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American Morning
Toyota Continues to Take Criticism for Vehicle Malfunctions; Tea Party-Supported Candidate Surprise Challenger in Florida Senator Primary; Tea Party Showdown: Florida Governor Faces Fight with Fellow GOPer in Senate Seat; Jobs: From Bad to Worse; President and First Lady to Attend National Prayer Breakfast
Aired February 04, 2010 - 06:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to AMERICAN MORNING. It's Thursday, February 4th. Glad you're with us. I'm Kiran Chetry.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans sitting in for John Roberts this morning fue to...
CHETRY: Due to under the weather.
ROMANS: That's right. Here are the big stories we'll be telling you about in the next 15 minutes.
Toyota is really taking it on the chin this morning. The automaker now admitting there are safety problems with the popular Hybrid, the Prius, and there are new questions about the company's fix for millions of cars with sticking accelerator pedals. Some experts now claiming those pedals are not the problem.
CHETRY: And welcome to the Tea Party. CNN is putting the spotlight on a growing political movement that has Democrats and Republicans in its cross hairs. The first ever national Tea Party convention opens today, and the best political team on television has it covered from all angles. Just ahead, our Jim Acosta looks at how the Tea Party furor is influencing a key senate race in Florida.
ROMANS: And is your doctor too tired? Nearly 100,000 Americans die every year from preventible medical errors. A contributing factor, physician fatigue. Some residents clocking 120 hours a week. How can you protect yourself? We're making an AM House Call this morning.
But our top story this hour, add the Prius to the list of Toyota vehicles with safety problems. Millions of concerned Toyota owners wondering this morning if it's wise to get behind the wheel.
CHETRY: Yes, Toyota is now acknowledging that many Prius hybrids already on the roads may have problems, problems with their antilock braking system. The automaker is now admitting this morning that they discovered a design flaw and corrected it late last month but did not alert the public.
Toyota service centers are now swamped. Many of the millions of customers with recalled cars are attempting to get sticky accelerator pedals repaired, and many of them are rattled by remarks made by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAY LAHOOD, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: We need to fix the problem so people don't have to worry about disengaging the engine or slamming their brakes on or putting it in neutral. And that's really our goal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I agree. We're looking into the situation.
LAHOOD: My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it. Take it to the Toyota dealer, because they believe they have the fix for it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: We're tapping into the global resources of CNN to bring in the latest developments with Toyota's safety problems. Our Debra Feyerick live in Los Angeles looking into the serious new question about the automaker's plan to fix the millions of cars already recalled.
But we begin with Kyung Lah live in Tokyo where Toyota just went public with the big brake problem we've been talking about with the Prius. Good morning, Kyung.
KYUNG LAH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kiran.
And it's not a big problem if you listen to Toyota executives, but it is definitely a problem. We are talking about the third generation Prius, known in the United States as the 2010 Prius.
The bottom line here is that there is a software problem with its antilock braking system. When you press on the brake in certain circumstances, you don't get that full braking feel, accord to go Toyota.
So how long is that gap? Toyota is saying it's less than a second. Well, depending on how fast you're going, if you're traveling 60 miles per hour, one second is 88 feet. So that's significant. Toyota definitely saying, though, this is less than a second but would not quantify exactly what kind of timeframe we are talking about.
Toyota says they have a fix in place. It has already been put into cars that have been produced beyond January, beyond last month. But if you own a new generation Prius prior to January, Toyota says they haven't figured out exactly what to do about that. They say that they, quote, "need a little more time."
At this point, Toyota says, this does not rise to the level of a recall, Kiran, but certainly on this day when they're announcing the third quarter earnings and looking at their financial books, certainly not the news they hoped to deal with. Kiran?
CHETRY: The other thing is are they answering the question of why they said they did not notify the public when they realized that there was this design flaw with the brakes?
LAH: Yes, they specifically addressed that. What they said is they deal with a number of quality issues, little quality issues that customers bring up to their dealers constantly, and they classified this as being a minor quality issue. So they did not feel that this rose to the level of anything further, of customer notification.
But something to keep in mind, there are some 100 complaints filed with NHTSA. So Toyota is going to have to deal with this issue very quickly, Kiran.
CHETRY: Kyung Lah for us in Tokyo this morning, thank you.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Now the millions of Americans driving recalled Toyotas who are wondering how wise it is to get behind the wheel this morning. The automaker says it's shipping the part that will fix the sticky accelerator pedals, but there are new questions this morning about that fix.
Deborah Feyerick is live in Los Angeles this morning with the the exclusive story of a Michigan family looking for answers after suffering an unimaginable loss. Deb?
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Christine, it's not just that one family, but hundreds of others now coming forward. They say what happened to this woman also happened to them, and that maybe Toyota knew about these problems and didn't act quickly enough.
What's more, here in Los Angeles a lawyer has filed a class action lawsuit. He's filed a preliminary injunction, saying it's not just the cars that are recalled, but many more cars that should be off the road.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FEYERICK: Driving this road in Flint, Michigan, Lilia Alberto is haunted by her mother's last moments, the fear the 76-year-old woman must have felt desperately trying to control her 2005 Toyota Camry as it barreled down a quiet street at 80 miles an hour.
