Another Toyota Recall!

[Tiger]

So, 4 years after other manufacturers complied, Toyota still refuses citing costs. Issues recall to avoid expensive requirements. Front passenger airbags will always deploy now (recall customers will no longer be able to turn them off)!

WASHINGTON — Toyota Motor Corp. will spend millions to deactivate front-seat passenger air bag cut-off switches in nearly 160,000 Tundra pickups to avoid having to install a costlier child safety seat anchoring system.

The Japanese automaker is taking the action after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week on June 28 rejected Toyota's petition to waive a federal safety regulation that requires most vehicles built after September 2002 and equipped with the cut-off switch to also have a child seat anchor system known as LATCH — for lower anchorages and tethers for children.

The regulation was meant to ensure that child seats stay in place in a crash, especially in vehicles with smaller rear-seating, such as pickups.

At the time the regulation was adopted, 600 children under the age of 5 were killed every year in auto crashes and another 70,000 were injured.

Children are at high risk of death or injury from airbags that deploy. That's why child seats aren't allowed in front seats that don't have an airbag cut-off switch, which activates the airbag only if it senses an adult is in the passenger seat.

Deactivating the switch means the air bag will always deploy, making it unsafe to ever put a child in the front seat.

Toyota will voluntarily recall the pickups, beginning in mid-September, after completing engineering of the parts to deactivate the air bag cut-off switch, spokesman Bill Kwong said Friday.

"We always recommend that child seats are used in the rear as children are safest there," Kwong said. Owners will get notice of the recall in September, he said.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety said Toyota shouldn't be allowed to simply deactivate the switches. Toyota's failure to provide the latches "is not merely an incidental statistical artifact but a clear and present danger to the children who ride in child restraints in the front passenger seats of those vehicles," said Henry Jasny, general counsel for the Washington-based group.

Kwong said there may have been some engineering issues that make it impractical to add the latches rather than deactivate the airbag cut-off switch.

He said the exact cost of the recall isn't known — only that the fix is expected to require two hours of labor.

At more than $100 for labor, it could cost more than $16 million if all vehicles are serviced, he said. It isn't known what the parts will cost since they are still being designed, he said.

In its ruling, NHTSA took no position on whether Toyota could comply by simply deactivating the switches.

Kwong said beginning in the 2006 model year, Toyota deactivated its front passenger air bag cut-off switch to satisfy the regulations.

In June 2005, Toyota acknowledged that 156,555 Toyota Tundras from the 2003-05 model years didn't comply with the child seat anchor safety regulation.

The automaker asked NHTSA to waive the regulation and spent more than a year trying to convince the agency it wasn't required to install child-seat anchoring systems.

Toyota lost the debate last week, when NHTSA rejected the company's final appeal.

Toyota noted that it hadn't received any customer complaints and that there were no injuries reported as a result of the lack of the anchoring system in the front seats of the trucks. Tundras have compliant child safety latches in rear seats.

"However, the fact does not render the absence of the anchorages in the front seats inconsequential," NHTSA chief Nicole Nason said in a June 28 notice published June 28.

Small children's safety "depends on proper installation of the child-restraint systems in which they ride."

NHTSA also noted that parents with vehicles built before 2002 who mistakenly believed their vehicles complied with the regulation have "used seatbelt latch plates, drilled holes through the nylon webbing of the seatbelt" in an effort to use the front seat.

[Joevette]

you'd think since they have so much money that they wouldn't mind spending it on something like this, real crowd pleasers

[jimmyisland]

Toyota Will Fix Their Bags!
Toyota to recall Tundra air bags
To comply with U.S. child safety rule, front passenger switch will be disabled, not replaced.
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau






WASHINGTON -- Toyota Motor Corp. will spend millions to deactivate front-seat passenger air bag cut-off switches in nearly 160,000 Tundra pickups to avoid having to install a costlier child safety seat anchoring system.
The Japanese automaker is taking the action after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on June 28 rejected Toyota's petition to waive a federal safety regulation that requires most vehicles built after September 2002 and equipped with the cut-off switch to also have a child seat anchor system known as LATCH -- lower anchorages and tethers for children. Continued.

[Butz]

Thanks for sharing, this is definetely a good change from all the Nissan-Renault taking over GM news.

[ChevyPV]

I love how the title makes it sound like Toyota is really fixing a problem with their airbags, when really they are just giving it a quick fix by disabling part of the system. They are not actually fixing the problem, which is the fact that they don't have LATCH installed on the truck like they are supposed. It makes me wonder how this type of oversight makes it through to production.

[kenman923]

Is this the same Toyota who wants to be #1

[dindak]

This is not news. Nothing happened. There is nothing to see here.

Regards
Toyota mgmt.

[88Fiero]

I bet the mindless people in Washington will let this go. But if it was GM or Ford they would blow it out of proportion!

[crooner214]

Why is this news? If it were news which involved Toyota, It would be about Hybrids. Toyota is the safest, most environmentally friendly company on the planet, after all... (YEAH RIGHT!!!)

[plane]

Now I have seen it all.

[mucker15]

i wonder if it will get the same coverage as GMs bad news does in the media

[sigma]

^It won't.

[MrMax]

CTS spyshots and a Toyota recall. Thats starting the week right.

[asim]

Originally Posted by kenman923

Is this the same Toyota who wants to be #1

Hmm...maybe so.

[GM-Joe]

That's "moving forward" face first into the windshield!