just commuting to work isn't covered in a lot of driver's insurance
This is true if you lie about how far you drive to work (for example a supercommuter), which is a common practice in the commuter world to save $100 / year or so on insurance. I pay the extra, as they can refuse payout if you don't let them know how many miles you put on a vehicle per year.
I once had a GM dealer tell me in 2007 that the reason most US GM cars DIDN'T have ABS was because the public didn't want it! WTF!!!! Seriously? Ok the US GM had a problem with ABS systems failing due to bad design (tried to make their own rather than use bosch) but that is just dumb!
Actually, according to the NHTSA, although ABS decreased multivehicle and vehicle-pedestrian fatalities, single vehicle fatality percentage went up. I don't prefer ABS myself, but I have only ever had one vehicle where ABS just didn't work (rock-solid pedal, absolutely NO braking at all at 60mph thru a stop sign, fixed it by shutting down and restarting). This happened on a Mitsubishi, not a GM.
GM did offer ABS standard for a time, it was standard on both my 2004 chevys. However, I would prefer to not have ABS at all, as I know how to use breaks during a panic stop, so if I could save $1000 on a car by skipping this, I'd like that.
There are over 2 million toyotas sold each year in the us alone not including lexus. Even if 36 cars had been destroyed thats still only 0.0002% of the cars sold per year! Thats nothing in the cost of fix vs payout analysis, if the truth be known toyota are going way over the top because they don't want to be branded as the next pinto!
28 deaths in pintos from fire. 3,127,322 pintos sold from 1971-1980. 0.0000895% of all the pintos resulted in "fiery explosion death". Sounds to me like they already have the next pinto. Pinto may be safer than a Toyota with a defective accelerator stepper motor.
From this some half wit will jerk his knees upwards and bang them on the underside of his desk and put in some half cocked, half baked "safety" solution that will cost the auto industry millions and solve nothing! Cars in the states, will get bigger and heavier so they are more "safe".
The cars are already heavier and more expensive than the cars of the 1980s for just that reason, safety.