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July 13, 2006
TOYOTA TUNDRA AIRBAG SWITCHES BEING DEACTIVATED
According to a Detroit News article, 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 action, which CNN called "totally bizarre", is prompted by NHTSA's rejection of 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.
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, a Toyota spokesperson told the Detroit News.
Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety told the newspaper that 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," it said. Calling the recall "totally bizarre", CNN asked, "Why would Toyota issue a recall designed to make vehicles less safe?"
Posted by MVHAP at July 13, 2006 03:11 PM