Post-reveal thoughts

As for reverse clues, in addition to the rear camera, the shifter display on the spedo clearly shows the transmission in R. If you disable the reverse beep, the shifter display flashes the R to make sure you see it.

Another way to tell is to see which way the car moves as you ease off on the brake. Only a dumb a$$ driver will come off the brake and onto the gas without verifying direction, but I suppose there is no shortage of dumb a$$ drivers, otherwise we wouldn't need navigation and phone lockouts, speed limits, and traffic enforcement officers.

Tom

 

. . . or Driver's Ed. I remember one eventful day in Driver's Education when one of my good friends was in the driver's seat in the parking lot at our high school football field. She was seated next to the teacher and two of us were in the back seat. The instructor told her to back up and drive out of the parking lot. She dutifully put the car in gear, turned her head toward the rear, put her right arm up on the seat, and then clearly did not see the three of us all looking at each other and suppressing our smirks. Because of the recent, heavy snow, the car didn't move when she let up off the brake pedal. To get things moving, though, she gave it some gas. The quick movement forward scared her near to death. She had plenty of room to go, so the teacher let her learn the lesson without damage (to all except her pride!).

Ahh . . . the good ol' days!

 

That was a good lesson: no one hurt, nothing broken, point made.

In regard to driver's ed, I saw something funny one time when I had sailed up to Beaver Island.

Beaver Island is the most remote inhabited fresh water island in the world (much like one of those baseball stats: "...best left handed pinch hitter named Tiny against one armed right handed pitchers named Tim..."). Beaver Island is 13 miles long, has about 90 miles of roads, only 9 miles of which are paved. The population is about 250. There is one town, the village of St. James. There is a K-12 school with 78 students.

We were in St. James, crossing the main street to get coffee and breakfast, when along comes the driver's ed car. It hadn't occurred to me that they would have driver's ed on Beaver Island, so I was mildly surprised. It was the normal car full of kids with the instructor in the right seat. The student driver was a young woman. Her eyes were filled with concentration and mild terror as she passed us on the empty street, doing maybe 15 mph. I guess driver's ed is scary no matter where you do it.

Beaver Island has no traffic lights, no freeway, and only one stretch of straight road where you might be able to go 55 for a few seconds. I suspect the driver's ed class makes a field trip to the mainland to experience the more exotic aspects of driving.

In a related story, back when our DNR still had money, Beaver Island had a resident DNR ranger. When the national speed limit dropped to 55 mph, the state DNR office sent a memo to all field agents, saying in no uncertain words "YOU WILL DRIVE 55!" He wrote back to them and said "I will try, but I don't know if I can go that fast." You gotta love it.

Tom

 

It isn't that weird a question. One can more easily make an argument for the 'up for Reverse, down for Drive" on the 2004-2009 than "forward for Reverse, backward for Drive" on the 2010.

While some manual transmission cars have Reverse "left and up", they also have various number of forward gears selected by movement of the shifter both forward and backward so moving the shifter backwards wasn't necessarily requesting Reverse. The only manuals *I* have driven had Reverse "right and back" or the odd "push down vertically and rotate clockwise" VWs. So "left and forward" was not at all intuitive to me.

And you are right, I push my boat throttle forward to go forward and backward to go backward. Pretty logical.

I wonder if 'new to Prius' people will be even more confused by this in the 2010 than those who were new in 2004-2009. Other than screwing up 2004-2009 owners, they should have flipped the shifter. Obviously the only solution is to put it back on the dash where it belongs.

 

Why put the noise outside? the driver is the one who needs reminding it is his/her responsibility to reverse safely. It isn't a truck but a car with a back window and 3 great mirrors.

 

Oh I like the telescoping and adjusting, but the appearance is like something from a bad sci-fi movie. I think the design is trying too hard to be futuristic or something.

 

I have no problem with the functional aspects. i have a problem with the weird silver "blades". I somehow doubt that many other car makers are going to copy this look. It's cheezy.

It's blue and plasticky looking and the dished ball and socket base looks like a 1980's arcade game stick. They could have done better.

In the photos I have seen the display appears to not be directly inline with the steering wheel. It appears to be to the right of the center line of the wheel. The entire instrument display is in the center of the dash same as the 2009. Are you saying it isn't?

 

Here is another picture of the dash : Which clearly shows the display is centered on the car, as opposed to centered over the steering center line.

 

Just as before. It feels exactly the same to me, only with more information to the right.

Tom