VIDEO: Toyota grilled over possible truck recall coverup

VIDEO: Toyota grilled over possible truck recall coverup

Filed under: Trucks/Pickups, Government/Legal, Videos, Toyota

Levi Stewart lost his life after the steering relay rod on his 1991 Toyota pickup snapped, causing the truck to roll. Officials labeled the accident alcohol-related due to the fact the teenager had a blood-alcohol level of .03 (legal limit for adults in his state over the age of 21 is .08), but that was before anyone involved with the investigation knew of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recall. The relay rod, which connects the steering wheel to the front tires, had been under recall since 2005, but neither the truck owner or the previous owner had been notified of the defect.

Lawyers for the Stewart family are accusing Toyota of both delaying and improperly distributing the recall notice, which affected 1 million trucks and SUVs. The lawyers contend they have evidence that Toyota has known about the problem since as early as 1996, yet the recall didn't begin until 2005. Toyota actually started the recall in Japan a year earlier, and Toyota waited a full year before starting the recall action in the U.S. The reason Toyota has stated for the delay was that driving conditions were different in Japan, and that there were no incidents reported in the U.S. Japanese media told NBC that it knew of 80 incidents in Japan. Hit the jump to view NBC's investigational video. Hat tip to Michael

[Source: NBC Los Angeles]Continue reading VIDEO: Toyota grilled over possible truck recall coverup

VIDEO: Toyota grilled over possible truck recall coverup originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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yea thats b.s. Toyota notifies everyone about there recalls. the steering rod recall was one of the most popular ones. We did a ton of them all the time.

Drinking and driving = your an idiot.

companies don't always notify, so that is not exactly true. toyota is not a perfect company and it looks like this mistake caused a lost of life. .03 is hardly drinking.

If you lose steering, I don't see how you can make it roll anyways. There's not enough information about his speed and whether or not he was driving impaired.