LILIA ALBERTO, DAUGHTER OF CRASH VICTIM: She nicked that tree, and the car went airborne, and it was going 80 miles per hour. And it hit the tree on the top, and it just went down. She died instantly.
FEYERICK: Guadalupe Alberto, by all accounts, was an extremely careful driver in good health.
ALBERTO: That was the first thing that I knew something had to be wrong, because my mother would never cross the street because of the two-way traffic.
FEYERICK: Witnesses say the car seemed to speed out of control. No one knows exactly why, but it fits the pattern of thousands of incidents of unintended acceleration involving Toyota vehicles.
After a recent spate of high profile accidents, Toyota recalled millions of cars, not including the model driven by Guadalupe Alberto. They blamed floor mats and sticky gas pedals. Yet a growing number of automotive experts and class action lawyers, like Richard McCune, say that explanation just doesn't fit.
RICHARD MCCUNE, CLASS ACTION ATTORNEY: What I hear over and over and over again -- I'm driving down the road, and my car just takes off on me. I apply the brakes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's the pattern that we have seen.
SEAN KANE, SAFETY RESEARCH AND STRATEGIES: So I think unequivocally that these recalls simply do not get to the core of the problems that Toyota has.
FEYERICK: Safety analyst Sean Kane has looked at more than 2,000 accelerator incidents involving Toyota and believes the root of the problem lies in the electronic throttle system which controls the speed of the car.
KANE: These are completely computer-guided systems, and we all know that electronics fail. They do fail, and they will fail. The problem with Toyota is they haven't built enough fail-safe devices into their cars to ensure that drivers get control of the vehicle when a failure happens.
FEYERICK: During a press conference in Japan this week, a Toyota executive ruled out any software or electronic issues with the accelerator.
SHINICHI SASAKI, TOYOTA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT (via translator): For the electronic control unit, we could not come across any case where we found there was a malfunction in this control system.
FEYERICK: McCune says Toyota's recalls are disturbing in their limitations because they don't apply to all makes and models that have allegedly experienced the acceleration problem, like the '05 Camry Guadalupe Alberto was driving.
FEYERICK (on camera): Based on your evidence, you're suggesting that there are cars on the road that right now should be recalled?
MCCUNE: I think the recalls cover less than half of the models and model years that need to be part of this recall.
FEYERICK (voice-over): Toyota says it bases its recalls on defects that have been identified and not solely on reports of unintended acceleration.
Late Wednesday, McCune filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, demanding Toyota recall all vehicle models allegedly affected and also install a brake override system that would stop a car that's accelerating out of control.
MCCUNE: While everybody tries to figure this out, including Toyota, I presume, we need a system so that these sudden accelerations do not become deadly accidents. And that's what the brake override system does.
FEYERICK: A system that possibly could have saved the life of Guadalupe Alberto.
ALBERTO: Once in a while, when I'm -- I come by this just to say a prayer or just to come and look and remember the place where she died. But it's very painful. It's still very vivid in my mind, in my heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FEYERICK: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, better known as NHTSA, has already conducted several investigations into Toyota. Now it says it's going to take a fresh look at the electronics system to see if it could be, in fact -- whether in fact that electronics system could be a factor in acceleration. Christine?
ROMANS: Deb, one thing that's just amazing to me is that cars today are so high tech. In fact, there are data recorders similar to the black box on airplanes. Shouldn't those recorders, or can those recorders have any kind of information to help explain why this engine surge is happening?
FEYERICK: Well, absolutely. As a matter of fact, we asked Toyota that question, and a spokesman told us that data recorders on their vehicles are not programmed specifically to detect unwanted acceleration, only the last five to six seconds before air bags deploy.
The lawyer we interviewed believes that they're programmed that way deliberately, especially since, if they did register the braking and the acceleration, it would give valuable information about why sudden acceleration is occurring.
ROMANS: Deb Feyerick, thanks so much, Deb.
I guess the bottom line here, are millions of Toyotas now on the road really safe to drive? In less than 20 minutes, we'll be joined by Joan Claybrook, a former administration for National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and David Rosenberg, the owner and president of a group that operates two Toyota dealerships in New England.
CHETRY: Well, we look forward to that.
Meanwhile, you certainly want your cars working this weekend, especially if you live in some parts of the country. We are expecting a storm. Our Rob Marciano is keeping track of all of that for us this morning.
(WEATHER BREAK)
ROMANS: Welcome to the Tea Party, the showdown in Florida with some really interesting political dynamics. Jim Acosta is here to break it all down for us. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. It's 12 minutes past the hour right now.
Today the national Tea Party convention kicks off in Nashville, and it's billed as a coming together of many grass roots groups that popped up around a year ago. People fed up with the bailout and fed up with the big deficits, people who feel abandoned by their own political parties.
ROMANS: And all this week CNN is just going to cut through the noise and take a comprehensive look at the real issues that brought people here in a special series, "Welcome to the Tea Party." That grass roots rebellion is impacting a key Senate race in Florida.
CHETRY: It sure is. There is a candidate heavily favored by Tea Party protestors is actually giving the state's most powerful politician a run for his money. Our Jim Acosta is following that in the second part of our special series, and he joins us this morning.
So this race is heating up. First the focus is on the special election for the senator seat in Massachusetts, and now all eyes on Florida.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. You mentioned the Tea Party convention that's happening in Nashville. Everyone at that Tea Party convention is watching this race in Florida race between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist.
