Across the pond

There was I thinking that all those Toyota accelerator problems, which have suddenly been splashed all over the world’s media and sent the stock market price crashing, could not possibly affect my three-year-old Prius, which has shown no such symtoms, after many thousand miles, including many on bumpy roads. (Camden is full of road humps and pot holes these days)

Until I read the story in The Guardian G2 just now.

Walter Schwarz, one of their most distunguished and reliable reproters, writes about an accident he had last November in his four-year-old Toyota Avensis. The car accelerated itsellf into the back of a van. He thought it was an old man’s lapse (he is even older than me). Now he knows better. He reports that today’s Washington Post says unintended acceleration has caused 800 crashes in Toyotas and 19 deaths since 1999.

Walter now hopes to be allowed to drive the grandchildren again in his Fiat. The Avensis was a write off.

But after reading his article, I have to face the fact that my beloved Prius might have the same disease. I shall have to do some serious research before I let it out on the motorway.

From what I’ve read so far it is probably the electronics, which dictate much of our driving these days on all modern cars.

And not only on Toyotas.

Maybe there are lots more problems with other makes, which the manufacturers and the motoring correspondents have not got round to telling us about yet.