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.
| Almost 160,000 Tundra pickups will be recalled in September to deactivate passenger air bags.
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The Japanese automaker is taking the action after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 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 — 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 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.
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.