Mike Huckabee, who is also a friend of the Tea Party movement, has referred to Marco Rubio as the "Republican Barack Obama." Why? Not just because he's going after Democrats, Marco Rubio is going after a fellow Republican, much of it over a hug.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOV. CHARLIE CRIST, (R) FLORIDA: We know that it's important that we pass a stimulus package.
ACOSTA: For Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist, it's the hug that just won't let go. His embrace of the president and of the stimulus program at this town hall meeting last year could cost this once rising GOP star a shot at a U.S. Senate seat.
MARCO RUBIO, (R) SENATE CANDIDATE: I've been hearing about these tea parties now for a while.
ACOSTA: Meet Marco Rubio. He's challenging Crist for the GOP nomination for that Senate seat and a darling of the Tea Party movement. Rubio has turned the hug into a fundraising gift that keeps on giving.
ACOSTA (on camera): Would you give President Obama a hug?
RUBIO: Why? Why would I? Depending -- I don't even know him. Why would I hug someone I don't know? ACOSTA: Charlie Crist has gotten himself in a lot of trouble for hugging President Obama.
RUBIO: Ultimately that gets a lot of attention, but what he really got in trouble for is supporting a plan that is helping to bankrupt this country.
RUBIO: What I find at events like this is a growing number of Americans who have never been involved in politics before. I bet you that's a lot of you.
ACOSTA: Rubio takes his message of smaller government and lower taxes to Tea Party rallies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a great awakening.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop the spending. It's an unnecessary thing.
ACOSTA: In his YouTube page features Tea Party activists venting their anger at Washington. Polls show Rubio has closed a 30-point gap and just might win the party primary.
ACOSTA (on camera): Would you be the first Tea Party senator if elected?
RUBIO: I'm running as a Republican.
ACOSTA: Despite the word "party," it's not a political party?
RUBIO: It's not a political party.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Crist, by contrast, is no Tea Party animal.
(on camera): Do you ever sit down with any Tea Party activists and talked to them? Have you talked to any of them over the phone?
GOV. CHARLIE CRIST (R), FLORIDA: Not really. No, I haven't. You know, I know that --
ACOSTA: Not once?
CRIST: No, not once. No. Happy to. I probably have and don't know it.
ACOSTA (voice-over): For groups like the Tea Party Express, there's no contest.
JOE WIERZBICKI, TEA PARTY EXPRESS: You want to know why there's anger with the Republican Party. Republicans embracing massive tax and spend policies. No, that's not what the Republican Party is supposed to be about. And that's what Charlie Crist did.
ACOSTA: Tea party groups saying millions of independents, Republicans and even some former Democrats are ready to take down some of the biggest names in politics, from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Republican John McCain. But Democrats say all that in-fighting between Crist and Rubio actually presents an opportunity.
JAMAL SIMMONS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I take either one of them as long as they're wounded and limping into the general election.
ACOSTA: Crist, who has a 50 percent job approval rating, is not backing down from a Tea Party fight. He defends the stimulus as a job saver and notes Rubio has stated he, too, would have accepted funds from the program.
CRIST: About 20,000 teachers would be out of work today in my state. I can't in good conscience look them in the eye and say, you know, you and your family are going to be without a bread winner. People have to eat.
ACOSTA: He's gambling conservatives will come around to find conventional wisdom in his own party. Crist met President Obama for another stimulus event last week.
(on camera): Did you get any feedback from your fellow Republicans in this state that maybe you shouldn't be there when the president landed in Tampa?
CRIST: A lot actually.
ACOSTA: They're telling you don't do it?
CRIST: Yes, quite a few people. I got a lot of advice.
ACOSTA (voice-over): They shook hands for 27 seconds.
CRIST: I think people really want -- I think they're honestly sort of tired of the bickering they see coming out of Washington. I think that's part of the change that they want to see. It's part of the reason I'm running for the United States Senate. I think we need more civility.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: And Crist is gambling that civility will beat anger come August 24th when that Republican primary is held down in Florida.
And guys, I have to tell you, Charlie Crist is not the only one who's under attack by tea partiers in Florida. The Florida state Republican Party chairman is stepping down in a couple of weeks because of pressure from the Tea Party movement. They don't like the fact that he came out in favor of Charlie Crist in this campaign. And Jim Greer, who's that chairman, said to me, when I talked to him about this series, he said, somebody tell me when I stopped being a conservative. That's how personal it's getting down there.
CHETRY: Very true. And we're glad you're covering it for us. Thanks so much, Jim.
ACOSTA: You bet. You got it. CHETRY: And we do have more special coverage, by the way, in the next hour. At 8:30 Eastern, we're going to speaking with David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones and also columnist for politicsdaily.com. Also Mark McKinnon, former McCain adviser and a columnist for the Dailybeast.com.
It's now 17 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: We got really excited there for a second.
ROMANS: I like to see, you know, what makes it go on TV.
CHETRY: Yes, that's a shot of our control room this morning. Everyone working hard back there for you guys, and meanwhile, we're out here just hanging out. No kidding.
