The 2002 Toyota Sequoia has 9 recalls, all centered on the same critical defect: the passenger-side front airbag inflator can rupture during deployment, sending metal fragments into the cabin and raising the risk of serious injury or death.
All nine recalls address variations of the same underlying problem with the passenger frontal airbag inflator. The inflator can build excessive internal pressure when triggered in a crash, causing it to burst rather than inflate the bag cleanly. When that happens, sharp metal fragments can fly toward the driver and front passenger. In some cases the ruptured inflator can also damage the airbag module itself, preventing the bag from deploying at all and leaving occupants without that protection in a crash. Several of these recalls specifically flag vehicles that spent time in high-humidity environments such as Florida, the Gulf Coast, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories, where long-term heat and moisture exposure accelerates the propellant degradation inside the inflator. Others apply more broadly regardless of where the vehicle was registered or driven. Prior repair attempts across earlier campaigns did not fully resolve the issue for all affected vehicles, which is why multiple rounds of recalls have been filed over the years covering overlapping populations of this model. The defect involves the Takata-manufactured inflator, and the core danger is the same across all filings: a device designed to protect occupants can instead become a source of high-speed metal projectiles at the moment it is needed most.
