By: Russell Keener  —  February 10, 2011
 

 

Toy­ota is recall­ing the 2010 Lexus GX 460 sport-utility to fix the soft­ware in the sport util­ity vehicle’s sta­bil­ity con­trol sys­tem. Test­ing by Con­sumer Reports and Toy­ota found the vehi­cle to be an SUV rollover risk, and the automaker has taken imme­di­ate action to fix the problem.

So far, there are no reports of injuries or deaths related to the auto defect. The prob­lem became pub­lic knowl­edge after Con­sumer Reports issued a “Don’t Buy” warn­ing to car buy­ers because its testers found that the GX40 was in dan­ger of rolling over dur­ing cer­tain emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. Toy­ota imme­di­ately began con­duct­ing its own tests and sus­pended the sale and man­u­fac­turer of its SUV’s to deter­mine if there was a prob­lem and if so, how to fix it.

The need for a recall is the lat­est bad news for Toy­ota, which has recalled more than eight mil­lion autos for sud­den acceleration-related defects and brake prob­lems. Last week, the automaker recalled approx­i­mately 600,000 1998 –2010 Toy­ota Sienna mini­vans because of con­cern that if road salt causes the car­rier cable to cor­rode exces­sively, the spare tire may fall off, poten­tially caus­ing a traf­fic crash.

Toy­ota has been try­ing hard to regain con­sumer con­fi­dence, which has fal­tered in the wake of so many auto defects and result­ing injuries and deaths. Since the mass recalls, dozens of peo­ple have filed auto prod­ucts lia­bil­ity law­suits and wrong­ful death com­plaints against the automaker.

On Mon­day, the auto man­u­fac­turer agreed to pay the $16.4 mil­lion fine imposed by US safety reg­u­la­tors because it waited too long to address the “sticky” gas pedal defect that prompted a mass recall in Jan­u­ary. US Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Ray LaHood says that by not act­ing fast enough to notify the pub­lic and the gov­ern­ment about the problem—Toyota automaker may have known about the prob­lem in September—the automaker put people’s lives at risk.

If you or some­one you love has been injured in a Geor­gia because of a Toy­ota mal­func­tion, call the Geor­gia injury experts at The Keener Law Firm, 770–955-3000, or visit the web­site at KeenerLaw.com.