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Toyota says: No, you child will not sit in the front seat, we will make it unsafe

M

MikeMike

Lifer
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.
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so, they spend $16 million to save money instead of making a vehicle safer.

go toyota
 
I don't see where it says the cost is for adding the LATCH mechanism; the 16 million refers to the recall cost to deactivate the airbag switch. The cost for implementing the latch is unknown, and according to the article might not even be possible.

So they're spending 16 million to comply with the letter of the regulations, while making the vehicle less safe for ignorant parents.
 
Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
I don't see where it says the cost is for adding the LATCH mechanism; the 16 million refers to the recall cost to deactivate the airbag switch. The cost for implementing the latch is unknown, and according to the article might not even be possible.

So they're spending 16 million to comply with the letter of the regulations, while making the vehicle less safe for ignorant parents.
Click to expand...

fixed to represent reading comprehension.

anyways, they are trying to save cash and taking the cheapest way out.

if this was GM, the media would be hanging them from their nads.
 
Now stupid parents can duct tape their children to the flat bed of their trucks. Joy for stupid people.
 
So it's either come up with a way to implement the LATCH system or remove the abilility to disable the airbag. Both options are safer, but one option makes the shareholders happy. Toyota is a business.
 
Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
I don't see where it says the cost is for adding the LATCH mechanism; the 16 million refers to the recall cost to deactivate the airbag switch. The cost for implementing the latch is unknown, and according to the article might not even be possible.

So they're spending 16 million to comply with the letter of the regulations, while making the vehicle less safe for ignorant parents.
Click to expand...

fixed to represent reading comprehension.

anyways, they are trying to save cash and taking the cheapest way out.

if this was GM, the media would be hanging them from their nads.
Click to expand...

Uhm... you didn't fix or change anything in that quote 😕
 
disable the airbag.... is it really obvious? what if u forgot to switch it back on and u crash with an adult sitting there...
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
disable the airbag.... is it really obvious? what if u forgot to switch it back on and u crash with an adult sitting there...
Click to expand...

Then you sue Toyota for making vehicles in which you can disable the airbag!
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
disable the airbag.... is it really obvious? what if u forgot to switch it back on and u crash with an adult sitting there...
Click to expand...

what are you talking about?

toyota is talking about disabling the switch that turns the air bag on and off based on the amount of weight in the front passenger side of the vehicle.

where anywhere does it talk about forgetting to switch it back on?
 
Aren't babies in child seats and small children supposed to be in the back seat in the first place? What's the problem here?
 
Originally posted by: NFS4
Aren't babies in child seats and small children supposed to be in the back seat in the first place? What's the problem here?
Click to expand...

It's a PICKUP!!!! 😀 What are you going to attach the kid to the flatbed?
 
Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Originally posted by: NFS4
Aren't babies in child seats and small children supposed to be in the back seat in the first place? What's the problem here?
Click to expand...

It's a PICKUP!!!! 😀 What are you going to attach the kid to the flatbed?
Click to expand...

80% of the Tundras I see are extended cab or Double Cab models...the majority being double cab models.

The only standard cab Tundras that anyone ever sees are work trucks (contractors, etc). And no child would be in those anyway.
 
Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
I don't see where it says the cost is for adding the LATCH mechanism; the 16 million refers to the recall cost to deactivate the airbag switch. The cost for implementing the latch is unknown, and according to the article might not even be possible.

So they're spending 16 million to comply with the letter of the regulations, while making the vehicle less safe for ignorant parents.
Click to expand...

fixed to represent reading comprehension.

anyways, they are trying to save cash and taking the cheapest way out.

if this was GM, the media would be hanging them from their nads.
Click to expand...

Toyota is way ahead of GM in implementing these airbag safety mechanisms. In fact, many GM models only this year got the same safety mechanisms that all of Toyota's models have had since 2002.

I must say that I am surprised Toyota is doing this to any of their vehicles, though.
 
Originally posted by: NFS4
Aren't babies in child seats and small children supposed to be in the back seat in the first place? What's the problem here?
Click to expand...


Exactly.

By putting a LATCH system in the front seat you are only encouraging parental stupidity.

1) Petition the NHSA to not have to install LATCH system in front seat.
2) Get rejected
3) Decide whether to install expensive LATCH system or deactivate passenger air-bag switch.
4) Deactive passenger air bag switch.
5) Force kids to sit in the back seat (where they are supposed to sit anyways)
6) ???
7) Profit!


 
I love how everyone is bashing the customers when it's Toyota who failed to build a truck that complies with safety regulations, and didn't notify its customers at the time of purchase, but only years later.
 
Ok, LATCH is for car seats. The rear seat is the safest place for a child to be in the car statistically speaking. If the child is large enough to ride in the front seat, then you want the air bag enabled. I don't see a problem here. If anything, Toyota is making the Tundra safer for children?
 
Originally posted by: Eeezee
Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
I don't see where it says the cost is for adding the LATCH mechanism; the 16 million refers to the recall cost to deactivate the airbag switch. The cost for implementing the latch is unknown, and according to the article might not even be possible.

So they're spending 16 million to comply with the letter of the regulations, while making the vehicle less safe for ignorant parents.
Click to expand...

fixed to represent reading comprehension.

anyways, they are trying to save cash and taking the cheapest way out.

if this was GM, the media would be hanging them from their nads.
Click to expand...

Uhm... you didn't fix or change anything in that quote 😕
Click to expand...

I'm glad I wasn't the only one... kept reading it over and over...

 
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