Anyway, the Super Bowl fever is closing schools, delaying classes. How about this one? Don't you want to be in New Orleans right now? Home of the Saints. One parish is reportedly shutting public schools Monday because, hey, the celebrations may go late into the night. The kids deserve to watch their team take on the Indianapolis Colts right?
Hometown classes there also delayed an hour on Monday morning. A lesson learned from the team's last Super Bowl appearance three years ago. So many bus drivers failed to show up the next morning that school had to be cancelled.
Hey, you know, go with the momentum.
ROMANS: All right.
CHETRY: I love when schools can go like that. How great is that?
ROMANS: It's the new snow day.
CHETRY: Yes, exactly.
ROMANS: All right. Tweens and teens prefer Facebook to Twitter. According to a new survey of the social media from the Pew Internet project, another surprise. Blogging is down by half among the 12 to 17 set over the last four years. Researchers pointing to the explosion in texting as a possible explanation. When asked about Twitter, most teens have no idea what it was. To quote one, "Twitter's lame."
CHETRY: That's right. They say only about eight percent of the teens in that age...
ROMANS: I'm just pretty good at it. It shows you the farther away I get from being a teenager, better I get at Twitter.
CHETRY: Exactly. There you go. And when they do, they only follow like the celebrity blogs.
ROMANS: Right.
CHETRY: Ashton Kutcher. They love the texting, those kids.
It's 22 minutes past the hour. That means it's time for "Minding Your Business." We have Stephanie Elam with us this morning.
ROMANS: Good morning.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, yes. My niece will text me just to say high.
CHETRY: Exactly.
ELAM: Just 11 years old and texting.
ROMANS: But are you going to tweet when you get done? Are you going to walk off here?
ELAM: I have my Facebook synced to my tweeting so, therefore, whatever I say on Facebook goes out because I can't handle two. It's too much.
CHETRY: So we're all officially old.
ELAM: Yes, officially. Oh, yes. I just had my birthday. I'm officially old. Our birthdays are a week apart. We're all older here.
Anyway, let's talk a little bit about job losses here. So here's the deal. We know that this was the great recession. We know that we lost a lot of jobs over the last 12 months. But guess what? It actually looks it may have been worse than we originally thought. We're going to get a revision coming out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And this is for April 2008 through March of 2009. The government's preliminary outlook is that 824,000 less workers were in the economy at that point. So that's a huge number obviously. Then this is compared to current estimates now.
So, this would mean that right now the current estimate is for 4.8 million jobs had been lost during that period. This will raise that number to 5.6 million jobs being lost. And the reason why there is this revision is because the bureau uses data that wasn't available during the period. There's some numbers that were off. Maybe someone started a company in the middle of the year. They didn't have the numbers on that. Maybe they went out of business during that time.
All of this is factored into these numbers here. And so the typical revision is usually quite slight. But these last 12 months that we're talking about, nothing about them was normal. You had Lehman going away. You had so many different things that took the economy to the brink and because of that, it's not a normal period. One thing I do want to tell you, the January jobs report does come out tomorrow. It's our big day for us.
ROMANS: It's our Super Bowl.
ELAM: It's our Super Bowl tomorrow. So we get the monthly. And we're expected to have added 13,000 jobs. But there's a lot of discrepancy about that.
CHETRY: Fingers crossed.
ELAM: Unemployment, though, the unemployment rate is expected to stay at 10 percent.
CHETRY: All right. Meanwhile, you guys can't call in an hour late Friday just because a jobs report comes out Thursday. Sorry.
ROMANS: That's right.
ELAM: Oh, we can't? We'll see. That would be for us on Saturday, right? And we don't have to be here.
CHETRY: Oh, yes, tomorrow is Friday. My goodness. What's going on?
ROMANS: Our Super Bowl is always on Friday.
CHETRY: Thank you so much, Steph.
Well, still ahead, is your car safe? We're going to be speaking to a former administrator that talks about what we do with this Toyota problem. Also a car dealer. Were they getting inundated right now? We're going to find out more.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: A live shot of the White House this morning at 26 minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning.
We're showing that shot because we are awaiting the annual National Prayer Breakfast taking place in Washington. The president is expected to speak this morning.
Our senior White House correspondent Ed Henry is live at the White House. And, Ed, big picture for us today. What does the president hope to accomplish?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Kiran. You know what's really fascinating is over the last couple of weeks this White House has been very aggressive about trying to get the president as many settings as possible where he can sort of be doing a give and take, and especially when he's sort of reaching out to the other side, as we saw him do in the State of the Union, we saw him do in that give and take with House Republicans late last week. And so this is a tradition for presidents of both parties to go to this prayer breakfast. And of course, it's a nonpartisan setting. So this fits right into what they've been talking about lately, a chance for him to talk about sort of bridging the divide.
And we talk a lot about how divided things are, and maybe we don't fully explain and give people good examples. And I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with a Republican senator who told me that when he first came to Washington, they used to have Republicans, Democrats having dinner, socializing, et cetera.
But in recent years, one of the only things they do on a bipartisan or nonpartisan basis now is get together for these kind of prayer groups. There's a weekly one on Capitol Hill where they get together for breakfast, Democrats, Republicans. They put aside politics, talk about faith. This is the annual one. And so I think that fits right into what they've been trying to do here about in year two, resetting things and reaching out to the other side, Kiran.
