Yes, especially true with newer cars having lots of gadgets and gizmos. Not much you can do about that besides selecting a vehicle with a minimum number of gadgets and gizmos, which in many cases isn’t possible. Beyond that, no test drive is going to find all the potential problems, so you have to just do the best you can. Review the Consumer Reports reviews and other sources you trust; ask online (here for example); and use car-repair-forum search features to see what other’s have posted about the candidate. A lot of problems you find later will have work-a-rounds, so finding a car you like is not an impossible chore.
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@grunes_183031 just quit while you’re ahead. You can’t blame any of this on sensors, or design. Your just an idiot.
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Why is he an “idiot”, just because a strap from his bag got shut in the rear hatch, and now the hatch won’t open?
People close the doors and hatches of their vehicles on items of clothing, seatbelts, etc. every day.
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For blaming it on the design of the car
Well, something cause the aft hatch to not be able to be opened after it was closed onto the strap.
And your point is?
My point is that, whether it’s the vehicle design or not, something caused the hatch to not open when something was closed in it.
The back door release switch you normally use to open the liftgate. Pressing the button releases the latch and engages the open/close actuator motor. The motor won’t have the strength to open the door when jammed, you need to assist opening while pressing the button.
There are two methods of protection, one is a “pinch sensor” in the door opening, that was not a factor.
The open/close motor can detect resistance while in motion and reverse direction if there is an obstruction. If your mechanic disconnects the motor, you will need to open the door manually just as you would when a strap jams the door.
If your radio has a security lock, why don’t you have the code? I haven’t seen a Toyota radio with a security lock in years.
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You’re funny, and in the same group as the OP.
Nevada_545 said
I bought the car used from a dealer who wasn’t a Toyota branded dealer, and was therefore unable to get the code.
But maybe you are right and Toyota stopped having radio codes by the time mine was made.
When you buy a used car, very often, the little card with the security code for the radio will be missing. Or, in some cases, the security code might be user set. Also, it is possible for someone to replace a factory stereo from a junkyard, in which case the default security code won’t be known.
Some factory stereos, such as the GM TheftLock series do not enable the anti-theft mode by default, and it must be enabled by pressing a sequence of buttons. Some, such as the Daewoo factory stereos used in Daewoo and Suzuki vehicles will enable the anti-theft mode any time power is interrupted. Fortunately, the Daewoo stereos do not lock out after incorrect guesses, but most brands do.
I have no idea when Toyota stereos stopped including anti-theft codes, but you are correct that even as long ago as the late 1990s, their factory stereos did not have this feature.
I don’t need to be defended just because someone calls me an idiot. Everyone who asks questions in volunteer Internet forums should develop a tough skin. Plus, this forum is frequented by mechanics and otherwise people very knowledgeable about mechanical systems. Which I’m not. In that context, I am an idiot.
I think the best designed consumer market products are idiot proofed. But that has limits.
It is also possible that the engineers who designed the vehicle never considered the possibility that the mechanism could be jammed in this way, and that placing a mechanical handle or release where it is easily and obviously accessible by the user might be a good idea. Some ignorant consumers might consider those engineers idiots. Unless the engineers’ goal was to force consumers to seek dealer service more often.
In all fairness, it has needed no major mechanical work. For a 2013 sort-of-SUV that I bought in 2018, that could have been worse.
I beg to differ.
Just because my wife, for instance, doesn’t understand tire pressures the way I do, or isn’t an expert on automotive repair, does not automatically render her an “idiot”.
She knows way more than I do about operating a sewing machine. I know only how to plug it in, and change the work light on it if the bulb goes. That does not make me an “idiot”.
On the other hand listenjng to someone tell you to walk somewhere, hanging on their every word and causing damage to public property, in my estimation makes one an idiot beyond compare!
With that squared away, how was the strap in the Venza rear hatch issue resolved?
Idiot is not the correct word, ignorant by definition is a more accurate word…
Ignorant: lacking knowledge or awareness in general…
Idiot: a foolish or stupid person…
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I pushed and pulled on the door. I’m not sure how much that helped, but maybe it put in a position where the door was not as badly stuck as before.
And after that, instead of using the pinch sensor to open the door, or the button on the key fob, which didn’t work, I held down the button on the dash for several seconds. Eventually it worked. I hypothesize, perhaps incorrectly, that doing so overrides the door-closing motor.
Perhaps it might have worked more easily if I had a second person help me. I.E., if one person was holding down that button while the other person was inside the car, pushing the door open, and/or pushing it closed from the outside, it might have made things easier to get unstuck. But that is purely hypothetical.
Once the door opened, I moved the strap, so it wouldn’t catch again.
The door-open light stayed on the dash, the first and second time I cycled it open and closed again, but after the 3rd or 4th time, it finally went out.
In short messing around with it, taking into account what people here suggested, eventually worked.
It just occurred to me that I could have used a very long stick or equivalent to push the door open from the inside while I pushed the dash button down. Or perhaps vice versa, though a straight stick couldn’t reach around the seat. I didn’t think of those things because I am an idiot. 
