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Toyota Tundra Recalled to Disable Front Passenger Airbag Switch

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

July 13, 2006

Toyota Tundra • Engine problems • Brake problems • Misc. problems --- News • Toyota Recalls Some 2007 Tundra Pickups • Camshaft Flaw in New Tundra Pickup • New Tundra Pickup Stumbles in NHTSA Safety Test • Toyota Recalls 533,000 Trucks for Failed Ball Joints • NHTSA Probes 600,000 Toyota Trucks and Vans • Toyota Tundra Recalled to Disable Front Passenger Airbag Switch --- • Toyota Trucks

In an odd twist of automotive safety, the Toyota Motor Corp. will recall nearly 160,000 Tundra pickups to disable the front-seat passenger airbag cut-off switch because the trucks do not have the required lower anchorage and tethers for children known as the LATCH system.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rejected the Toyota petition to waive a federal safety regulation that requires most vehicles built after September 2002 and equipped with the front passenger side airbag cut-off switch to also carry the anchorages and tethers.

Disabling the switch will comply with the NHTSA order but auto safety experts question the decision and warn the move will not make the Tundra a safer vehicle, at least for children.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety characterized the Toyota decision as a "a clear and present danger to the children who ride in child restraints in the front passenger seats of those vehicles."

Installing in the LATCH system would cost Toyota more than deactivating the airbag cut-off switch but deactivating the switch means the airbag will always deploy and the right front passenger seat will always be unsafe for a child.

Children are at high risk of death or injury from airbags that deploy and child seats are not allowed in front seats that don't have an airbag cut-off switch.

Toyota does not know the cost of the recall but estimates that the repair will require approximately two hours of labor suggesting that disabling the switch will cost the automaker more than $16 million in labor alone if all the pickup owners respond to the recall.

In June 2005, Toyota acknowledged that 156,555 Toyota Tundra pickups from the 2003-05 model years did not 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 safety regulators the company was not required to install child-seat anchoring systems.

In the ruling, NHTSA took no position on whether Toyota could comply with safety regulations by simply deactivating the switches. Toyota has already disabled the cut-off switch in the 2006 Tundra in an effort to comply with the regulation.

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