The O'Reilly Collins Law Firm announced on Monday 10, 2010 they requested the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to open a timeliness query into Toyota Recall 05V389 to replace defective steering relay rods in Toyota pickups and 4Runners. Toyota had issued a recall for the same component in Japan a year earlier than the United States, even though it knew steering rods were failing in its U.S. models.
The request is based on evidence that Toyota failed to meet its obligation to notify NHTSA of a motor vehicle defect within five days of determining a defect or noncompliance. Toyota's internal records show that the automaker was aware of many relay rod failures that occurred in the U.S. well before it issued a recall here.
"Toyota's delay is unacceptable," said John Kristensen, an attorney with O'Reilly Collins. "We are encouraged by NHTSA's recent actions to initiate timeliness queries into Toyota recalls for floor mats and sticky gas pedals. It is imperative that the agency do likewise for Recall 05V389. The parallels between the Japanese relay rod campaign and the sticky pedal campaign in the U.S. are striking; in both cases, Toyota initiated recalls in overseas markets well before it made the fix available to American consumers."
In October 2004, Toyota informed NHTSA it was issuing a relay rod recall in Japan, but not the U.S. The component, a link which connects the steering mechanism to the wheels, had a tendency to snap, resulting in a complete loss of steering and crashes. Toyota claimed that the problem was unique to driving conditions in Japan, and that it had not received any reports of relay rod failures in the U.S. Toyota had actually received at least 44 reports in the U.S. since as early as 2000, including crashes involving rollovers and injuries.
On September 6, 2005 Toyota filed a Defect Notice to recall near one million steering relay rods on Toyota 4Runners (model years 1990 -1995), Toyota Pickups (1989-1995) and Toyota T100 Trucks (model years 1993 - 1998).
"The agency has already fined Toyota $16.4 million for delaying a U.S. recall of sticky accelerator pedals. Now it should investigate the wide chronological gaps and apparent falsehoods Toyota has provided about the relay rod defect," Kristensen said. "It's time that Toyota own up to their mistakes."
Shortly after O'Reilly Collins' request NHTSA announced they would open a timeliness query into Safety Recall 05v389. "Safety is our number one priority and we take our responsibility to protect U.S. consumers seriously," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "With new assurances from Toyota about their efforts to improve safety, I hope for their cooperation in getting to the bottom of what happened."
