Toyota Pledges $50M for New Safety Research

Early in 2010, a number of safety-related recalls and the unintended-acceleration crisis found Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda testifying to the U.S. Congress. Toyoda admitted his company’s practice of making decisions about recalls and other safety concerns only in Japan had contributed to a culture of ignoring customer input that may have prevented some of the problems. Toyoda said he said he would insist on a new culture of “customer safety first,” and pledged to create an automotive center of excellence in the U.S. dedicated to improving safety.

This week, Toyoda put his company’s money where his mouth was, as Toyota detailed a 5-year, $50-million commitment to a variety of collaborative safety research projects and brought some of its new safety-research partners and the media to tour a sprawling new $38-million technical center near Ann Arbor, MI, built to enhance the company’s safety-testing capabilities.

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