Recall reality check - where are the bodies?

4 Prius cars have been involved in accidents due to failure of the brake system in Gen III cars. You can search NHTSA's web site. When I posted, there were 547 complaints that had been logged. One example of a complaint involving an accident is ODI Number 10307728. There are others. It is not a figment of the drivers' imaginations.

 

Please keep in mind that an owner can report anything to the NHTSA's website. Claiming that you are abducted by aliens does not mean that you were actually abducted. Likewise with NHTSA reports.

I have no doubt that the drivers involved in these four reports believe that their brakes failed, but given the problem descriptions we have seen on PC, I have to take the reports with a grain of salt.

Tom

 

Are dead bodies the new standard for when a recall is necessary? I thought we were better than that.

 

I took it to mean car wreckage - anything from a fender dent to garage door damage will do.

 

The Prius brake recall isn't the subject of OP's post. I believe that he's referring to the statistic that ABC, the LAT and other biased media outlets keep pounding over and over again primarily on the SUA issue.

It goes something like this....2500+ complaints, 500 crashes, 50 injuries and 19 deaths. It comes from Sean Kean a former protege of Ralph Nader who branched off on his own.

A poster on another site, one whom I respect greatly, gave this perspective on Sean Kean's organization. It has one engineer....period. That one engineer has a BS...period. It does no testing and no verification of data. It gathers reports off the NHTSA/ODI website and compiles data. It then feeds that data to lawyers and news outlets, with no verification.

And it has an official sounding name that might be confused with a real testing organization like the IIHS which does extensive testing, has many engineers with highly advanced degrees and access to all the crash data from every insurance company in N America...including any deaths.

This poster, who probably works for the IIHS I'm guessing, portrays Sean Kean as a news hound with no substance. That's the background.

As for the mantra that Sean Kean keeps looping... 19 deaths, 19 deaths, 19 deaths... in answer to the OP's posed question, there are no names. I'd watch for this topic next week at the Congressional hearings.



This statistical estimation is definetly valid though...

• Each year about 36,000 people die in auto-related accidents in the US
• Each year about 10,000 - 12,000 people die in GM vehicles.
• Each year about 8000 - 10,000 people die in Ford vehicles.
• Each year about 5000 - 6000 people die in Toyota vehicles.
• .
• .
• .
• Each year one or two people die in Lamborghini's.
• Nobody has yet died in the US in a Chinese-made vehicle.

 

I read a short piece today that teh Ford Focus has the same problem, and is working on a software fix. I also read another article about the "myths" of auto recalls. There is so much politics involved in all this. But Toyota is #1 in the world ... they cannot be "thin skinned" or "cut and run" everytime a wantabee takes a shot at them.

Personally, I am not certain I want to be the first in the garage to get a fix. I have absolutely no complaints about my G3 ... I just may let a bit of time pass .... maybe teh next time I have it in for an oil change?

 

Rather than the number of reported incidents, which could be biased, I would like the accident rate per miles driven or death rate per miles driven compared to other fleets. That would tell us if the car was dangerous or not.
To look at incidents, even if accurately reported would give a scewed result. If you only looked at injuries caused by airbags, you'd think they were dangerous until you saw that fatalities in general dropped.

 

I believe that was a reference to wrecked cars. However, dead bodies, in the human sense, are usually required before safety changes are made. For example, our little village has a bad intersection involving a state highway. When approached about the possibility of having a traffic light, the first question was "Has anyone been killed? Come back after you have had at least one fatality." Anything less isn't worth the state's time and expense.

Tom

 

The IIHS has this data and it does a good job of correlating accidents, injuries and deaths to a variety of causes including manufacturers.

However for obvious reasons it doesn't publish these stats. At best it does this job by giving specific vehicles GREEN marks for being tops in the category. It then promotes these Top Picks and once in a while lambasts certain really horrible vehicles ( Chevy Cadavalier for example ).

 

ODI does do follow-up investigations. I imagine they give a higher priority for investigation to the reports that involve crashes or fires. At the end of the day, when NHTSA orders a recall, you can bet that they will have the data that justifies the order. Otherwise, the order can be overturned in court.

 

Fortunately, NHTSA does not have the same threshold.

 

Right, but only with ordered recalls. Most complaints are not reproducible, and few result in ordered recalls.

Tom

 

I doubt that NHTSA told Toyota to fix the problems with accelerators or face an embargo on new sales on the strength of bogus accident reports.

 

In many communities this is a budgeting screen. It makes no sense to 'fix' transportation problems that haven't killed anyone when the problems that have already been fatal exceed the available budget.

 

Probably not, although public opinion can force agencies such as NHTSA to take action when none is warranted. After all, the government is run by politicians, and politicians will bend when the heat of public opinion gets too hot. Better to throw someone to the lions and save your own skin.

Tom

 

I think the best statistic would be the accident rate per passenger mile or the death rate per passenger mile. This way the statistics could be compared to other forms of transpotation.

Safety should be concerned with people more than vehicles.