2020 TOYOTA TACOMA — Complaint #1783579
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SEAT BELTS:REAR/OTHER:RETRACTOR filed December 16, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1783579 (ODI reference 11444037) concerns a 2020 TOYOTA TACOMA and was filed on December 16, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 8, 2021. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as seat belts:rear/other:retractor, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same TOYOTA TACOMA cohort independently describe similar seat belts:rear/other:retractor failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2020 TOYOTA TACOMA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
A child infant passenger car seat was placed in the rear passenger center seat position. The the shoulder/lap-belt was used to install the car seat rear-facing. Once the install was complete. The shoulder belt was slowly pulled and extended all the way out. The purpose was to have the shoulder belt reach its maxed length. This would position the belt to be placed into retracting mode only. This would prevent the child or an infant to possibly extend the belt once its been retracted. This would minimize the free play with the belt such as being tangled with child's arm, head, body parts, and potentially becoming a choking hazard. The issue now, is the shoulder/lap-belt retracting mechanism is malfunctioning. The shoulder/lap belt is not retracting. Rather it is stuck and now the entire shoulder/lap belt is extended all the way out. There is no resistance in the seat-belt and cannot will not secure a rear passenger in the center seat position. The rear center seat does not ha
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1783579 |
| ODI Number | 11444037 |
| Date Filed | December 16, 2021 |
| Failure Date | December 8, 2021 |
| VIN | 3TMDZ5BN4LM |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.