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.
Toyota originally discovered the compliance issue and, in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in July 2005, the company asked regulators to let them to ignore it as “inconsequential to safety.”
NHTSA denied that petition. So Toyota asked NHTSA to reconsider, arguing that the solution would be worse than the problem.
Toyota’s fault. They knew the regs, now they are going for the cheap way out by disabling the switch.
# 1. Agreed. Instead of a black plastic plug (or whatever colour) in the dash where the key-hole used to be, why not comply with a known regulation?
Toyota owners are generally a pretty savy group, I wonder how many of them will ignore the recall? I wonder how many dealerships will advise owners to do so?
Most owners ignore most recalls — unless they involve fire safety. Of the few recalls over the 12 years I’ve had my pickup, most of them have been almost exclusively of the lawyer-caused variety.
Yeah, I have to agree with the other comments. Toyota knew the rules and ignored them. Toyota could have come into compliance by installing LATCH in the front seats. That would be costly, so they are choosing to simply disable the switch.
This is Toyota’s problem, not the government’s. And this post had a pretty misleading title. Good to know that blogs pull the same crap as the mainstream media… 🙂
Don’t blame the US Bureaucrats. Blame the schmo’s at Toyota.
These bureaucrats do this all the time. Why have the regulation at all? Why not allow all cars to have a airbag shutoff switch? You usually have to get individual permission for that.
AB CD, I don’t think you understand. The regulation says that if there’s an on/off switch for the airbag (so kids can ride in a front seat) then there must be the LATCH harnesses (brackets) too. The LATCH system is for car seats. The rule is there so when a person is utilizing the LATCH system (i.e.: there’s a car seat there with a kid in the front seat), then the airbag can be turned off.
This is idiotic, mostly on part of Toyota.
If you have such a manual switch (besides the automatic ones that are standard anyway for those cases nobody sits on the front seats), then a protection is mandatory.
BTW: This procedure protects Toyota from class suits, so they should be happy.
Everybody is protected now, except those childs driving on the driver’s seat. But an appropriate disclaimer might even solve this problem.
Perhaps they’ve changed the rules, but when they first allowed these on/off switches, the individual buyer had to get permission from the gorvernment to get it. It’s not just children that can be hurt by airbags. My complaint is why have the regulation at all. They should let people turn off the airbags whenever they want, even without a child safety seat. Whoever posted this said that bureaucrats are making Toyota make their trucks less safe. Well by extension, not allowing for a on/off switch without LATCH makes cars less safe.
They still should have the recall, but instead of removing the air bag switch install the blooming LATCHes . Like it’s really hard to mount an anchor behind the seat. Those with kids should get these installed anyway.
Reminds me of an old VW recall of (I think) Rabbits for an oil consumption problem. The fix? Add a label to the gas cap that read, “Check your oil.”
10# Of course, people not conforming to standard sizes (aka “giants”, “dwarfs”) may be hurt by those airbags.
Airbags were an option, initially, similar to ABS and seatbelts. But if a fear-ridden and brain-damaged majority decides to make such devices obligatroy then your only option is to buy and use a motorcyle.
BTW: The seatbelts issue, in my opinion, was the breakthrough for all those nanny attempts to regulate our existence, based on the assumption that people need the helping hand of a hierarchy of bureaucrats (remember the third braking light?).
It will never end. Wait until you won’t get any fastfood without a warning sticker.
This is what we get for demanding that the government regulate everything. Bureaucracies never move fast. Expecting them to do so is foolish.
They also mandated a release lever in case you lock yourself in the trunk.