CHETRY: All right, so we talk about resetting. We talk about reaching out to the other side. But what are the prospects of, let's say, for this job bill -- jobs bill that they want to get out there, that both sides would actually work together on that?
HENRY: That's a big question because both sides have been talking the talk recently about the president on this side of Pennsylvania Avenue, Republican leaders on the other side. But the fact of the matter is right after this prayer breakfast, the president is going to be having Democratic leaders over here to the White House, Harry Reid, Speaker Pelosi, et cetera, to talk about that jobs bill, talk about other issues like health care.
And right now, they're really not sure if they're going to get a lot of Republican support. When you talk to top White House aides, they think this jobs bill that's going to be debated in the Senate is really the first test of whether this sort of new push for bipartisanship is going to work. They've sprinkled this bill with some sweeteners for Republicans, some small business tax cuts. Other Republicans saying no, we want an across the board tax cut. That's not enough.
Can they bridge this divide or not? This is going to be the first test, Kiran.
CHETRY: All right. We'll have to wait and see then.
Ed Henry for us this morning at the White House. Thanks so much.
HENRY: Thank you.
CHETRY: Right now, we're crossing the half hour. Time for a look at the top stories.
A senior intelligence official says that a top Taliban operative is believed to have been killed by an American missile strike in Pakistan. Government official telling the AP that the terror leader may have been hit by a U.S. predator drone last month. The terror leader has taken responsibility for numerous attacks, including the deadly blast inside of the CIA base in Afghanistan last year.
ROMANS: A rare multiple shark attack in South Florida. A whole group of sharks killed a 38-year-old kite surfer yesterday. A lifeguard spotted the man struggling about a quarter mile offshore, but by the time he was able to pull the man from the water, it was simply too late. This is Florida's first shark attack fatality since 2005.
CHETRY: Wow.
Well, President Obama's aunt, who's been in this country illegally for years, will learn today if she is indeed allowed to stay. In just a few hours, the Kenyan native will go before an immigration judge in Boston to make her second request for political asylum. She could potentially argue that the ties to the president would make her a political target if she returns to Kenya.
ROMANS: Many more Toyota drivers don't know whether it's simply safe to drive to work.
ROMANS: Many more Toyota drivers don't know if it's simply safe to drive to work this morning. Now the company is acknowledging the very popular Prius had break problems but never told customers about it. And Congress is demanding more answers from Toyota about what's really causing runaway cars. More and more safety experts are saying sticky gas pedals are not the problem. So, are these fixes the final fixes?
Here to talk about the trouble at Toyota is David Rosenberg, owner and president of Prime Motor Group, which runs two Toyota dealerships in Massachusetts and Maine. And Joan Claybrook, former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and well-known public advocate. Welcome to the program, both of you.
David, I want to start with you first. It's probably safe to say you've had a very busy few days at your dealerships. What are you telling your customers when they call you and say "Is it safe for me to drive my Toyota on the recall list?".
DAVID ROSENBERG, OWNER & PRESIDENT, PRIME MOTOR GROUP: What we're telling them, if they've experienced any problem with the accelerator sticking or moving back to the idle slowly, or getting stuck moving back to idle to stop driving the vehicle immediately and call us, and we'll come pick the car up obviously and do the repair.
If they haven't experienced any of the symptoms of the issue, that is, if their accelerator pedal has moved smoothly, if it hasn't return to the idle too slowly, then we're telling them that it's OK to drive their vehicle. We're getting the parts in every day for this recall. We've made hundreds of repairs yesterday. We're going to make hundreds of repairs today. We're planning for the service department to be open for 24 hours until all these repairs are completed. ROMANS: David, show me. You have the part with you. I mean, you've got the part in-house. You're trying to make these fixes as you can. So people who are coming to you. They're getting fixed. How long is it taking to have the car fixed and being able to drive out of there?
ROSENBERG: It is a very simple fix. If you can see this, this is an accelerator right here.
ROMANS: Lift it up and show.
ROSENBERG: This is the accelerator pedal of the vehicle. And this is where the accelerator pedal. Obviously, this is the movement of the accelerator pedal. There's a little metal reinforcement bar right there. I don't know if you can see that or not.
ROMANS: Just a little. Great.
ROSENBERG: OK. If you can see that, all we do is we insert this reinforcement bar into that pedal assembly. The repair takes at most a half hour. After we've had a lot more experience doing it, I'm sure it will be a lot quicker. It's a very, very easy fix.
ROMANS: All right. David, you know that I know that Toyota is also sending checks out to dealers, saying that we realize you're going to have to be open later, you're going to have overtime. How has your communication with the company been through all of this? I mean, you feel like you're a partner in trying to preserve this brand, or you feel like this brand has been very badly damaged by all of this?
ROSENBERG: I don't think Toyota's been very badly damaged. My family's been involved with Toyota since 1975, and I will say, out of all the manufacturers we represent, we have 15 different dealerships, our best relationship, our closest relationship is with Toyota. They are great at getting us information expeditiously. They're very supportive.
ROMANS: OK.
ROSENBERG: We have access to the higher echelons of the company.
ROMANS: Let me bring in Joan Claybrook now, because you know very well how this industry works. And you know, the important public safety aspect of this industry. Ray Lahood, Joan, yesterday made some headlines by saying stop driving this car and then backtracking a little bit.
