It can't have escaped anyones attention that Toyota are having some problems with their cars. The issues with accelerator and brake pedals have sparked deep concerns especially after the tragic crash in the US of a car whose brakes failed on the approach to a road junction.

Before I go on about car production and road safety, I can't help noticing that the driver whose brakes failed simply prayed he'd drive through unharmed. Clearly God was on his lunchbreak that day, but that said, God helps those who help themselves. Why didn't he turn the engine off? Why didn't he try to downchange the gearbox? Why didn't he try the handbrake? Instead he merely closed his eyes.

The answer is that he wasn't mentally prepared for such a disaster. I wonder how many of us are? As someone who used to drive sportscars enthusiastically, I know full well how easily people make poor decisions. That doesn't exclude me from being a klutz, I must point out, but at least I knew I was going to be one if I didn't watch out.

It's rather like a woman driver I was told about a few years back, out driving during one of those nasty hurricane force winds we now get every autumn. She'd stopped at a junction waiting to proceed, and a tree next to her car gave up the battle against the wind. Pedestrians nearby saw the tree about to fall and warned the woman she was in danger. If she had moved a few feet forward or back she would have survived. Instead, she looked up in horror and then hid her head in her hands. Crunch. The problem was that she wasn't used to dangerous situations and hadn't learned how to react. In all probability, that was the first time she'd been in any serious danger in her life.

Car Manufacturer In Serious Danger

Now of course Toyota, just on the tail end of very shakey economic events, now has to live with the bad publicity of having to recall thousands of cars. They used to make some interesting cars but like many car makers, these days they concentrate on those awful eco-urban midget wagons, one model after another in enviromental and political corectness, all virtually identical to another. Has Toyota stopped designing cars? It looks more like they're simply building cars to plans drawn up by international agrrements these days.

With fewer people believing government propaganda about Global Warming (Oh at last, see the light people!) one has to wonder if that will eventually impact on car sales. At the moment we're all being made to feel guilty about driving the things, made criminals of if we're not worried, and made beggars of for daring to keep up with the Joneses. But if car buyers lose their interest in enviromental issues - and they may well do if we receive yet another cold blast from Siberia later this week as predicted by yet more warnings of dire conditions to come - won't they find the latest mobile shopping trolley just a little bit dull?

Anyone who predicts the end of the automobile is talking rubbish (hey, that was almost witty). Of course there'll be cars in years to come. What we might might experience is the death of the interesting motor car. It seems our politicians have conspired to reduce the fun in driving to the point where we don't bother getting the horrible degradable plastic buggy out of the garage anymore. Personally, I think they became hugely upset when they discovered their very visibly expensive luxury saloons were way duller than the plebmobiles. It took them a while to find that out didn't it? That's what happens when you sit in the back all the time.

Come to mention it.... Glancing through the serried ranks of die-cast models on display in the shop just across the square from the library, I notice everything except the latest supercars was, on average, from the 1960/70's. What does that tell you about the modern production car?

Today We Look Through... The Shop Window

Early this morning I ventured out into the cold dark streets and strolled down the arcade toward my workplace. I became aware of the number of premises lit and active two hours before opening time, with a veritable army of cleaners pushing vacuum cleaners back and forth in bored resignation. They were all asian women, every last one of them. It seems the caste system is well and truly entrenched in our culture too.