Bad Vibe

I love my car--my Pontiac Vibe. It's so peppy and comfortable and reliable. At least that's what I thought until yesterday. I was on my way to Target (big surprise to those who know me well), traveling down Sycamore Road, which is a fairly busy road in DeKalb. The traffic light was red, so I was slowing to a stop, when suddenly, without a hiccup or any other sign of warning, my car's engine stopped. Being a bit flummoxed as to why my car would suddenly stop working, I put it in park and tried to start it again. No go. So now I'm in the left-hand lane with no way to pull over to the side of the road, and cars keep zipping around me. My friend Corrinne just happened to be driving by at the time my car stalled and pulled over to make sure I was OK. By the time I called Eric and a tow company, a police officer had pulled up behind me to make sure oncoming traffic wouldn't plow into me.
While I was being towed, Eric went online to investigate possible causes for my engine to spontaneously cut out. Turns out, it's another Toyota issue. My Pontiac Vibe is essentially a Toyota Matrix with a cuter physique--a fact that used to give Eric and I peace of mind, because, after all, how reliable are Toyotas? Well, with all the trouble Toyota has been in lately, I guess it's no wonder this has come up. Eric found some fairly recent articles that claimed that a small number of Matrixes and Vibes are crapping out for no apparent reason, just like my car did. Toyota doesn't want to do a recall, though, for obvious reasons, and they say that the engine's cutting out poses no imminent danger to the driver. Say what? Let's say I'm driving along a busy highway, like I was just that afternoon, and my engine randomly cut out. Yeah, I think anyone could say a safety risk is posed by spontaneous engine failure.
So apparently, my engine may have gone on strike due to the failure of some part, the ECM, which can come unsoldered from the engine. It's supposedly a quick and relatively inexpensive repair, but boy did this whole episode cause me to doubt the safety of my car. Thank goodness Logan wasn't in the car with me!