How do you think the Transportation Department and American regulators have been doing in all of this?
JOAN CLAYBROOK, PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF PUBLIC CITZEN: Well, I think that they let Toyota, unfortunately, delay endlessly for four or five years are really confronting and addressing this problem. And I think that's why they're in the trouble that they are now. Under Ray Lahood, it's been much tougher. And I think that they've really pushed the company to do the right thing and to do these recalls.
I'm more concerned about the initial recall, the one in November, dealing with the so-called floor mat recall because there the accelerator sticks, not just sticks, but it smashes to the floor in some cases. And even in vehicles without the floor mat. And so there's a real concern that there's an electronic problem here, and I think that's why, in the repair of those vehicles -- and there are five million of them -- that Toyota is putting a brake override system, software change into the vehicle so that, if there's a conflict between the accelerating and the braking, that the braking will stop the vehicle.
ROMANS: And, Joan, now we bring in the Prius issue, which is on a much smaller scale, but certainly there are American drivers of the Prius who they bought this car before January of this year, who are very concerned this morning about whether they should get in this car and drive it for a different reason, for a braking reason. Are you concerned about quality and safety at Toyota in general from what you've heard so far?
CLAYBROOK: Well, this company has a very good reputation. I'm very surprised that they've not been more aggressive in trying to make these corrections at an early stage. I hope that they'll move this as rapidly as possible. But I don't think they've really come clean on this November recall with the format because I think it's more electronic.
On the Prius brakes, they've known about this for a while. And braking and sudden acceleration, those are serious defects. I hope the Department of Transportation jumps on this immediately and pushes Toyota to make these repairs very, very rapidly because not having braking and sudden acceleration are hideous experiences to the public.
ROMANS: Yes. And this is why even this morning driving to work people are still curious and worried about whether they should be driving their cars. Joan Claybrook and David Rosenberg, thank you so much, both of you for your time on this still developing story about Toyota recalls. It is 36 minutes after the hour.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to the most news in the morning. A lot of states across the country, you can only vote in a primary if you're registered there as a Republican or as a Democrat.
In Kentucky, though, we found one independent voter working to change that. As David Mattingly reports, it's really turning into an uphill battle.
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DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As an independent voter with two small children and a mortgage to worry about, 26-year-old Mike Lewis has a common complaint. He feels like his concerns are drowned out by partisan bickering.
MICHAEL LEWIS, INDEPENDENT KENTUCKY CHAIRMAN: These politicians talk about problems, but they're only keen on one solution.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Do you feel like you're being left out?
LEWIS: Of course. There's no connection anymore.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): So Lewis is taking matters into his own hands. I'm tagging along to see what happens as he drives his pickup to the state capital of his home state Kentucky, hoping to give independents a bigger voice.
(on camera): Ok. What's the plan?
LEWIS: Well, the plan is just to talk to as many senators as I can.
Senator Lieber (ph), how are you doing, sir?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good.
LEWIS: Trying to get as many people on the ground as I can, wrestle them down if I have to.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Lewis is only partly kidding about a fight. He wants to overturn the state's closed primary system, a system that excludes tens of thousands of independent voters from primaries. And he knows he's about to hit a nerve.
JULIAN CARROLL (D), KENTUCKY STATE SENATOR: What you're saying is I don't like the way America runs its political system? Well, if you don't like it, move to another country.
LEWIS: That's untrue, senator. Don't you want to talk to me about something real instead of these false truths that you're spreading?
MATTINGLY (on camera): The way it works right now in Kentucky, you have to register as a Republican or a Democrat before you can vote in a party primary. 17 other states have the same system. If you're an independent voter, you're not allowed to vote until the general election.
(voice-over): Democratic state senator and former Kentucky governor Julian Carroll thinks independents should pick a party.
CARROLL: If they want a party, fine, we'll create a party, and then they can have their own party that believes in their own principles.
MATTINGLY (on camera): Independents don't want to have their own party.
(CROSSTALK) CARROLL: I could care less what they want. I'm telling you how we operate a democracy in America, David. We operate a democracy in America with the two-party system.
You're trying to destroy the two-party system in America, and I'm not going to be a part of it. End of this conversation.
LEWIS: You went on record saying I'm trying to start a party. There is no party here, sir. I'll see you on the floor, senator. I appreciate it.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): And just a few hours later, there was a vote in the state Senate. With it, another surprise.
(on camera): There's a little bit of irony here. The bill seems to be split down party lines.
(voice-over): Most Democrats, led by Carroll, opposed opening primaries to independents. Most Republicans, holding the majority, voted yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The bill is passed.
LEWIS: This is strictly about letting an individual, an independent, a little "I," get out there in the primary and be a part of the process.
MATTINGLY: But Lewis still has a long way to go for an independent voter victory. Open primaries now goes to the Kentucky House, where Democrats hold the majority.
David Mattingly, CNN, Frankfort, Kentucky.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: Wow. All right. David, thanks.
Well, this morning's top stories just minutes away, including a CNN exclusive. A lawsuit targeting Toyota claims that a woman was killed in a runaway car that sped out of control and a lot of potential problems that we're hearing about in this latest recall. Our Deb Feyerick is going to be breaking that down for us today.
