[HN Gopher] 'Do not drive': Toyota recalls some 50k older vehicles
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'Do not drive': Toyota recalls some 50k older vehicles
Author : pg_1234
Score : 91 points
Date : 2024-01-30 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scrippsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scrippsnews.com)
| anotherhue wrote:
| > The affected models include the 2003-2004 Corolla and Corolla
| Matrix, as well as the 2004-2005 RAV4.
| mr-marbo wrote:
| Other articles have noted this also affects the 2003 to 2004
| Pontiac Vibe, which is essentially a rebadged Toyota Corolla
| Matrix.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/toyota-takata-air-bag-explode-shr...
| acheron wrote:
| My wife had a 2003 Vibe, they were contacting her about the
| airbag recall years ago. I'm not following why there's an
| update now? Isn't this the same recall?
| beart wrote:
| I believe these vehicles were made in the same factory as a
| joint venture between Toyota and GM called NUMMI. There's a
| This American Life episode about it.
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/transcript
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| My 2001 Camry was not affected by this. Hooray.
| justin66 wrote:
| Or they've calculated that there are few enough 2001 Camrys
| on the road 22 years later that the risk/reward for them does
| not justify doing a recall. Hooray?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not how that works. If Toyota doesn't do the recall
| they'll be forced by the NTSB. Recalls are how
| manufacturers avoid regulators cramping their style.
| rzzzt wrote:
| So Fight Club was not a documentary?
| justin66 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's exactly how it works. If the NTSB
| was some sort of strict regulator who pushed ahead with
| recalling dangerous parts regardless of the risk and
| costs, they would have forced Toyota to commit to the
| recall announced today a decade ago. The risk of aging
| Takata airbags being explodey if moisture gets in has
| been a known issue for a very long time.
|
| I assume today's announcement represents some factor in
| the equation changing. Takata is caught up and can make
| lower volume parts again? There was an uptick in these
| older airbags exploding? Some other random political or
| economic factor? One thing that isn't new is the
| knowledge that these airbags are dangerous. (to be fair,
| I have no idea if the 2001 Camry's airbags might have
| used a completely different technology)
| trashface wrote:
| I drive a 1997 acura CL and had the same thought. At first
| they sent me a letter saying it had to be recalled, then a
| few months later they said, "upon further review your car
| is not affected". There are very few of these cars on the
| road anymore and I'm sure they did the math and found it
| not worth it to fix.
| justin66 wrote:
| The car manufacturers did all sorts of maneuvering to
| cope with the problem of Takata running at full capacity
| to service the need for replacements. I had something
| similar with a Toyota I owned, which was on a "everything
| is fine but some day in the future your car's airbag
| might be recalled" list. (it eventually was recalled)
|
| It felt great driving that thing.
| roughly wrote:
| The Onion, prophetic as usual: https://www.theonion.com/toyota-
| recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...
| is_true wrote:
| Meanwhile FORD says that the powershift gearbox is YOUR fault for
| not using it properly. American automakers are a joke.
| hackernewds wrote:
| KIA still hasn't fixed the theft systems so it's not just
| Americans
| kube-system wrote:
| Meh, there was never anything wrong with them. Immobilizers
| (or the lack thereof) have been on windows stickers as long
| as they've existed. Hyundai/Kia simply realized that their
| buyers DGAF about an immobilizer as much as they cared about
| being slightly cheaper than cars from other brands. And they
| were right, the cars sold well.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Slightly cheaper meaning $50 to $160 according to Google.
| That seems like a really stupid thing to skimp on, so don't
| blame the consumer for this dumb decision. That's like 1%
| (corrected from 0.1%) of the price of a new car or
| something like that! What dumb engineering, what was KIA
| thinking?!
|
| --
|
| Edit:
|
| I understand the reality of capitalism means a constant
| race to the bottom, I just don't like it.
|
| --
|
| Edit 2:
|
| I am "posting too fast" so here is a response to a post way
| further down than this, so I don't lose my text I tried to
| comment with (Also, what the fuck HN!? I'm not one of those
| flame-baiters!? This is one of the few places I am
| comfortable talking to strangers and I get this
| bullshit...)
