Roof rack detachment on highway: We have the Toyota Sienna oem roof rack cross bars installed when we purchased the vehicle, but never had actually attached anything to the cross bars. While driving down the highway, we heard a bang, looked in the mirror and saw my cross bar in the road. Immediately, pulled over and confirmed that the cross bar had in fact detached from our car and fell in the road behind us. The remaining cross bar was still on, but was cocked and the tightening mechanism was loose. Our concern: The special installation practice has been explained to me by the parts manager. Apparently, this new clamp design requires the user assure perpendicular alignment of the lower clamp plate to the roof rack, otherwise when you tighten the screw you can get a false tight sense, when the plate is cocked and not true. So, I see many things wrong with this design: (1) too much reliance on following proper installation to assure product is safely secured. (2) how tight is tight on the screw" no instructions provided" (3) excessive reliance on the owner to check this part for the life of the car - service manager says this must be intermittently tightened by the owner" where is this in the service manual" (4) it also appears that Toyota may have introduced this "easy to remove" design to appeal to those customers which complained on how long it takes to remove the earlier model roof racks (<2011), but in turn have compromised on quality and more importantly safety. (5) not only is this a unique design for the Toyota lineup of cars, it is also a unique in the industry design, which has for many years now established a history of having positive locking and redundant installations for roof rack cross bars. I wrote letter, and Toyota said our insurance covers such things, and for us to work with our dealer, rather than main company. Updated IVOQ 03/20/12

- Columbus, IN, USA