Toyota Motor Corporation will voluntarily begin recalling almost 160,000 of its full size Tundra pickup trucks that were built between 2002-2005. Just this week the NHTSA rejected a petition from Toyota officials to waive a federal safety regulation that will cause the recall. The requirement in question states: vehicles built after September 2002 which are equipped with a cut-off switch for the front seat air bag must also have a child seat anchor system, known as LATCH, installed. The Tundra, which competes against the Ford F150 and Chevrolet Silverado, did not come with the LATCH feature in the front passenger seat. So with the rejection of the petition it will be less costly for Toyota dealerships to disable the passenger air bag switch than it will be to install the LATCH system on all of the effected vehicles.

The recall is slated to begin in mid-September of this year. Toyota has until that time to engineer a permanent solution to deactivate the PAB switch which will force parents to use the back seats when carrying children around in their pickup trucks. The spokesman for Toyota said that each repair will take an estimated 2 hours per vehicle. With labor rates in the dealerships running at or near $100.00 an hour, expect this recall to cost Toyota $160,000,000 dollars.