Auto Shipping Blog

Archive for June, 2010

Despite all the misgivings that people have been having regarding Toyota and their…slip ups, I guess you could call them, the overall number of safety recalls over the past decade are actually down. The reasons vary, but primarily the largest reason is that people were kicking the bucket in older, more unreliable cars, and with the industry’s new trend, which just happens to have started 10 to 15 years ago, automobile manufacturers have switched gears in terms of safety.

There was a time when safety features weren’t standard; seat belts were considered confining, air bags were a joke (not to mention the now-standard side airbags), and the idea of making them standard scared the heck out of everyone in the auto industry - look at what happened to Tucker!

But now, times are changing, and while recent scares with Toyota’s vehicles not stopping or accelerating randomly have certainly skewed this year’s number, 2008 saw the fewest number of recalls since 1998, with only 9.1 million vehicles recalled.  Now, the numbers may be down, but the fact that there are millions of cars rolling off the assembly lines with inherent safety problems is incredibly disconcerting for me.

The car shipping industry is well-known for its safety regulations, as well it should be. When you’re transporting cars for a living, driving them across the country, you need all the safety features you can get your hands on in case something goes wrong. The idea that safety features are still taking a backseat to things such as engine power and gas mileage is incredibly troubling, but the fact of the matter is that things are moving forward. We may still be looking at millions of recalled vehicles every year (most of which people are completely unaware of, by the way), but it could be worse - a lot worse - and I think that we need to thank our lucky stars for the features we do have.