The thing that I don't get is that this guy did not even try to put it in neutral. He said he was not familiar with this type of transmission and he didn't want to try and figure it out while the car was speeding. Also, I beleive on our Insights, that the steering wheel does not lock until the key is removed. Not sure if that is the case on the Prius.
You can cut the power on the 2010 Insight while in D. I did a test tonight while going about 35 MPH. I just moved the key to ACC2 and the car shut off. Steering and brakes still available and I coasted to a stop while going around a corner. Put it in park and restarted. The car really glides nice and now I feel I have finally "hypermiled" with the Insight.
The prius is a little different. The "key" just has to be on the person I believe and you press a start button, but you still should be able to shut it down. Maybe hold the button longer or something?
Anyway, this was on the national news so Toyota cannot be happy. At this point someone could stick thier foot on the accelerator and another foot on the brake and "claim" the car was moving on its own. It wouldn't be ethical but how can you tell for certain whether it is the car's fault or the driver?
I hated to be negative about the whole thing. There are enough publicity on the brake issue that someone may simply take the opportunity (fake the incident) to sue Toyota and chances are you will win the case. Any experienced drive would know how to shift into neutral or engage the hand brake. You should have plenty of time to react on a highway. If it happens within the city with a lot of traffic then you may ideal not have sufficient time to react.
My 09 scion xb I know you cant down shift it unless you were in the rpm range, it just beeped when in the manual mode. I never tried shifting to nutral while it was floored.
Strange why all these stories are popping up, unless its an inside job from one of the manfacturing plants or customers trying to rake it in or get back at Toyota.
My local news is normally full of stories where someone drive through a store or backs into their own garage. Its a range of vehicles and usually a senior behind the wheel.
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My sister-in-law has a Toyota Corolla. Several years ago, while driving other family members home from LAX airport, she had an "unintended acceleration" issue and nearly lost control of her car. She described the incident as horrific, and all of the passengers talked for days about her futile attempts to stop the car while swerving through LA traffic. The car was out of warranty, and she never reported the incident to Toyota. The problem never happened again – and she still owns the same car. I expect that many such prior unintended acceleration incidents have gone unreported... OR, even if reported, they may have been 'squashed' by Toyota before coming to the public's attention. Generally, these sorts of issues had been attributed to driver error.
Besides the obvious issues of putting the car in neutral, turning it off, etc. The one thing that still stuck in my mind is this: Is the Prius' engine really powerful enough to overpower the brakes? Lets think about it, brakes on most any car are powerful enough to lock the tires up (assuming you don't have anti-lock brakes kicking in) no matter how fast the car is driving. But, how many cars have the engine power to cause all 4 tires to burn rubber? And at what speeds? Do you think the Prius could burn rubber if you floored it at 20 mph? No way, never happen. But the brakes are certainly capable of doing the opposite. So even if this guy was legitimately trying to stop the car with the brakes, why wouldn't the brakes be sufficient? Well, the video above certainly proves my point. The guy is full of it.
The Braking system is the most powerful part of the Car, it wins against the engine, The Police employs Stingers to puncture tyres in pursuits, once "stung" the vehicle cannot proceed for much distance due the rolling resistance of deflated tyres.
The design specification of Porsche is Braking time is half of acceleration, ie 0 to 60 = 5 seconds, then 60 to zero must be 2.5 seconds or less.
Yeah at this point, how do you know what's operator error? Here's a local one that has been all over the news. I could be wrong, but this one definitely sounds like it's operator error. Just because it's a Rav4 it's big news. I've mistakenly put a car into drive instead of reverse, and have hit the gas instead of the brakes (This one while my dad was teaching me to drive. I almost plowed his Civic into a cement wall.). Sh*t happens. (Though I caught myself in both cases before causing any damage.)
Someone hit my mom's parked Toyota the other day and didn't leave a note. I told her she should report it to the news and they'd be all over it Maybe a runaway Toyota was drawn in by the parked Toyota's electronics! Or maybe there's a serial Toyota basher out there taking their anger out on parked Toyotas!
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I think a lot of this stuff is politically motivated against Toyota. There seems to be a movement in the media against hybrids. There is also a desire to jump start the American car industry--which is in dire straits.
Why all these problems after years and years of Toyota reliability? Very suspicious. And why just in the U.S.? Consumer Reports has reliability reports from thousands of Toyota and Prius drivers for many years. Never hint of these problems.
If the media wanted to report every unexplained car problem for every model every day, there wouldn't be enough time or space to report them. It seems that somebody has decided to target Toyota. Honda may be next.
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Maybe a runaway Toyota was drawn in by the parked Toyota's electronics! Or maybe there's a serial Toyota basher out there taking their anger out on parked Toyotas!
