The Herald is always concerned when scores of our readers contact us with concerns about their safety. That is what has happened in the past week with owners of Volkswagen cars. People have emailed Fairfax Media about their adverse experiences with various Volkswagen brands - Golf, Passat, Polo and Eos.

Mostly the episodes have involved failures of transmissions and/or sudden loss of speed. The upsurge of concerns was prompted by media coverage of an inquest into the death of Melissa Ryan, 32, after her VW Golf suddenly lost power on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne in 2011.

Reputation tarnished: Volkswagen. Credit:AFP

On Friday, Fairfax Media had a report that 15 Volkswagen owners had said they experienced the same sudden loss of acceleration. Since then, the number of people who have contacted our journalists with similar or related problems involving VW cars has risen to more than 100.

What is alarming about most of these emails is their specificity. Typical is this email from a reader: ''I would also like to report the sudden loss of power in my wife's 2008 Eos Tdi DSG … I then suffered two episodes where I was driving at 80km/h and there was complete power loss … I cannot understand why Volkswagen Australia has not issued a safety recall for this fault.