2001 HYUNDAI SONATA — Complaint #742789
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about CHILD SEAT:LATCH STRAP filed November 5, 2009
NHTSA complaint #742789 (ODI reference 10291152) concerns a 2001 HYUNDAI SONATA and was filed on November 5, 2009. The owner reports the failure occurred on November 4, 2009. The vehicle had 201,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to West Virginia based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as child seat:latch strap, 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 HYUNDAI SONATA cohort independently describe similar child seat:latch strap 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 2001 HYUNDAI SONATA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
TL* THE CONTACT OWNS A 2001 HYUNDAI SONATA. THE VEHICLE DOES NOT HAVE THE LATCH SYSTEM AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEAT TO ATTACH THE CHILD SEAT. THE SEAT BELT DOES NOT RETRACT ENOUGH TO TIGHTLY SECURE THE SEAT IN THE VEHICLE. THE VEHICLE WAS TAKEN TO A CHILD SEAT TECHNICIAN, WHOM CONCLUDED THAT THE VEHICLE WAS NOT DESIGNED TO PROPERLY SECURE AN INFANT CHILD SEAT. THE MANUFACTURER WAS NOTIFIED, AND HE WAS ADVISED THAT NONE OF THE VEHICLES FROM 2001-2009 HAVE THE LATCH SYSTEM IN THE BACK SEAT TO ACCOMMODATE AN INFANT CHILD SEAT. THE FAILURE MILEAGE WAS 201,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 742789 |
| ODI Number | 10291152 |
| Date Filed | November 5, 2009 |
| Failure Date | November 4, 2009 |
| VIN | KMHWF35V01A |
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.