In news that I can only describe as shocking, Toyota has finally admitted to engaging in unethical behavior when it comes to investigating the safety of its vehicles. An article released by the Associated Press late Sunday night, confirms that Toyota not only dragged its feet when looking into safety defects, but also patted itself on the back for doing so.

In a 2009 presentation called, "Wins for Toyota — Safety Group," it shows that in 2007, Toyota purposely and repeatedly delayed safety regulations by avoiding defect investigations and obstructing government inquiries into safety concerns.

The Associated Press also states, "the new documents show the financial benefit of delay. In the presentation, Toyota said a phase-in to new safety regulations for side airbags saved the company $124 million and 50,000 man hours. Delaying a rule for tougher door locks saved $11 million."

In a situation like this it is easy to see that something went wrong, but how can things go so wrong. Toyota is a company that has a mantra of "kaizen," or continuous improvement. Instead they somehow found a way to justify negotiating with the government to make their problems disappear.

However, consumers have found themselves victims of a PR spin game in which 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.

A further look into the documents reveals several other reports entitled "Wins for Toyota & Industry," including "favorable recall outcomes," "secured safety rulemaking favorable to Toyota" and "vehicles not in climate legislation." Another page lists "key safety issues," including "Sudden acceleration on ES/Camry, Tacoma, LS, etc."

What this goes to show is that Toyota conspired with NHTSA, the government department responsible for crash test ratings, to falsely improve Toyota's 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.

The larger problem with this scandal is that it has created a precedent for corruption and unethical behavior when it comes to the saftey of vehicles that so many of us use and depend upon everyday. We now have a situation, in which we must now question the validity of all safety scores given out not only to Toyota vehicles but to all motor vehicles.

theCD's take: Every company that engineers and manufactures a product strives to save costs, so this doesn't blow us away. What does shock us is how irresponsible and uncaring the U.S. government that we employ to represent and serve us, continues to f*ck us over.

 

This problem is reminiscent of what tobacco companies did to smokers during the latter half of the last century. Tell the consumer your product is safe, make them feel at ease while using it, and derail the government and whistle-blowers who are trying to show just how dangerous your product is.