ROMANS: At 8:03 Eastern, something privacy advocates may consider an unholy alliance, Google and the NSA reportedly working together. Will your searches be safe?
CHETRY: Also, at 8:10 Eastern, "Welcome to the Tea Party." CNN cutting through the noise, taking an in depth look at the Tea Party movement. Many people who feel abandoned by their leaders in Washington. Those stories and much more at the top of the hour.
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CHETRY: All right. See that? See the sign and goal posts over there? ROMANS: I know.
CHETRY: We're getting excited, right?
ROMANS: Indianapolis. Yes.
It doesn't matter if it rains, doesn't matter if it's cold, because it's going to be sunny and 80 every day this week in Indianapolis.
CHETRY: So exciting.
ROMANS: Actually, it's cloudy and 24, then sunny and 39. But it doesn't matter if they're cold then (ph), I think.
CHETRY: No. Not at all. They're very excited there.
So what's the weather going to be like? You get a check with Rob Marciano. He is keeping track of the Extreme Weather here. I know you're going to watch the Super Bowl, but are you rooting for a team or no?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, I've got to love Peyton Manning, but you got to like the -- the story of -- of New Orleans and Brees. So how's that for a politically correct answer?
CHETRY: I like that. That was very PC.
MARCIANO: I'm going Colts, baby. OK, there you go. I just -- I just got a lot of my friends in New Orleans upset with me. Who dat (ph)!
Heavy rain across parts of New Orleans today and a big storm system taking shape, actually, two pieces of atmospheric energy. There's your red lows. There's some snow to the north, but the heavy rain is going to take over to the south and we'll see potentially some flooding from Houston getting into Atlanta.
A pretty deep layer of moisture here, and it's only going to get deeper as it taps that water from the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans to Hattiesburg to Montgomery, the rain shield now extending into Atlanta and it will eventually hit the colder airs that's in place now across parts of the Appalachians, the mid-Atlantic, the Delmarva, and the northeast.
Similar scenario, though, to what we saw in late December, and I think we'll -- we'll see similar snow amounts at least in some cases. So winter storm watches and -- and warnings have been posted, 10 to 20 inches of snow potentially near the -- the Baltimore and Washington, DC area. How far north it gets to New York? That's a big question. Right now computer models are keeping it south, and New York, you just kind of get clipped.
Houston, Atlanta, rain and clouds today, if you're traveling through those hubs. Also Minneapolis, some freezing, fog at least in the morning. And then tomorrow's forecast, weather map shows a big old mess across the eastern seaboard, and we are trying to get some of that snow to our snow-starved friends in the Big Apple. But right now it looks like just a few inches and most of the action is going to be south of, say, Trenton, New Jersey.
Back to you guys.
ROMANS: My sleds are greased. My kids are all ready to go.
MARCIANO: All right. Well...
CHETRY: Start driving south as soon as the show's over.
ROMANS: Did you say 10 to 20 inches in Baltimore and Washington? Did you really say that? Did I hear you just say that?
MARCIANO: Yes. That's -- that's the potential of this thing.
CHETRY: Wow!
MARCIANO: And you know, it will be -- it will localized amounts. And it may sneak up to New York. We'll give you an update tomorrow morning. We'll see.
CHETRY: My parents are coming up from Maryland. They'd better get in the car and get up here now.
MARCIANO: Get them on the road early, Kiran. Get them on the road early.
CHETRY: All right. Thanks, Rob.
Well, if you're not a big fan of big teeth, long tails, and scaly skin, you may want to avoid the place we're about to show you.
ROMANS: We're talking about a park in the Florida Everglades, where there's nothing between you and 100-pound alligators. So who do we send to check it out? None other than our very own John Zarrella.
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JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He knows you are there. Take his picture. He's cool with that -- all 800 pounds of him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm pretty freaked out by it. I don't want to get any closer.
ZARRELLA (on camera): No?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just can't believe that we're not warned before we come in here.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): The reaction from visitors is standard fare. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some of them don't believe the alligators are alive. They think we've planted them.
ZARRELLA: From Upstate New York, Doug and Caroline Finke (ph) don't see gators too often, never this up close and personal.
DOUG FINKE (ph), TOURIST: I was just going to say what stops us from just going up and trying to pet him?
ZARRELLA (on camera): Uhhh, common sense?
FINKE: And I -- yes, I know that. But not everyone has it, like me.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): This is Florida's Everglades National Park, a spot called Shark Valley. The name, totally misleading. It's home to wading birds, water birds, roosting birds, and apparently very friendly birds.
HELMUT KUEGEL, TOURIST: The birds in Europe are more shy. You cannot come as close to a bird like here in the States.
ZARRELLA (on camera): Really?
KUEGEL: Yes. I cannot understand why.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): But what Shark Valley is most noted for is its alligators -- hundreds of them. There may be no other place in the world like it. Every few feet along the 15-mile trail, there is a gator lazily sunning itself, fortunately, less interested in the humans than they are in it.
ZARRELLA (on camera): Look at this. There's an alligator right here. Literally, he's sitting up on the rocks, in the bushes.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Alligators apparently do grow on trees here.
ZARRELLA (on camera): Are they scary?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
ZARRELLA: No?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
ZARRELLA: Well, you want to get a little closer?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
ZARRELLA: Come on.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): Talk about trusting, we stood within about 10 feet of a dozen gators.
