Today, 24th February, is known as Toyota Restart Day. This commemorates the day in 2010, when then President Akio Toyota, testified at the US Congress following a major recall of vehicles due to quality issues, pledging to return the company to its core values of putting customer first, in terms of safety and quality.
What prompted this hearing was a tragedy in which a family were driving a Lexus down a California highway, when they realised the accelerator was stuck. They made an emergency call, which is recorded and shown below in the link, but to no avail, and eventually had a collision, killing all members of the family.
An investigation later concluded that the floor mat had been trapped the accelerator, resulting in the accident. Following this defect, Toyota recalled over 7m vehicles in the US alone, to adjustment to clip the floor mats down, to prevent the mat sliding, and following this incident, all vehicles have a set of clips to prevent the mat from sliding around.
The incident caused an estimated $2bn loss from this incident along in terms of lost sales and recalls, but also reputation, and of the course the tragedy. February 24th is therefore an important day in allowing all colleagues a moment to pause and reflect, always thinking about the Toyota Way of Working values, including putting the customer first and building in quality, before continuing.