|
| I think you would have to define the minimum level of
| effort necessary to steal a car, then say that cars which
| do not pass that bar are probably defective. I would say
| the minimum bar should rise as tech changes, and today we
| could say the minimum is that an unskilled thief (a
| 'regular Joe') should not be able to steal a car without
| any specific knowledge. At least, I think that's
| reasonable.
|
| In this case, meth addicts could break a window and use a
| screwdriver to steal a car without an immobilizer, so that
| seems like a defective product to me.
| kube-system wrote:
| There's always some company that optimizes for the type
| of consumer who sorts by lowest price and chooses the
| item at the top of the list. This is that. These vehicles
| are aggressively priced.
|
| Immobilizers were a great idea of what to skimp on.
| People are buying those cars based on creature comforts
| and price. People DGAF about immobilizers when they're
| buying a car. If it gets stolen next week it doesn't
| matter to the manufacturer, as long as they keep selling.
| Which they are. Hyundai Motor sales figures are very
| healthy and growing.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I wonder how many people check out the insurance premiums
| before pulling the trigger on their car purchase. If the
| answer is anything like 'most' then decisions like this
| will eventually cause people to steer away from
| Hyundai/Kia cars.
| kube-system wrote:
| Hyundai changed their tune on this issue after some
| insurers threatened to stop insuring certain models at
| all, and they're now putting immobilizers in all of their
| models.
|
| But I still don't think they made a mistake. They're just
| the victim of a social media trend. There's hundreds of
| other vehicle vulnerabilities out there just waiting to
| be the next trend. There's so many ways to maliciously
| mess with a car, it's mostly limited by people's
| imaginations.
| thfuran wrote:
| That's maybe an argument that they didn't make an
| uncommonly egregious mistake, but that many cars are
| defective hardly means none of them are.
| kube-system wrote:
| All cars have serious security issues. The security
| features on any car mostly just mitigate the most
| severe/commonly/easily exploited issues.
|
| Locks and electronic countermeasures merely discourage
| people from exploiting cars, or give the illusion of
| security, they don't actually provide very high security
| at all.
|
| People are stealing luxury cars in American cities in
| large numbers right now and shipping them overseas to
| resell. It doesn't matter how many security systems the
| manufacturer has put into place. It doesn't take advanced
| techniques or esoteric tools. All it takes is a flatbed
| trailer and a hand winch from the hardware store.
|
| Where's the line between security issue and defect? Is it
| a defect when it becomes popular to exploit? It is a
| defect when other manufacturers mitigate it? Seems like a
| matter of opinion to me, more than anything qualitative.
| thfuran wrote:
| $100 a pop is pretty big even if it doesn't increase
| sales. Airlines save millions by slightly reducing the
| weight of the pamphlets they put in the seats.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> That 's like 0.1% of the price of a new car_
|
| These were very low end cars, much closer to $10k (1%)
| than $100k (0.1%).
| ok_dad wrote:
| True, but it's also the cost of ~3 gas tanks of gas,
| which to me is pretty small in the long-term ownership of
| a car versus the risk of dealing with it being stolen,
| which would take longer than the 3 weeks that gas would
| get you around for.
|
| I guess I think about value differently than many
| consumers?
| is_true wrote:
| I don't think that can kill you.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That logic applies to the powershift you are complaining
| about.
| is_true wrote:
| A car that sometimes changes how it accelerates can kill
| you.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Ford has already recalled vehicles in the past for the Takata
| airbag issue.
| astura wrote:
| Is there some context here?
| neogodless wrote:
| It looks like Ford settled a lawsuit for those transmissions.
| (Surely out of the kindness of their hearts, just like Toyota.)
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30689585/ford-settlement-...
| is_true wrote:
| Just in some countries. I'm fighting for them to recognize
| that it's a global problem considering it's a global car.
| tromp wrote:
| Takata airbag recalls have been ongoing since 2013, affecting
| dozens of car brands [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takata_Corporation
| themaninthedark wrote:
| There is another air bag company that may have to recall as
| well.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/business/air-bag-recall/index...
| astura wrote:
| The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a
| portion of their website with information on the Takata airbag
| recall and a VIN search. This really is a gigantic problem.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/takata-recall-spotlight
|
| >Approximately 67 million Takata air bags (priority groups
| 1-12) have been recalled because these air bags can explode
| when deployed, causing serious injury or even death.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Thank you for posting that link! I think every car owner in
| the USA should check.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| My thought as well.... was Toyota ignoring the problem?
