Toyota’s ‘Pattern of Hiding’ to Be Probed in Hearing

Toyota Motor Corp.’s “pattern of hiding” will be examined at a congressional hearing next week on safety recalls by the world’s largest automaker, said U.S. Representative Darrell Issa. Toyota said yesterday that President Akio Toyoda will testify at the Feb. 24 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Bloomberg reported. That’s important because “he’s the only person that can speak for a global enterprise” about “getting those problems addressed quickly,” Issa, the panel’s senior Republican, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, faces at least three hearings into its recall of more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for defects including unintended acceleration. This week U.S. regulators said they’re investigating the Toyota City, Japan-based company’s Corolla sedan, the world’s top-selling car, for a possible steering flaw. While its production system enables workers to stop assembly lines for quality issues, Toyota’s corporate structure doesn’t allow safety concerns to “bubble up” from a low level after the vehicles are manufactured, Issa said. “Any production worker can and does stop production if they see a bad part,” Issa said. “No one has the equivalent power” to address signs of danger “in a car that’s already produced,” Issa said. “There was the impression that because you make such a good car, you don’t have to pay attention to the safety issues,” Issa said. Toyoda, the 53-year-old grandson of the company’s founder, had said earlier that he didn’t plan to appear at the hearings, and North American president Yoshimi Inaba had been scheduled to testify instead. Toyoda reversed the decision yesterday after an invitation from oversight committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat. The panel will also examine the failure of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use its legal authority to force recalls, Issa said. Regulators should be looking more globally for potential defects, the California lawmaker told Reuters.