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1999 TOYOTA SIENNA — Complaint #240018

Open-data reference.

NHTSA Complaint about CHILD SEAT:HARNESS RETAINER/CHEST CLIP filed September 18, 2000

NHTSA complaint #240018 (ODI reference 731218) concerns a 1999 TOYOTA SIENNA and was filed on September 18, 2000. The owner reports the failure occurred on June 24, 2000. The report was geocoded to Oregon based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as child seat:harness retainer/chest clip, 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: 1, 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 SIENNA cohort independently describe similar child seat:harness retainer/chest clip 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 1999 TOYOTA SIENNA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
1999 TOYOTA SIENNA
Component
CHILD SEAT:HARNESS RETAINER/CHEST CLIP
Injuries
1
State
Oregon

Complaint Description

THE MECHANISM THAT RETRACTS SEAT BELT, HAS A RATCHET OPTION FOR CAR SEAT USAGE. DURING NORMAL DRIVING, THE MECHANISM TURNS INTO RATCHET MODE, TIGHTENING AND TRAPPING CHILD IN BELT. IT LEFT RED BURN ON CHILDS STOMACH. SOFFOCATION COULD HAVE RESULTED IN DEATH HAD THE CHILD BEEN SLEEPING DURING THIS TRIP. TOYOTA CHECKED OUT SEAT BELT LATCH ( NOT MECHANISM ) AND STATED NO LATCH DEFECT. THEY IGNORED THE MULTIPLE COMPLAINTS THAT THE MECHANISM IS DEFECTIVE. *AK

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 240018
ODI Number 731218
Date Filed September 18, 2000
Failure Date June 24, 2000
VIN 4T3ZF13C2XU

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.