Owners/service Manual problems of the 2007 Toyota RAV4

The driver side visor has begun to droop when placed in the up (touching the roof) position or in the down (blocking the sun). I noticed this in June 2015 and has significantly gotten worse. There was no one incident that caused the visor to fall and this seems to be more than just a normal wear and tear issue. There is no way to manually tighten the visor and it now falls down whenever I brake, turn or stop the vehicle. I have been hit in the head when leaning forward to look in my blind spot when merging and high speeds and the visor falling scared me. Toyota knows that this is an design flaw with 2006-12 Rav4s, as per the dealerships I spoke with and with customer care. Because the vehicle is out of warranty, they will not replace the part. I have contacted Toyota and they stated the only way they will do a recall is if enough customers complain to nhsta about the problem. This is a safety issue and defective visors should be replaced by Toyota.

Driver's side sun visor failure to work properly causing a safety issue and possible bodily injury or death. The sun visor is not staying in the stowed position which is flat against the interior roof of the car due to a known failed mechanism within the sun visor such as the spring loaded mechanism which is failing. Instead, the sun visor is dropping down at a 45 degree angle. This has caused my head to hit it several times while entering the vehicle. And, if involved in a head on collision, this could cause the sun visor to slice through my neck because it is at a 45 degree angle going across my neck since it will not stay up due to the failed spring mechanism within the sun visor. After research of my own, I have found and been told by reliable sources in the Toyota industry that this is a known problem and that I am not the only one having this problem with the failure of the driver's side sun visor and possibly the passenger side as well over time. I have been told by a Toyota representative at Toyota headquarters that this part is only covered by a 3 1/2 year warranty instead of the same warranty as the car. This tells me that Toyota may know that this part will fail over time. All other vehicles I have owned with manual sun visors have never failed for the life of the car since they do not have internal parts like the Toyota model has. I have been told by my local Toyota dealership that I have to pay about $85 to have it replaced when this is a safety issue and it should not fail. It's not a moving part within the engine.

My 8 month old baby was auto- locked in the car on an 80 degree sunny day! I double clicked the unlock button on my car's key fob on approach, opened the rear passenger side door and put my child in the car seat and put my purse (keys on top) in the floor with the diaper bag. Entire car still unlocked, I closed the rear passenger door and walked around to the driver's side to get in. The car beeped aloud before I could grab the door handle to get in, locking all doors of the vehicle. Luckily there was a mechanic on the same street I was on, but it still took 15 minutes start to finish to finally get my child out. Upon reading the owner's manual, it stated that there is a 30 second timer for the autolock feature that automatically locks the entire vehicle if a door is not opened in that time after being unlocked. I had, however, opened the rear door to place the child in his seat. There is no way this could have been an error on my part as I was not only outside the vehicle when it locked itself, but there are no lock/unlock buttons in the car except on the driver's side which I had yet to enter. So I could not have even hit one by accident.