| wooptoo wrote:
| It looks like a lot of other brands are affected. You can check
| your VIN here for example: https://www.fcai.com.au/is-my-
| airbag-safe
| globular-toast wrote:
| I had my Honda airbag replaced around 2018 due to this, I
| think. I found it quite funny to have work done by the
| dealership on an almost 15 year old car.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| this article links to https://toyota.com/recall but entering the
| VIN to my 2004 corolla and clicking submit does nothing but grey
| out the submit button.
|
| Anyone have any insight into what's going on here?
|
| I've tried this in both Brave and Chrome.
| Stagnant wrote:
| Turning ublock origin off and refreshing the page solved it for
| me.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| thank you, that solved it for me. I opened in an incognito
| tab in chrome.
| dragant wrote:
| I called Toyota dealer service center near me. Gave them my VIN
| and they said I already had my airbags replaced years ago. I
| have a 2004 Toyota Matrix. So there's nothing new? Maybe
| catching the last remaining ones that did not get serviced?
| justin66 wrote:
| You'd hope it is something like that. The Takata airbag thing
| has been a known issue for a really long time.
| kube-system wrote:
| Takata also makes different types of inflators, and cars
| often have different types of inflators in them at the same
| time, and all of these airbag recalls have been on specific
| inflators made at specific times or specific lots that were
| known to be problematic. Some were also only recalled when
| the vehicle was sold or operated in humid areas.
|
| I had a vehicle that was recalled once for the driver side
| airbag, and then later called back for a recall on the
| passenger side airbag. IIRC some cars early on were even
| recalled for the same inflator twice when it was found that
| the replacement inflator had issues.
|
| There's all kinds of details in the weeds here.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > if the airbag deploys, a part inside is more likely to explode
| and shoot sharp metal fragments
|
| Paging Brandon Lee...
|
| No death is more indignified than getting killed _by_ a safety
| feature.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| I don't think you could call what happened to Brandon Lee
| "getting killed by a safety feature" so much as getting killed
| by negligence of the production crew.
|
| Blanks are dangerous, especially if you're using them with an
| unmodified firearm. Even if there's nothing lodged in the
| barrel as was the case with Lee, a blank cartridge can kill you
| just with gas pressure if the barrel is held close enough to
| something important. That's part of the reason that blank-fire
| adapters used in live-fire military exercises plug the barrel.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/US_Navy_...
| globalise83 wrote:
| I remember a military instructor showing us what happens if
| you fire a blank round from a rifle into a folded newspaper.
| In one word "confetti".
| vkou wrote:
| At what range?
| arp242 wrote:
| Confetti range.
| dghughes wrote:
| Jon-Erik Hexum too if you're old enough to recall. Put a gun
| to his temple and pulled the trigger the blank caused
| terrible damage and killed him.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon-Erik_Hexum
| rascul wrote:
| The main reason for the blank firing adapter is to keep the
| gas from escaping out the end of barrel so it can go back and
| cycle the bolt and load the next round.
|
| A live fire exercise would be using live rounds, not blanks.
| jstarfish wrote:
| You say that and the first thing I'm thinking is, surely
| revolvers must be safe to use without these adapters then?
| They eject gas around the cylinder and are cycled
| mechanically.
|
| And yet, the Alec Baldwin fiasco:
|
| > Dave Halls, assistant director on the movie, told
| investigators he failed to inspect every round in every
| chamber of every gun on set. In his affidavit, Souza said
| the gun went off during rehearsal of a scene in which
| Baldwin, seated on a church pew, pulls his firearm from its
| holster and aims directly "towards the camera lens."
|
| > According to the Los Angeles Times, half a dozen union
| camera-crew workers had walked off set in protest of
| working conditions just hours before Hutchins was shot.
| There had been three misfires of the prop gun before the
| one that killed Hutchins. "There were no safety meetings,"
| an unnamed crew member said. "There was no assurance that
| it wouldn't happen again. All they wanted to do was rush,
| rush, rush." The Times reported that someone texted the
| production manager, "We've now had three accidental
| discharges. This is super unsafe."
