National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota Industries free essay sample

Possible reason Toyota admits to purposely neglecting safety concerns and delaying recall investigating to save money. Toyota purposely and repeatedly delayed safety regulations by avoiding defect investing and obstructing government inquiries into safety concerns. Toyota also conspired with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the government department responsible for crash test ratings, to falsely improve Toyotas safety record while hiding the fact that NHTSA and the Department of Transportation were neither adequately staffed nor compensated to deal with influx of safety concerns raised by consumers. Toyota would recall a limited amount of vehicles at certain times of the year to avoid a massive recall. At the same time, Toyota was producing new vehicles with known safety flaws and advertising their vehicles to be the safest and highest quality vehicles on the road. Ways to overcome this issue Toyota should recall it back immediately to avoid a greater impact on society. We will write a custom essay sample on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota Industries or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Toyota has recalled all those Toyota’s vehicles which have problems. Toyota also had made some recalls this include the floor mat recall, accelerator pedals recall, anti-lock brake software recall, and others recall. Furthermore, it could not just recalled a limited amount of the vehicles it must recalled all related vehicles that may causes the same problem happened. Floor mat recall On November 2, 2009, the NHTSA denied a petition to reopen previously closed unintended acceleration investigations of Toyota vehicles, stating they had already been thoroughly investigated making it unlikely for the NHTSA to reach any new conclusions. Later that day Toyota issued a voluntary recall of 3. 8 million vehicles, with a letter sent to owners asking them to remove the driver floor mat and not replace it with any other type of mat. In its November 2, 2009 recall announcement, Toyota appeared to claim the floor mats were solely at fault, stating, The question of unintended acceleration involving Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been repeatedly and thoroughly investigated by NHTSA. Amended recall to include accelerator pedal On November 25, 2009 Toyota amended its floor mat recall involving the same 3. 8 million vehicles sold in North America. Toyota will reconfigure the accelerator pedal, replace the all-weather floor mats with thinner mats, and install a brake override system to prevent unwanted acceleration. The brake override system, also called brake to idle and already a common design in German cars, allows the driver to override the accelerator by hitting the brakes. According to Toyota, the repair work done under the amended recall for floor mat incursion problems are as follows: * The accelerator pedal will be shaved to reduce risk of floor mat entrapment. * A replacement pedal with the same shape as the modified pedal would be made available at a later date. * For drivers who have existing all-weather floor mat but do not need or want the newly designed all-weather floor mat, the existing mat will be removed and the owner reimbursed. Accelerator pedals recall On January 21, 2010, Toyota initiated a second recall, this time in response to reports of accelerator pedals sticking in cars without floor mats. The company had received three such complaints in 2009. In its recall announcement, Toyota stated that the condition is rare and does not occur suddenly. It can occur when the pedal mechanism becomes worn and, in certain conditions, the accelerator pedal may become harder to depress, slower to return or, in the worst case, stuck in a partially depressed postion. The January 21 recall announcement for the accelerator pedal problem covered 2. million vehicles sold in the U. S. Toyota then widened the recall to include 1. 8 million vehicles in Europe and 75,000 in China. On January 26, Toyota announced that until they had finalized an appropriate remedy to address the potential for sticking accelerator pedals, sales would be suspended for selected vehicles. Anti-lock brake software recall The Prius was not involved i n Toyotas second recall, although it had been involved in the first recall involving floor mats. Toyota said that it was investigating the reports, and that it would be premature to comment. The company said it was looking into the best way to solve the problem. An internal NHTSA memo indicated that the issue was the short delay in regenerative braking when hitting a bump, resulting in increased stopping distance. In total, Toyota recalled three hybrid vehicles to reprogram the anti-lock braking (ABS) software. In February 2010, a US federal court in New York began the process of determining if there is probable cause to charge Toyota criminally for the way it has handled the Prius brake recall, and a civil class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of 2010 Prius hybrid owners. A total of 133,000 Prius vehicles in the U. S. and 52,000 in Europe are to receive the same software update.