It would made me feel more like an idiot to have a mechanic fix it like that in a few seconds, and charge me normal minimum shop rates - or more.
Apparently, I am an idiot to assume that just because I had to waste a lot of money on my last vehicle to get the radio code after the battery died, I might have to again on this vehicle.
One can be an idiot in selective fields, if you lack knowledge or experience in those fields.
Now - since you are TheTireWhisperer:
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I am using Michelin Defender LTX M/S tires rated at 42 psi. But my vehicle says to use 32 PSI. I am worried that the vehicle will handle unsafely if I use just 32 PSI. Besides, the vehicle doesn’t get very good MPG. So I use 42 PSI. But I’ve been warned by a fairly well respected tire place that that could damage the suspension. Am I likely doing significant harm by using 42 PSI?
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Toyota recommends that tires be rotated front to back and back to front, in pairs, with no side-to-side rotation:
I used bidirectional tires, so I could put the same-type spare tire into the rotation pattern, to equalize tread on the spare. The same fairly expert tire place told me that was not what Toyota recommends, but did the 5 tire rotation I asked for. Is that a mistake? Why does Toyota recommend rotating front to back in pairs.
- To fit the full size spare wheel and tire in the wheel well intended for compact spares, I have to deflate the tire. The cargo area rests on top of the tire. Does this do significant damage to the tire? I usually don’t have much weight in the cargo, but I might have 100 or 200 pounds on it on long trips. Also, should I periodically flip that tire & wheel upside down to equalize things? I prefer to keep the side up that leaves me the most room for a few pounds of tools and air pump on the center of the wheel.
fyi, if interested, I use those same tires in my 50 year old Ford truck, all on 15 inch rims. Tough beasties. I get the best ride at 32 psi. 35+ is too jolting. Less than 30 feels a little squirmy. 42 might be ok w/a more modern suspension system.
It sounds to me like you are just using common sense. I expect most car owners first consider what their prior repair invoice was, before deciding whether to go again or not.
If you are using the specified size and load rating tire, you do not need to worry about the handling using the recommended pressure. A couple of psi extra is what I do, but NOT 10 psi over.
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Why are questioning the people who built the vehicle and the tire shop ? Go by the plaque on the drivers door frame for crying out loud . Put the temporary spare back in so you don’t have to air that one that does not fit in case of a flat. I won’t call you an Idiot but you sure do make thing difficult.
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Study this table I created. It is specific to my 2010 Honda, but it is the principle of built-in safety margin I am trying to drive home:
90 percent of the modern automotive world rotates tires front to rear, same side of vehicle. Why buck the trend?
Get the OEM donut spare. Problem solved. No “squashing” full sized tires into a space not intended for one.
Oops. I misremembered. The tires are rated at 44 psi, not 42 psi, and if the Internet is right the vehicle plaque says 35 PSI, though that definitely isn’t what I remember.
The car drives very smoothly at 42 PSI on these tires. (Oddly, it didn’t drive smoothly at any reasonable pressure on the Achilles Desert Hawk AT (?) tires the used car came with, though the dealer had just put them on. But a couple tire places told me Desert Hawk tires were complete junk. Plus they weren’t locally available, so when one went flat shortly after purchase, I had to buy 4 new tires. Which I wouldn’t have had to do if I had a same type spare wheel and tire.)
I went up a bit from the vehicle rated pressure because I remembered from back when Ford trucks equipped with Firestone Wilderness AT tires (which I had, on a Ford Ranger) flipped, killing and injuring many people. Firestone claimed it was because Ford specified too low a tire pressure for those tires. Ford disagreed. The problems were said to mostly occur on Explorers, not Rangers. Nonetheless. I responded by upping the pressure a bit, and have continued to do so, and I always drove the Ranger slowly around sharp turns, and have never done serious off-road, or driven on highly side-tilted roads.
As to why I am using a full size same type spare wheel and tire, that is for what I believe to be good reasons. I fairly often drive on weekends hundreds of miles away from the nearest open tire store that might carry these tires - even though they are very common tires, which was a deliberate decision after the Desert Hawk fiasco.
I think I burned out limited slip differentials on that 4WD Ford Range on two different occasions, because I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to drive more than about 20 or 30 miles on compact spares - and I was indeed 500-700 miles away from any shop I knew of that would carry it. (This was back in the 90’s - I did not have a GPS or SmartPhone, and they were weekends.)
A lot of people in the outdoor sports community, who drive far from major cities, feel very strongly that we need same type spare wheels and tires, because we have had similar bad experiences. Unfortunately, full size spares are now almost unheard of in new cars and light trucks - even in SUVs, which one could argue “should” be designed for exactly that type of purpose, though “SUV” doesn’t always mean now what it used to. (And the Venza is only sort of an SUV.) The conclusion is one definitely needs a same type spare wheel and tire, if you drive far out of town. Some vehicles let you mount a spare tire carrier on the back - but a body shop told me the Venza door didn’t look strong enough. Another negative of the Venza.