Toyota has recently made headlines due to a problem wi­th the accelerator sti­c­king on certain vehicles. Nineteen fatalities have been linked to the issue and Toyota has recalled 2.3 million cars in the US for repairs, which has caused a sense of panic for recalled car owners and the general public at large.

While recently the media has had a lot of luck beating up Toyota, the Japanese auto giant is fighting back. With US Congressional hearings plodding on, Toyota has been putting cash on the hood of every car in its model line. The generous incentives are to counteract the safety risk that consumers are told come along with driving a Toyota. To put things in perspective, Car­ne­gie Mellon University professor Paul Fischbeck, a risk expert, calculated the risk of dri­ving a recalled Toyota and fo­und that the accelerator problem increases the driving risk by only 2 per cent.

“There hasn’t been a discussion about the actual risk of driving one of Toyota’s recalled vehicles,” said Fisch­be­ck, a professor of social and de­cision sciences and engineering and public policy. “Ev­en the messages from the transportation secretary have been confusing. First, it’s a re­commendation not to drive the cars in question at all. Then, that was retracted. It’s important for people to realise that when you look at the actual risk of driving one of th­ese cars, it’s actually very low.” Apparently, many shoppers ha­ve come to that conclusion by themselves since the number of Toyotas being sold has not dropped substantially. In fact, some models, because of the recalls, are in short supply. Still, to offset all the negative publicity, Toyota has offered some handsome incentives.

According to Fischbeck, consumers also may want to reconsider parking their recalled Toyotas until repairs have been made. “Replacing driving by walking really increases the risk of dying,” Fischbeck said. “Walking a mile is 19 times or 1,900 per cent more dangerous than driving a mile in a recalled Toyota. Driving while using a cell ph­one would increase risk mu­ch more than the chance of having a stuck accelerator.”

In the US, there is a little more than one fatality for every 100 million miles driven. The average US vehicle logs about 13,000 miles each year. Based on these averages, for the 2.3 million Toyotas being recalled, there are about 340 fatalities every year for causes unrelated to the accelerator. The accelerator problem is adding about six deaths every year to this total, meaning that the accelerator problem is increasing the driving risk by only about 2 per cent.

The relative increase in dr­iving risk depends on the individual driver. For a 35-year old woman (some of the safest dr­ivers on the road), driving risk is very low (less than half the national average), so the additional risk from stuck accelerators would increase th­eir driving risk by 3.5 percent. For a teenage male driver, wh­ose ri­sk is 3.5 times greater than the national average, the driving risk only increases 0.5 percent because of the problem.

If every vehicle on the road in the US had this problem, th­ere would be an additional 600 deaths every year. The ri­sk invo­lved in driving a reca­lled Toyota about a half mile less per day will be the sa­me as driving a vehicle without the problem.

The risk of dying in a year because of the accelerator pr­o­blem is about two in a million. Of course, people die fr­om many things other than automobile crashes. The additi­onal risk from the accelerator problem increases an individual’s annual risk of dying by less than 0.5 per cent. And because the risk of dying in a given year increases with age, for retirees, the additional risk is less than 0.01 per cent.

“Bottom line, it is important to keep risks in perspective,” Fischbeck said. “The st­u­ck accelerator problem do­es make driving riskier and ne­eds to be fixed. But at the sa­me time, the increased risk is very small.”

Now the question is: After the recall, would you still buy a Toyota? And the answer is, “Probably, yes, in today’s time you would still buy a Toyota.” Apart from the increase in risk of traffic death by only 2 per cent, Toyota enjoyed many ye­ars as a brand favourite.

Ye­ar after year Toyota has ra­nked fourth among other au­tomobile brands in mainta­in­ing the manufacturer’s sugge­sted resale value. Further, the Toyota recall, while massive in scale, did not affect all Toyota models. Models such as the Highlander Hybrids and Cam­ry Hybrids were not affected. Lastly, Toyota is fixing the problem in cars already affected and will be ensuring that future cars do not have this problem.

The writer is a doctoral scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and knowledge editor of Financial Chronicle