ZARRELLA: You like it? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Really.
ZARRELLA: What are you, crazy? You like alligators? Up close?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, yes. I'm crazy.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): You can walk the path or bike it, which makes for a quick getaway, although there's never been an incident. Just don't get any ideas.
FINKE (ph): She's, like, really into purses too, so I'm looking at -- I'm thinking (INAUDIBLE), too, you know?
ZARRELLA (on camera): Yes, but then there's always federal prison, so I think you probably don't want to go that route either.
FINKE (ph): Right.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): The rules are simple. Don't touch them. Don't feed them. Don't mess with them. Just marvel at them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Got them!
ZARRELLA: John Zarrella, CNN, at Shark Valley.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: Would you go?
ROMANS: I would -- did you see the guy with like the little baby on the back of the bike?
CHETRY: Yes. I don't think that's such a good idea.
ROMANS: Never been an incident, according to John Zarrella -- our chief reptile correspondent, John Zarrella. If there's -- if there's an alligator story, John Zarrella (INAUDIBLE).
CHETRY: He's like the gator whisperer, right?
ROMANS: Yes.
CHETRY: Fifty-one minutes past the hour.
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ROMANS: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. It's 53 minutes past the hour, time for your "AM House Call", stories about your health, a new campaign to boost patient safety.
Listen to this, nearly 100,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors. Now, one contributing factor -- doctor fatigue. And now one group is trying to fix that.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, founder and director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, joins us from Washington. Welcome to the program. Let me ask you first, tell us how serious a problem this is of doctor fatigue? Way back in 1989, the Institute of Medicine has this seminal study about medical -- preventable medical errors. Ten years later, one of the big key reasons for medical errors, doctor fatigue. Have we addressed it? Is it still such a problem?
DR. SIDNEY WOLFE, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC CITIZEN'S HEALTH RESEARCH GROUP: Not really.
The millions of people who fly every year would never get on a plane if someone told them that their pilot had been awake for 20, 25 hours. One the other hand, people are not aware of and appropriately outraged about the fact that many times they are being taken care of by doctors who have not been to sleep for 20 or 25 hours.
I think that there is no question that there are more people killed in hospitals every year as a result of sleep deprived doctors than are killed in all the plane accidents or train accidents because there is federal regulation preventing pilots, people who are driving trains, from being able to do their work unless they've had an adequate amount of sleep.
We are announcing today a campaign, wakeupdoctor.org is the website where you could find out about the evidence, and there's a lot of evidence about errors caused by sleeplessness, and where you can sign a petition to try and strengthen the regulation over doctors, so that you aren't going to be exposed to a doctor in a hospital who hasn't been to sleep. And you also can tell the stories that you may have because people are aware, from talking to other people or their own experiences, about injuries or deaths that have occurred as a result of sleep deprivation.
So it's inexcusable that we have regulation and therefore we don't have to worry about when we get on a plane that it's -- there's a tired doctor, but we do have to worry and the outrage...
ROMANS: Right.
WOLFE: ... needs to build and we need to regulate it.
ROMANS: Why is there this culture -- residents in particular. I mean, there's one statistic up to maybe 100, 120 hours a week of work.
I mean, I recently ran into an anesthesiologist was on -- 24 hours on. 24 hours off, 24 hours -- and you think about that you think about how difficult that must be. Why is the culture like that and why can't it be changed?
WOLFE: Having been through that culture myself, back about 40 years ago, it is -- it's inhumane. I mean, the Institute of Medicines report that you referred to said to err is human, but, on the other hand, to treat doctors in an inhumane way where they aren't allowed to sleep, it's not only inhumane to them but it's inhumane to the patients.
The phrase "resident", "medical resident" was coined because in the old days you used to sleep in the hospital when you had a chance. You were on so much that you didn't have a chance to go home. So it's a bad culture, it's a dangerous culture.
ROMANS: Right.
WOLFE: It needs to be changed, and we hope people will go to wakeupdoctor.org, learn about it, sign a petition to try and protect patients and doctors themselves...
ROMANS: Very -- very quickly, let me ask you, until there are some change to the system, what should a patient do? I mean, do you need to have an advocate with you? Do you need to make -- I mean what can you do yourself to take control of the situation if you think that you're looking at a doctor who's literally the walking dead?
WOLFE: Well, some doctors are apparently sleepy and are dozing off during the (INAUDIBLE) that that's almost too far. You need to put pressure on the hospital that you use either on an elective basis or that you might on an emergency basis not to allow doctors to be going that long without sleep.
Sleeplessness is dangerous and it's somewhat akin to having a lot of alcohol onboard. You can't make decisions. You can't operate properly. You can't make the right kind of decisions about drugs if you don't have enough sleep. So there needs to be a public outrage. We need to have it regulated.
It's inexcusable that pilots, train drivers, bus drivers are regulated. They're not allowed to sleep as little as doctors are.
ROMANS: All right. Dr. Sidney Wolfe, thank you so much for joining us.
WOLFE: Wakeupdoctor.org again to get more information about this.
ROMANS: All right -- Kiran.
CHETRY: Sounds good. Christine, thanks so much.
We're going to take a quick break. It is now 58 minutes past the hour. Your top stories coming your way in just 90 seconds. We'll be right back.
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