For decades, millions of Americans have trusted Japanese automaker Toyota. They’ve bought Toyota’s cars and have made Toyota rich. And how has Toyota repaid them? With treachery. How so? Because Toyota knew that its cars had stuck accelerator defects in 2009, and it didn’t recall them until forced to do so by the U.S. government in 2010.
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said as much this week when he revealed that it took considerable pressure from the government before Toyota would recall millions of cars in order to fix their gas pedals.
Fatal traffic accidents involving a car, auto, truck, bus, motorcycle or other vehicles are declining in America. That’s the good news. The bad news is that at least 37,000 Americans still die on the USA’s roads and highways each year, and almost all of them die due to persistent and, in some ways, increasing driver errors.
Indeed, drivers are the most vital variable in car wrecks and other traffic accidents — not weather, defective parts or road conditions. Though such reasons and many others do arise in wrecks, most collisions continue to be due to drivers who — quite simply — make a momentary but lasting mistake.
Maybe you recall seeing drivers education footage showing what not to do behind the wheel. Often such lessons start as fun, with a clownish actor frantically shaving, eating, consulting maps and even reading a book while doing a lousy job of driving a car. But even with a sobering punchline about car accidents, the real joke is on all of us, now that texting while driving has entered the equation.
A recent survey for Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. reveals that 19 per cent of motorists admit to texting while driving. The real amount is probably higher, since not everyone will admit doing something so stupid. In fact, another survey in Massachusetts indicates that 28 per cent of people text while driving.
Another survey shows that 26 per cent of mobile phone users tend to text while driving — and that 60 per cent of drivers 16 to 19 years old text while operating the two-ton machine known as a car.
Such behavior, in effect, is unleashing millions more drunk drivers on America’s roads. That’s because text-messaging distractions, as studies show, are the equivalent of being drunk while driving, hampering attention, reaction and overall ability to drive.
For decades, millions of Americans have trusted Japanese automaker Toyota. They’ve bought Toyota’s cars and have made Toyota rich. And how has Toyota repaid them? With treachery. How so? Because Toyota knew that its cars had stuck accelerator defects in 2009, and it didn’t recall them until forced to do so by the U.S. government in 2010.
Fatal traffic accidents involving a car, auto, truck, bus, motorcycle or other vehicles are declining in America. That’s the good news. The bad news is that at least 37,000 Americans still die on the USA’s roads and highways each year, and almost all of them die due to persistent and, in some ways, increasing driver errors.
Maybe you recall seeing drivers education footage showing what not to do behind the wheel. Often such lessons start as fun, with a clownish actor frantically shaving, eating, consulting maps and even reading a book while doing a lousy job of driving a car. But even with a sobering punchline about car accidents, the real joke is on all of us, now that texting while driving has entered the equation.