|
| > But a huge cache of documents the bureau released after
| the report suggest Gutierrez-Reed may have known live
| rounds had been detected on set ahead of the fatal
| shooting. In published text messages, Rust's prop master
| tells Gutierrez-Reed she found "bad ones" in the box of
| ammunition. "Hannah advised she thought it meant possibly
| one or two rounds from the box, but Sarah told her it was
| more than half of the box," the summary reportedly read.
|
| Lesson learned: if you want to engineer an on-set firearm
| accident, use faulty revolvers, _heavily_ contaminate the
| supply of blanks with live ammunition, and make sure
| everyone is rushing through everything at all times so crew
| is conditioned to ignore warning signs and nobody knows who
| to blame when tragedy occurs.
|
| Well played, Alec. Next time just do Springtime for Hitler.
| LukeShu wrote:
| Getting off-topic, but:
|
| > There had been three misfires of the prop gun before
| the one that killed Hutchins. ... "We've now had three
| accidental discharges. This is super unsafe."
|
| A "misfire" is when the gun should go off but doesn't, an
| "accidental discharge" is when the gun shouldn't go off
| but does.
|
| There was a lot of sloppy reporting around the events, to
| where it's hard to tell what the facts actually were. The
| particular mistake I highlighted (the reporter saying
| "misfire" when their source says "accidental discharge")
| IMO makes whichever article you're quoting suspect as a
| whole.
| rascul wrote:
| It's also a safety thing. The main function is for the
| firearm to function properly with blanks instead of live
| rounds. Not all types of firearms need blank firing
| adapters to function properly with blanks.
|
| Edit to expand on that:
|
| Various types of autoloading firearms rely on the gas
| from the combustion of the powder in the round to be
| directed a certain way which provides the energy needed
| to cycle the bolt, which includes ejecting the spent
| round and feeding the next round. If that gas escapes out
| the end of the barrel then that action doesn't happen and
| remedial action must be performed on the rifle (in the
| case of an AR style rifle it means working the charging
| handle). With a revolver (at least mine), the cylinder is
| spun using the energy from squeezing the trigger so it
| doesn't matter if the gas escapes out the end of the
| barrel. I'm not sure how safe that would be to use a
| blank firing adapter on a revolver if there's no other
| way for the gas to escape.
| adolph wrote:
| another part being that the M2's BFA looks awesomely
| steampunk scifi
|
| https://www.psmagazine.army.mil/News/Article/2051920/m2a1-ma.
| ..
| jstarfish wrote:
| My point was more being on the receiving end of a directed
| explosion is uncomfortable, be it airbags, rocketry or
| firearms.
|
| _Anything_ between you and the propellant becomes a bullet.
| See also that couple who tried to DIY pink-or-blue fireworks
| for their baby shower but inadvertently maimed attendees with
| a gender-neutral pipe bomb.
|
| Thanks for the additional context though, I didn't know blank
| rounds required _that_ much diligence.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Eh, the barrel plugs are there to drive back the assembly and
| have a full eject, as the plastic blanks are too weak
| otherwise.
| rconti wrote:
| I've been wishing my 25 year old BMW would be affected by an
| airbag recall because I think I'd rather have a new one than a 25
| year old one!
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My 2003 3 (built in 2002) was. Think they had to replace it
| like 3 times.
| user2342 wrote:
| Did Takata produce any Airbags, that don't need replacement?
| throwup238 wrote:
| They sold a few to the SDF as fragmentation grenades that
| probably work as intended. _Probably_.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Fortunately I totalled my RAV4 back in 2018, so I'm _just fine_.
|
| First time I'd ever had an airbag deployed; I'm glad it didn't
| kill me :/
| theultdev wrote:
| These are real recalls btw, for a safety feature that kills you.
| (airbag frag grenades)
|
| I know some people have been conditioned that software rollbacks
| are recalls due to all the anti-Tesla articles.
| belter wrote:
| Ironically, those are more likely to kill you, than these
| airbags.
| theultdev wrote:
| Not really, Teslas are quite safe and don't have the killer
| Takata airbags like the many other car brands.
|
| But yeah that facetiousness is why I said the statement
| above.
|
| It's really easy to lookup Tesla safety ratings so I won't
| get dragged into what you're trying to do.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Tbh, 24 deaths in all the years since 2003 is a pretty tiny
| number considering just how many of these airbags were
| used.
|
| I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's also pretty low
| rate-wise.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes 24 people that had to die for no reason, but yeah
| it's low for the massive fuck up that this was.
