TOKYO, June 22, 2021—It has taken more than two years for Toyota Motor Corp. to deny mechanical defects since a top former Japanese government bureaucrat’ drove his Prius at a dizzing speed in a busy Tokyo entertainment district and killed a young mother and her daughter crossing the green traffic light.
When the Prospect contacted Toyota’s public relations office on Oct. 29, 2020, asking for comments about the allegations of Kozo Iizuka, 90, former director-general of the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, a spokeswoman curtly said the company had no comment.
In an article published on that day, The Prospect said:
‘Toyota keeps its lips zipped tightly toward the allegation saying that the automaker is watching the court proceedings. The automaker’s silence against the allegation is sparking speculation that it weighs its relationship with the ministry and the Japanese government at large as vitally important for its business.
‘The accident drew national attention not only for its ghastly scene of the bodies of the 31-year-old mother and her 3-year-old daughter, who were crossing the green traffic light when Iizuka’s Prius hit and run over them at extraordinary high speed but because the driver was the head of the powerful ministry’s top science and technology institute and was not arrested, sparking a barrage of public criticisms of the government to have handled the case for ‘a high-class Japanese.’
On June 21, 2021, Japanese public attention was rivetted to the Tokyo District Court’s hearing. Iizuka, the defendant of the case brought by the husband of the victims, reiterated his testimony that the sudden acceleration of his Prius was caused by mechanical defects, not his driving mistakes. ‘Electronic control (systems of automobiles) sometimes develop defects, and as we often experience, they resume normal when rebooted. I believe that my case is one of those,’ Iizuka was quoted as testifying June 21 to the ourt by the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, the unit of the pro-Toyota Chunichi Shimbun of Nagoya City.
The courroom and the Japanese public’s mood has been steadily shifting against the former top METI bureaucrat. It appears to be the reason why Toyota on Oct. 21 released a press comment that said the company’s investigations confirmed that no unusual conditions or mechanical defects in Iizuka’s Prius. Prius has an onboard memory that records driving data. This was the first time that Toyota made comments on the case publicly.
Toyota’s press comment, which was not released as a press release, also appeared to have been intended to dispel concerns about Prius’ safety sparked by U.S. accidents in the 2000s and 2010s, as well as future accidents that could occur as the automaker and the auto industry as a whole install more advanced technologies for autonomous driving and other artificial intelligence-based functions.
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