2021 Toyota Venza Hybrid

The crash occurred at 2:50 PM on January 10, 2024 while pulling our 2021 Toyota Venza into a diagonal parking space on a slight upgrade. The vehicle surged over the curb, across the sidewalk and into a brick wall with gas pipelines attached to it. As this was happening, the driver yelled, “I don’t know what’s happening.” The car then rebounded onto the sidewalk and was turned off quickly because of a gas smell. We exited the vehicle and tried to keep people away from the scene because of the smell. The passenger had great difficulty getting out of the car because the passenger side door was blocked by a tree in the median. The Fire Department cleared the area, the police interviewed both the driver and the passenger and the gas company arrived to repair the meters and pipes. No citation was issued. During a call on January 12, 2024 to cancel a pre-paid service agreement, we were referred to the Toyota Brand Engagement Center who interviewed us before forwarding information on to the Toyota Liability Team. Toyota sent a contractual employee to download the information from the vehicle’s computer modules for further analysis by Toyota. On February 20, 2024, Toyota issued a report that stated the vehicle had no defects related to the accident and that the accelerator pedal had been fully depressed prior to impact. The report did not address other information that was provided to individuals investigating the incident, including information about the incident itself, information about a delayed acceleration event several days prior to the incident and notification from the local Toyota dealer the next day that a check engine light had come on around 2:50 the day of the incident followed a minute later by alarms indicating “airbag failure to deploy” and “hybrid system failure.” The report also did not address the possibility of a problem with the throttle system, specifically the accelerator sensor.

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.

OUR CAR IMPACTED WITH ANOTHER AS WE TRIED TO ENTER THE HIGHWAY FROM A SHORT MERGE LANE. THE OTHER CAR ENTERED IN FRONT OF US FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AFTER WE PASSED A STOP SIGN IN THE MERGE LANE; THE OTHER CAR THEN STOPPED SHORT BEFORE ENTERING THE HIGHWAY, JUST AS WE WERE SPEEDING UP THE ENTER THE HIGHWAY. A SENSOR SOUNDED IN OUR CAR, WE SLAMMED ON THE BRAKES, AND THE TWO CARES COLLIDED. THE PASSENGER SIDE FRONT OF OUR VEHICLE WAS DAMAGED; THE REAR DRIVE SIDE OF THE OTHER CAR WAS DAMAGED. DRIVER SIDE SEATBELT IN OUR CAR OPERATED NORMALLY. PASSENGER SIDE SEATBELT IN OUR CAR LOOSENED INSTEAD OF TIGHTENED; PASSENGER HIT HEAD ON DASHBOARD AS BRAKES WERE HIT OR IMPACT HAPPENED (WE WERE GOING APPROX. 15 MPH. UPON IMPACT). SAID PASSENGER OBSERVED UPON IMPACT OF HEAD ON DASH THAT HER SEAT BELT WAS HANGING SLACK AWAY FROM HER CHEST BY APPROX. SIX TO EIGHT INCHES. TOYOTA PRODUCT LIABILITY DEPT. WAS INFORMED (CASE NUMBER 210409002008) BETWEEN 6:15 AND 7:30 PM ON FRIDAY, APRIL 9TH, 2021. THEY SAY THEY WILL DOWNLOAD THE "BLACK BOX" INFORMATION, BUT THEY HAVEN'T COMMITTED TO A PHYSICAL INSPECTION OF THE SEATBELT, WHICH SEEMS CRITICAL (I.E., THAT A SEATBELT ENGINEER PHYSICALLY INVESTIGATE).*DT