I was sitting in my parked car, turned the key, and my side airbags deployed. My car has never been in a previous accident, I bought it brand new and nothing has happened recently to make anyone think this had any reason to happen. I have had no luck with Toyota helping me with this issue. Has anyone heard of this happening before? Any tips or suggestions for helping me to make Toyota realize this is a major problem. if it happened to me it could happen to someone else.
You’re going to have to push harder with Toyota, but before you do that you need to read the owner’s manual and ALL warranty information that came with your RAV4. I know this will be time-consuming, boring, technical, and difficult, but if you want to prevail you’ll need to know what’s covered and what’s not.
Don’t take anyone’s word for what’s covered by a warranty. Read your warranties so you know for yourself. They will tell you anything. Don’t believe them. Read and learn.
There’s no way any airbags should deploy just because you turned the key. Something is (was) wrong. The local dealer is going to stonewall because they have no idea. Really, they have no clue. You have to go over their heads, all the way to the factory engineers in Japan, or wherever RAV4’s are engineered, if necessary.
You should also report this to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) in Washington. This is very important. The NHTSA keeps track of things like this, and if enough of them occur they may issue a recall for the vehicle involved. If you don’t report it, they won’t know it happened.