One of the strangest things about some Toyota (TM) crash victims is how they find time for phone calls.
"I thought it was my time to die, and I called my husband," Rhonda Smith of Sevierville, Tenn., told Congress on Tuesday.
She was barreling down the highway at up to 100 miles per hour with a stuck gas pedal in her 2007 Lexus 350. She said the brakes wouldn't work. Nor would throwing the transmission into neutral. So she made the call.
"I knew he couldn't help me in this particular situation, but I just needed to hear his voice," she said.
Fortunately, God stopped her car after six miles of terror, she testified.
The Sayler family from the San Diego-area received no such divine intervention. You can find their horrific 911 call on YouTube. As they raced in a Lexus toward the rim of a canyon, the Saylers called to say the gas pedal was stuck and the brakes weren't working. The call lasted 54 seconds.
"You don't have the ability to turn the vehicle off?" the 911 operator finally asked.
But it was too late.
Since these are the tales that prompted congressional hearings on Toyota, I found it odd the way U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood prefaced his testimony on Wednesday.
"One of the hallmarks of my time as Transportation Secretary has been our work on distracted driving," he said. "For all of you with cellphones and Blackberrys and other electronic devices, I want you to know that I'm on a rampage about people talking and texting while driving. .. It's a menace to society."
Unless, of course, your car has suddenly taken on a mind of its own.
"I listened to the 911 tape of the Sayler family's harrowing last moments," LaHood continued. "Mark Sayler, a California highway patrolman, died last year along with his wife and daughter and his brother-in-law when the Lexus they were driving crashed at more than 120 mph."
LaHood did not suggest that the Saylers should have been trying something else besides talking on the phone. I don't mean to suggest it, either. But people making phone calls as they are about to crash seem worthy of further examination.
Can the gas pedal, the brake, the gear shift and the ignition switch really fail all at once? And if that's the case, what's to keep a Toyota from starting itself and driving around on its own like Herbie The Love Bug?
To date, 39 deaths have been linked to sudden, unintended acceleration in Toyotas, said Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"To give that horrifying number some perspective, there were 27 deaths attributed to the famous Pinto exploding gas tank of the 1970s," he said.
Towns didn't mention that 1.5 million Pintos were recalled vs. more than 8.5 million Toyotas. But you get the idea: A Toyota is a Pinto. Or maybe a DC-10.
"If the Camry and Prius were airplanes they would be grounded," Towns said.
Into this cauldron of hyperbole and emotional accounts walked the media-shy Toyota President Akio Toyoda.
Toyoda has long been known as "prince," being the grandson of the automaker's founder. But after his royal grilling on Wednesday, he should consider changing his name to the auto executive formerly known as prince.
His emotionless, technocratic responses hinted that he will likely not be the one to restore the automaker's ravaged reputation.
Toyoda required a translator to get through the hearing, even though he received his MBA from Babson College in Massachusetts in 1982.
He also worked as a banker and consultant in both New York and London. And he served as vice president of a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors Corp. where he reportedly wanted to study the American mind.
If he didn't learn English in any of these environments, it's likely because he always had people to do things for him.
The official line has always been that Toyoda was never handed anything and worked his way to the top. I always find it amazing, when out of thousands of people battling their way through the ranks, it's somehow the grandson, who beats everyone out in the end. The one who doesn't speak English.
This clearly cost Toyoda in an arena filled with heated American-style rhetoric on Wednesday.
"Sudden acceleration?" cried Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio. "I call it sudden-death acceleration. .. Where is the remorse?"
Maybe it got lost in the translation? It is impossible to say things like, "I feel deeply sorry for those people who lost their lives" when you talk like a boring executive reading off a boring cue card to begin with, and then you have to rely upon an even more boring translator.
Toyoda, and his English-speaking sidekick Yoshimi Inaba, who is head of Toyota's North American operations, stayed on point, expressed sorrow, apologized, promised to study and fix the problems. But they were simply unable to explain the unexplainable.
They faced off with a Congress that has accomplished nothing amid unresolved wars, a burgeoning national debt, and one of the biggest economic crises of our lives. A Congress with stakes in GM, Chrysler, and to some extent Ford Motor Co. (F).
Maybe our congressional leaders should have just asked nicely: "We bought your cars during Japan's lost decade. Will you buy our cars during ours?"
Toyota's problems are a developing story with lots of technical, financial and legal considerations. It's costing Toyota billions. So what else can anyone expect from Toyoda at this point? Hari-kiri?
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia, was hoping he could at least tell her what was up with her own car.
"I drive a Camry Hybrid," she said. "So I ask you, Mr. Toyoda, is there any chance that the Camry Hybrid will be recalled?"
"As customers continue to use those vehicles, they may come up with a new finding, but ... it's 100% safe, at the moment."
(Al's Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)
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