2021 Toyota Venza Air Bags & Restraints Problems

I was involved in a no fault accident when an SUV slammed into the back of my Toyota Venza at full speed and pushed me into the left guardrail of the bridge we were driving on. Neither the front airbags or the driver (left) side airbags deployed.

On 17th June 2023, while returning home on the WA-9/SR-9 NB, I stopped at the red light where WA-2 was crossing. My wife was sitting with me in the car. One Subaru rammed me from behind. This road has a speed limit of 55 Miles per hour and is a single-lane state highway. The rear was damaged heavily. I lost control of the vehicle, went into the SB lane, and saw a car approaching me from the opposite direction. I looked right and saw a little space between the car ahead of me and the vehicle ahead of it. I turned right without hitting those two cars and entered the roadside ditch damaging the front. In both cases, the airbag was not deployed, first the ramming from behind and then going into the ditch. Is this normal? Later my insurance declared my car as the "Total Loss."

Extremely loud seatbelt warning chimes created a hazardous situation by causing a severe distraction, preventing ability to hear traffic, and having no way to correct the situation. I had a near miss accident while trying to figure out what was wrong, and was forced to make a very dangerous stop on the side of a highway to correct the problem. The seatbelt warning chime was improperly triggered by a fault in Toyotas programming. A child briefly plugged their seatbelt into the 'wrong' receptacle in the rear seat. They quickly realized it was the wrong one and plugged it into the correct receptacle. After visually and verbally checking with my child that they were properly restrained, we left a parking spot at a shopping center and got almost immediately onto a highway. The car improperly deduced there was a child in the middle seat because of the brief failed attempt of buckling into the wrong buckle. And since the buckle was not buckled, it assumed there was an unbuckled child now in the middle rear seat. After some testing, it seems the only way to clear this alarm is to fully stop the vehicle and open one of the rear doors. This is how Toyota decided to 'clear' the status of someone leaving the car. The seatbelt warning system does not begin it's chimes until the vehicle has reached a certain speed, which did not occur until I was on the highway. The extremely loud chime with no obvious reason created a panic situation. The child was unable to help in the rear because they did not understand, and would not have been able to safely reach over and buckle the unoccupied seat anyway. While focused on resolving the intrusive noise, we had a near miss situation. I was unable to hear any of the safety system warnings over the chimes. Ultimately I had to perform a dangerous stop on a 65mph highway to get out, and figure out why the car thought there was someone in the rear seat that wasn't there.

As I was pulling in slowly (going about 2 miles or less) to a perpendicular parking spot at my apartment complex, I took my foot off the accelerator to brake. And all the sudden my car lunged forward and rapidly accelerated forward on its own. It was completely terrifying to have the car take over. The car jumped the curb and went over a hill. I couldn't stop the car and I crashed head on into a two story garage. I saw a "MALFUNCTION" on the dashboard and the air bags did not deploy. I injured my back, neck and right arm. My new car that only has 9K miles on it was completely totaled. Vehicle is scheduled to be inspected by Toyota's Product Liability Department - 3rd Party Engineer. The only other time I was concerned about the vehicle was about 5 months ago, I was at a stop sign and when I pushed on the gas, the car felt like it lost acceleration power, but then it was fine after that so I didn't think anything of it. Vehicle is available for inspection for a very limited time (probably within 1-2 weeks of this post), after Toyota inspects it, it will be going to the salvage yard. If you want to inspect it, please contact me ASAP.

My wife was in involved in a crash where a person ran a red light and she broadsided a truck which flipped over. The front end of our 2021 Toyota Venza was destroyed see photo which I uploaded. The airbags in our car did not deploy at all.

Involved in an one-car automobile accident (attempted to avoid hitting deer and hit a cement barrier). Vehicle was subsequently classified as totaled. AIR BAGS never deployed.