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I don’t claim to understand how US government agencies determine what a reasonable fine is for companies found of wrong doing or impeding solutions, but is $53 per incident enough? Serious? I’ve never been impressed with fines from the government. They aren’t even enough to remove profits from the infraction, IMHO.

According to this BBC article, Toyota is fined $16.4M for something that impacted at least 2.3 million vehicles. So, $16.4/2.3 = $53. Nice. I don’t think that is much of a deterrent to prevent the behavior for Toyota OR any other manufacturer in the future. Is my math wrong?

I’d think somewhere between $500 and $1500 per vehicle would be a more appropriate penalty to correct future behavior. It needs to hurt a little. I’ve worked in large corporations and know that while $16M is a bunch of money, it isn’t really that much. Heck, I’ve worked a laptop replacement project that was $25M.

I also understand that Toyota is an excellent automobile company and we don’t want to unjustly penalize them, their workers, or future customers. Like many of us, the managers involved didn’t know how serious the problem was and down played it for as long as they could. Being completely open concerning any issue with a consumer product isn’t part of any corporate culture that I’m aware. I’m reasonably certain if more than a few actual incidents happened and anyone were hurt, then Toyota would have been up front. When I worked on public impacting systems, I always pictured how my family would be impacted if there were any issue with the work. I believe the Toyota engineers do the same with their issues and fixes. Doing the right thing is easiest when you are close to the issue. The spin team is what concerns me – both the government AND the company spinners.

We all know that companies don’t pay any taxes OR fines with internal money, right? The fine paid will probably become part of the cost of every vehicle going forward when pricing is determined. I would add that to my checklist if I were on the accounting team and marketing team setting prices.

Another way to choose the fine amount may be to base it off the CEO + President complete annual pay packages including bonuses. Just a thought, I dunno. I read that the Toyota CEO earns less than $1M annually, while the GM CEO earned over $14M, so perhaps that isn’t a good idea for underpaid CEOs. Of course, my data was just found with a google search, so it could be wrong.