Why?
Take a look at this (courtesy of the Wall Street Journal).
Sort and long-term reliability comparison trends
Comments are in order.
- Bill
Keeping Toyota's debacle in perspective
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Bill Glasheen
- Posts: 17299
- Joined: Thu Mar 11, 1999 6:01 am
- Location: Richmond, VA --- Louisville, KY
Keeping Toyota's debacle in perspective
How do you know that a car is reliable when compared to the competition? With all of Toyota's serious "unintended acceleration" problems, that sort of question should be asked.
Why?
Take a look at this (courtesy of the Wall Street Journal).
Sort and long-term reliability comparison trends
Comments are in order.
- Bill
Why?
Take a look at this (courtesy of the Wall Street Journal).
Sort and long-term reliability comparison trends
Comments are in order.
- Bill
I was just at the annual hospital medicine meeting and Peter Pronovost (an MD who ran a project first at Hopkins then all over Michigan to reduce central line infections) pointed out that the total deaths from Toyota's problems was 19 (I think), and we were all excited about the 26 mining deaths (and rightly so). But there is no press or outrage about the ~150,000 people dying each year from central line infections, although that's about a 747 going down every 3 days.
We think about risk in strange ways. People are afraid to fly, so they... drive. Some motorcycle drivers won't take regular medicines and insist on unstudied unverified unregulated supplements that are supposed to "support immune health" or something. And if a hypothetical car that has a death rate of 1/2 the norm overall or a repair rate 1/2 the norm overall has a few dramatic deaths or a particularly problem prone gadget, people decide to buy something that they are more likely to die in and more likely to repair. People tend to base their selections of cars and hospitals based on reports from people they trust rather than external quality standards and aggregate data.
Toyota has to make amends for its errors, and of those, stalling and hiding information was more egregious than being imperfect in the first place. There are other less heard reports of unintended acceleration besides Toyota.
Also worth pointing out that being at the top can make you slip up. Americans were using "Toyota methods" all through WWII and when they were left with the only preserved manufacturing system at the end, they took over and got lazy, and the Japanese took over. Toyota has been at the top a while, and so their quality slid and CR stopped recommending all their models based on trust, then the accelerations, then the reports of stalling and the (I feel) bogus floor mat solution. It's good to be hungry, I guess.
We think about risk in strange ways. People are afraid to fly, so they... drive. Some motorcycle drivers won't take regular medicines and insist on unstudied unverified unregulated supplements that are supposed to "support immune health" or something. And if a hypothetical car that has a death rate of 1/2 the norm overall or a repair rate 1/2 the norm overall has a few dramatic deaths or a particularly problem prone gadget, people decide to buy something that they are more likely to die in and more likely to repair. People tend to base their selections of cars and hospitals based on reports from people they trust rather than external quality standards and aggregate data.
Toyota has to make amends for its errors, and of those, stalling and hiding information was more egregious than being imperfect in the first place. There are other less heard reports of unintended acceleration besides Toyota.
Also worth pointing out that being at the top can make you slip up. Americans were using "Toyota methods" all through WWII and when they were left with the only preserved manufacturing system at the end, they took over and got lazy, and the Japanese took over. Toyota has been at the top a while, and so their quality slid and CR stopped recommending all their models based on trust, then the accelerations, then the reports of stalling and the (I feel) bogus floor mat solution. It's good to be hungry, I guess.
--Ian
