Feeling fatigued from too much Toyota news

My daughter drives a Toyota. I recommended the brand and went with her to buy the car a few years ago. She likes her car. It's not one of the recalled models, but obviously I have had some concerns because of the safety problems being reported.

If you have similar worries about Toyota read this. Essentially, the writer of this article does the math and the math indicates that the chances of having a runaway Toyota are pretty darn low. He also gets into why we are afraid of so many things that don't pose any overwhelming threat.

This doesn't mean that as a father I have no worries about my daughter's Corolla. I wish Toyota would have paid more attention to safety and less attention to the bottom line in recent years. I don't want to let the car company off the hook, nor do I want to ignore a country (Japan) that is so pro-business that it hasn't yet recalled a single Toyota in its homeland. But I also think that Americans are overly jittery about far too many things lately. Heck, we mentally fall apart, close schools and shut down the government whenever a snowflake falls from the sky. The risk of slipping in the snow seems to overwhelm us.

There are risks in life. I don't believe companies should knowingly create and lie about those risks like cigarette manufacturers have done for decades. We need consumer advocates and government regulators to expose and police companies that have bad intentions or cut too many corners. I am glad Toyota's over-the-top ambitions and greed have been exposed. However, I don't think this particular story deserves the media attention it has received. I don't think we need another thing to be overly anxious about.

There are plenty of things in life that fail far more frequently and have dire consequences when they do. Politicians fail us every day in profound ways that lead to recessions. Toyota cars aren't creating the infections in hospitals that kill tens of thousands of relatively healthy people each year. Camrys aren't wiping out the rain forest. We have convicted pedophiles living in our neighborhoods. We barely give any attention to the food we ingest or the factory farms that create it. Yet, we're obsessing about Toyota?

As the author of the column writes, the problem could lie in the software of these runaway cars. We are relying way too much on technology, in my opinion. It's seeping into everything. Frankly, I want to make the decisions on how my car drives, handles and brakes. I don't want a computer telling the engine when to accelerate or steering mechanisms how to turn.

Perhaps one good thing that might come from these Toyota headlines is that technology needs to be managed better. Just because something is new and shows potential doesn't mean it's ready to go to market or will ultimately improve the quality of our lives.