deadly toyotas.

Toyota, one of the world most recognized and respected automobile companies probably lost a great deal of respect on august 28, 2009. A California highway patrol officer was driving his 2009 Lexus ES350 accompanied by three family members. His car suddenly starts to excel out of control down the highway and as they reached speeds of over 100 mph, one of the family members called 911 and stated that the car had “no brakes”. Everyone in the vehicle died when the car crashed.

On December 26, 2009 a Toyota Avalon crashed into a lake in Texas after it accelerated out of control. Four people also died in this crash.

What is the best thing to do when your company is known as one of the best automobile makers but all of a sudden you have to recall over 7.5 million vehicles? And not recall them for a minor reason. They had to be recalled because they could potentially cause lives to be lost. During this time, Toyota companies didn’t really have a lot to say; and i really don’t blame them. Beside many apologies, what is there to say when your malfunctioned vehicles have claimed the lives of eight of your customers?

Instead, Toyota took action. They recalled as many vehicles as possible. They told drivers of the cars ways to prevent the same tragedy from happening, and ways to stop it if it did start to happen. Toyota knew that they had a problem, and they tried their best to come up with a solution that was quick and safe.

I’m not sure if i would have done anything differently in this situation. Maybe i would have assured the public more frequently that we were trying our best to fix the problem as quickly as possible. But i felt like Toyota handled it pretty well, because they fixed the problem and Toyotas are still selling today. I’m sure Toyota did their absolute best to turn their “deadly Toyotas” back into safe vehicles for the whole family!

To read the timeline of the Toyota recall crisis, click here.

-cw