|
| I don't really know what the point of that statement is
| though. Reads like part of a Boeing spokesman's speech.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| My point is that the person who made the statement "those
| are more likely to kill you than these airbags" wasn't
| really all that off the mark.
|
| There's been more (~35) deaths due to Tesla issues
| (fires, self-driving, etc) in a few years than in the 2
| decades this problem airbag has existed.
| theultdev wrote:
| Are those 35 counting the people who were asleep, trying
| to kill themselves, etc?
|
| Because if they are from the same news outlets as reports
| the other Tesla crashes, those are not always due to
| Tesla issues, and it always comes out they weren't
| because they have data on everything.
|
| And other cars catch on fire in crashes and people burn
| to death in ICE cars. Fires are not exclusive to EVs.
| Shrapnel airbags on the other hand...
|
| Plus I've seen at least 5+ videos where the safety
| features in a Tesla reacted faster than the driver and
| saved them, do we count that as a negative death?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| >Plus I've seen at least 5+ videos where the safety
| features in a Tesla reacted faster than the driver and
| saved them, do we count that as a negative death?
|
| Safety features that exist in other cars too? A base-
| model Corolla has pedestrian detection and collision
| avoidance in it as well.
|
| And plenty of other manufacturers have similar systems.
| theultdev wrote:
| I'm not talking about pedestrian detection, I'm talking
| about active avoidance of oncoming vehicles.
|
| But if the positives of any safety system don't count,
| then the negatives don't count against Tesla.
|
| Because all cars have safety systems that could kill or
| save you under that logic.
| tjoff wrote:
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle-safety/takata-recall-
| spotlight
|
| 2012-2016 Tesla Model S
| theultdev wrote:
| I stand corrected. Glad they stopped using them.
| freejazz wrote:
| Recalls are recalls because that's what the gov't is calling
| them, I do not understand this post at all.
| theultdev wrote:
| What's not to understand? Physical recall. Killer airbag.
| Turn it in.
|
| It simply means, your car will not roll this feature back
| itself because it's not a software recall. Go turn it in.
|
| Turns out it's confusing to overload the term "recall", and
| downright dangerous when it comes to overloading safety
| terms.
|
| We're always going on about how misleading AutoPilot is as a
| term to the hypothetically confused consumer. But overloading
| recall isn't confusing?
|
| I cannot help that the government for _some_ reason chose to
| overload this term.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Recall is what the government called the autopilot thing,
| right? It's a legal term.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes I'm pointing out the difference that their legal term
| overlooks because it's overloaded.
|
| Illegal alien is also a legal term that sometimes
| requires distinction.
| hot_gril wrote:
| You said anti-Tesla articles are conditioning people to
| think there were recalls. But there were in fact recalls,
| which Tesla responded to with OTA fixes.
| theultdev wrote:
| I'm simply saying don't expect this to be rolled back in
| software.
|
| It's a PHYSICAL recall. Normally the articles cover that
| important detail up, so all you see is recall.
| spookie wrote:
| It's a recall, just one that you don't need to go to a
| dealer for. I understand your point, but it is still a
| recall.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes, if you're used to "recalls" that happen
| automatically this is not one of those.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Is this a net-new airbag recall?
|
| I had to take my 2004 Matrix in a few years ago for an airbag
| recall identical to this. When I went the next day to pick the
| vehicle up, I was informed that the new airbag they had installed
| caused the airbag light to turn on(!) and thus were now waiting
| for another replacement airbag from Toyota and stuck me in a
| rental car for an extra day because of the unforeseen delay.
|
| Glad to know I was driving with an equally explosive shrapnel bag
| for a couple years after that until a low-speed collision that
| totaled it (and didn't deploy the airbags).
| beart wrote:
| I had a Matrix as well, wish I still owned it because it was a
| nifty little 5- speed.
|
| I remember bringing it in for airbag recalls at least twice in
| the years I owned it, and continued to receive recall notices
| for some time after selling it, which tells me there was at
| least one more recall for airbag issues.
| everyone wrote:
| Is there anywhere I can check my VIN for stuff like this? I have
| an Audi from around that era and am in Ireland. I have been
| looking around, but there doesnt seem to be one place for this,
| eg. one person linked a .au domain.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| 50 000 is not much. Toyota sells 10 million+ vehicles per year.
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