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What is going on at Toyota?

In 2008, the Japanese auto maker became the world’s largest auto manufacturer, knocking General Motors out of the top slot after 77 years. Toyota’s sales last year amounted to 8.418 million vehicles worldwide. Clearly,car buyers trusted the brand. Now Toyota appears to be headed for a record as the auto manufacturer with the most recalls in history.

This week, it recalled nearly 1.7 million cars worldwide. Add up its recalls since 2009 and they total nearly 16 million cars. What happened? (more…)

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On December 15, the venerable automaker Volkswagen, known worldwide for its trusty  Volkswagen beetle has recalled its newest version of the mighty little auto and other popular models it manufactures because of a potentially deadly mechanical problem.

Volkswagen’s recall of the 2010 VW and other VW cars amounts to 413,000 cars in the United States, including Golfs, Rabbits, Jettas and Jetta Sports made in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The recalled beetles were manufactured from 2006 to 2010.

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Articles in newspapers, magazines, stories on TV news and the Internet urge the growing number of baby boomers in the United States to stay active.

“Motion is lotion,” so the saying goes about staving off the ills of arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, strokes and other ills that tend to beset Americans as they age. Along with a good diet, exercise helps to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s too, according to the latest research.

But just when aging Americans need to be more active, deteriorating hip joints can keep them on the sidelines. Fortunately, today hip replacement surgery is usually successful and more than 200,000 of those operations take place in the United States each year.

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Commercials make renting a car seem so easy. The airways are full of car rental deals. A quick call puts drivers in any car they want, commercials say. The company will even deliver it. The service is fast, efficient and dangerous.

How could it be dangerous? The answer is simple and it points out a major flaw in government transportation standards. Car rental companies don’t have to repair recalled cars before renting or selling them. Consumer groups are urging the government to change that because the practice leads to car accidents.

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Car accidents are the leading killer in the United States of kids 14 and under. Car seats  can reduce those fatalities by a 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for children between the ages of one and four, according to Safe Kids USA. But if car seats are not properly installed or they are poorly made, they put kids in danger.

That’s the reason the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled  23,000 Britax car seats made between April 2009 and May 2010 in early November. The CPSC issued the recall due to a defective clip in the car seat’s chest harness. The federal agency calls the clip a serious potential hazard. It can break easily and cut an infant. The CPSC also calls the clip a choking hazard because it is so small. The CPSC has received four reports of breaking clips – three involving lacerations and scratches and one report of an infant putting the clip in its mouth.

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An important safety feature that could save a child from severe injuries in some mid-size GM and Isuzu pick-ups does not meet American and Canadian standards for car seats. As a result, more than 192,000 of the pickups are being recalled. They include the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon models from the 2004 to 2011 model years, the Isuzu I-280 and I-350 pickups from 2008 and I-370 pickups made in 2007 and 2008.

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Imagine walking down the street making a clicking sound with every step that is so loud people stare. That’s what happened to Kim Horbas the summer after she had hip replacement surgery in February 2008 with a device made by a division of Johnson & Johnson, DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc.

The clicking sound was the first sign the Champaign, Illinois woman had that something might be terribly wrong with the device doctors put in her hip. It turns out the doctors themselves had no idea that the DePuy device had a high failure rate.

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A federal judge in California has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Toyota lawsuits over defective cars which were flawed by such problems as sudden acceleration and faulty braking.

In U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, Toyota had moved to dismiss key causes of action in 51 lawsuits pending against it. But Judge James V. Selna issued a preliminary opinion to deny this. Instead, lawsuits can proceed against Toyota for negligence, design defects, failure to warn and fraudulent concealment.

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Are big companies getting away with using people as guinea pigs to make money?

The August 2010 recall of a failing hip replacement system looks like it. The Food and Drug Administration had reports that the device was defective but it remained on the American market until it was recalled recently by DePuy Orthopaedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson, the company that makes the device.

Personal injury attorney Jim Adler has charged for years that the FDA fails to protect the American public by adequately testing new drugs and medical devices before big companies are allowed to market them in the U.S. The victims in this instance are often frail and elderly. Their only recourse, if they got one of the defective Johnson & Johnson devices, is to have another total hip replacement to repair the hip joint.

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