Toyota facing federal, local criminal investigations
March 16th, 2010 joshua
Toyota Motor Corp. is facing criminal investigations from nearly every possible level, according to a new Tribune report.
The world’s largest auto maker faces criminal investigations from the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York as well as the Los Angeles city attorney. Toyota also faces charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over what it told investors and when regarding millions of unsafe vehicles it produced over at least the last decade.
Toyota is still trying to manage the crisis generated by its lack of oversight which led to the recall of more than 10 million vehicles manufactured over the last ten years.
A majority of those vehicles are prone to experience unintended acceleration due to a defect with either the accelerator pedal or an electronics defect. This malfunction has led to hundreds of traffic crashes, in which at least 60 deaths and thousands of injuries have resulted.
While Toyota may have thought its recalls would have quelled the panic that set-in following the announcements, it figured wrong. It’s been discovered that the unintended accleration problem could exist in nearly twice as many vehicles as it recalled, and the repair it’s offering may not be working.
Questions surround when Toyota knew about this problem and when it decided to inform the public. The first recall announcement regarding unintended acceleration happened about three months ago, but did little to address the full scope of the problem. Also, it’s believed Toyota officials knew about and ignored complaints from consumers and its own union assembly workers since 2002 about the problem.
