s got to be the electronics.’ So to try to
prove the case that it wasn’t the electronics we hired the experts.
. . .We have some of the best safety people in the world work-
ing at DOT, that know what they are doing, that did a thorough
investigation.” One can ask whether reassuring Congress is the
best way that NHTSA could have used $1.5 million. It seems
obvious that a much greater bang for the safety buck could have
come from improving the NHTSA complaints database, which
will, without alteration, presumably continue to provide fertile
ground for baseless accusations and media frenzies.
What if the news media and the U.S. Congress paid more at-
tention to finding facts and solving actual problems, themselves
practicing genchi genbutsu and some version of TBP, rather than
chasing headline-grabbing stories fueled by speculation and trial
lawyers? It’s hard to believe that we wouldn’t be better off.
We do not mean to imply that making the world safer is a
trivial task and as simple as writing more accurate newspaper sto-
ries or having the U.S. Congress focus on the most important is-
sues. After announcing a set of fines related to Toyota’s handling
of recalls, NHTSA administrator David Strickland commented
that Toyota had made efforts “to make improvements to its safety
culture.”* While we obviously don’t agree that significant changes

* Josh Mitchell, “U.S. Hits Toyota with Fine on Lapses,” Wall Street Journal,
December 20, 2010.

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