Somehow I think it just doesn't much matter. From Robert Wright's opinion piece in the NYT on March 9 (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/toyotas-are-safe-enough/): ...if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don't bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million -- 2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244.

Hmm. My 2009 Prius consistently gets 80-100% better mileage than my 2002 Saturn SL 4 door 5-speed. And in the stop and go traffic I often have to drive in, I'll take the automatic any day.