Media Balks At Toyota's "Totally Bizarre" TUNDRA Recall - Making Vehicles Less Safe?

[56 Starchief]

Toyota's totally bizarre recall

Why would Toyota issue a recall designed to make vehicles less safe?

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
July 12 2006: 3:22 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- This fall, Toyota will voluntarily recall nearly 160,000 Toyota Tundra pickups so that they can be made less safe for children riding in the front seat.

No, that's not a mistake - at least not on our part.

The recall announced Monday, is meant to make Tundras comply with a set of safety regulations. The rules say that vehicles built after 2002 must have a child-seat anchor system known as LATCH in the front seat if they also have a front-seat airbag shut-off switch.
The Tundras in question were built with an airbag shut-off switch but not the LATCH system.
The solution? Spend lots of money and inconvenience customers...to remove the airbag shut-off switch.

The move not only doesn't enhance the safety of these vehicles, it actually makes the vehicles unsafe for small children riding in the front seat.

Those shut-off switches exist because airbags can injure and even kill small children even in otherwise minor crashes.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/11/auto...call/index.htm

wow, media is pissed about this! the tide is turning.

[sigma]

Wow, that headline from CNN...

There's gonna be a revolution (cue the music). GM has heritage to fall back on and to inspire with and quality to match. Toyota just has quality. When that goes, they will be in trouble.

[Lewie]

LOL, all for Toyota to save a few bucks. Maybe they don't realize their stock is worth 10x what GM is.

[Chet]

what the heck is Toyota thinking with this one?! Not good for people who own one of these trucks and small children.

Now only about 5-10 more years of this and maybe Toyotas reputation will start to take a significant hit...

[johnny smallblock]

Originally Posted by 56 Starchief

Is this seriously the interior of the Tundra? It looks cheap and ugly. I've never seen the interior before. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly was more then this. Ewww.

[DU Biggs]

Originally Posted by johnny smallblock

Is this seriously the interior of the Tundra? It looks cheap and ugly. I've never seen the interior before. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly was more then this. Ewww.

Yeah its pretty 1990's Ford Taurus-ish isnt it?

[Greg Burr]

It's a gift, baby!

[Greg Burr]

Oh, and while we're at it, give one to Thomas Friedman and all of the staff of the NYT.

[grumbles]

Originally Posted by DU Biggs

Yeah its pretty 1990's Ford Taurus-ish isnt it?

Not to derail the thread but... you've never been inside of a GM truck, have you?

[coaster.n3rd]

*waits for the trolls to spin this* EDIT: Nevermind, one appeared while I was writing my post.

CNN is right to pick this up, now where is MSNBC, yahoo etc?

[grumbles]

I wonder how many people aren't going to read the rest of the article linked? You managed to quote all of the bad, and leave out the rest.

NHTSA denied that petition. So Toyota asked NHTSA to reconsider, arguing that the solution would be worse than the problem.

"[We] believe that the agency should understand that the likely remedy is to remove the airbag cut-off switches," Toyota lawyers wrote to NHTSA in October of 2005.

Toyota has no other choice, Chris Tinto, Toyota's vice president for regulatory affairs, told CNNMoney.com. Placing the LATCH system in the trucks' front seats would have been far too expensive.

"We still think it's better with the cut-off switches in," said Tinto said. But rules are rules, so it's out with the switches.

Heh.

Sounds like the problem is the NHTSA, not Toyota.

[CBECK]

Originally Posted by Chet

what the heck is Toyota thinking with this one?! Not good for people who own one of these trucks and small children.

Now only about 5-10 more years of this and maybe Toyotas reputation will start to take a significant hit...

I said it before and I'll say it again. Toyota's recall rep. and GM's recall rep. was all relative in numbers. The more you sell the more chance you have in glitches. The proof is in the pudding.

[56 Starchief]

Originally Posted by grumbles

I wonder how many people aren't going to read the rest of the article linked? You managed to quote all of the bad, and leave out the rest.


Heh.

Sounds like the problem is the NHTSA, not Toyota.

no...rules are rules...I showed the gist of the article.

even 'Yota isn't powerful enough to create rules out of thin air.

the point is they should follow the rules, not evade them. it doesn't matter if the rules were that all car seats must be polka-dotted, that doesnt mean you remove the seats to evade it.

either you do it right or you do it wrong. Toyota chose to do wrong.

Lawyer spin or not.

[Paul]

"[We] believe that the agency should understand that the likely remedy is to remove the airbag cut-off switches," Toyota lawyers wrote to NHTSA in October of 2005.

WHAT?!
So, I guess the remedy for my broken arm is to remove it, not to actually FIX it?

Just fix it, removing the switch is evading the problem.

[yukonho]

Originally Posted by grumbles

I wonder how many people aren't going to read the rest of the article linked? You managed to quote all of the bad, and leave out the rest.


Heh.

Sounds like the problem is the NHTSA, not Toyota.

Um, did you even read what you pasted above? The proper way to do this recall is to install the latches. Yet even with all the cash Toyota has, they choose to do a half a$$ job and try to blame the NHTSA. Also, NHTSA did not make the rule after the trucks were produced, it was before the Tundras went to market!!! Hello...McFly...anybody home?