Akio Toyoda Quotes

I have a lot of respect for the auto manufacturers. They make a product people live inside - and can die inside - so they are held to very high standards.

Companies need to understand that the quicker they report product safety problems to CPSC, the quicker we can take action together and protect consumers from injuries.

Manufacturers must accept responsibility for their customers' safety.

Lawsuits prod companies to make their products safer.

The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation.

When a company creates a product that directly or indirectly adversely impacts the health of people, that product must be regulated. The process by which it's created must be regulated. No company has the right to injure people. No company.

Health care organizations don't ask us to interface to every type of module because they understand that it could cause safety problems.

We’ve got to get the bad operators out of business so that the good operators can be rewarded for investing in safety.

We need to know why NHTSA, which has officials who are paid to do nothing else but monitor accidents, have been asleep at the wheel when it had information served up to it on a silver platter by State Farm Insurance Company which would suggest grave problems with Firestone tires.

No one would say, 'Hey, I think this medicine works, go ahead and use it.' We have testing, we go to the lab, we try it again, we have refinement. But you know what we do on the last mile? 'Oh, this is a good idea. People will like this. Let's put it out there.'

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part.

With its present organization, staff and attitudes, the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is unable to fulfill its responsibility for providing an acceptable level of safety for nuclear power plants.

You can't fire anybody in Government; everyone blames the system. Look what is happening in NASA. Now we have to truck out these 200-plus audits out of the closet because we had a disaster [the Challenger], and we still can't find someone to fire.

The insurance industry has proven by expenditure ... and its legions of pin-striped lawyers, that it is capable of tying up the will of the people.

In England the attempts which our fore-fathers made for Regulating of Manufactures, when left to the Execution of some particular person, in a short time resolved but into a Tax upon the Commodity, without respect to the goodness thereof … a Seal was invented, as a signal that the Commodity was made according to the Statutes, which Seals it is said, may now be bought by Thousands, and put upon what the Buyers please.

Efforts to approach zero risk through exhaustive pre-release testing are extremely expensive and time-consuming. New drugs are delayed in reaching those who need them, and marginal drugs may not be developed at all.

Basic labeling and consumer information hasn’t been a chief priority, but hopefully now its starting to change.

In theory, the rules are strict enough to preclude all discretion that might corrupt the process. In practice they enable misguided, unsure, stubborn, or biased procurement officials to justify any decision.

Institutions are created to address human frailties and human failures to meet human needs, but unfortunately, institutions are staffed by humans, so more institutions are created to address the failures of the original institutions.

When I testified before Congress after the Hudson River landing, Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota said, 'Safety begins in the boardroom.' That's as true in medicine as it is in aviation. It always boils down to leadership.

I think there is a sort of box-ticking mentality. Not just in the teaching profession. You hear about it in medicine and nursing. It's a lawyer-driven insistence on meeting prescribed standards rather than just being a good doctor.

Our objective in regulation should be to put in place tough enough regulation and capital and liquidity standards that we level the playing field and make it costly.

We have put in place policies through supervision and regulation that has greatly enhanced the safety and soundness of the banking system.

To enable large U.S. banks to support their clients better, the Volcker rule should be clarified.