The deluded statements about Prius brakes NOT being a safety issue

Because 50+ posts on the subject is ridiculous. Is it that hard to figure out or are the ones doing the complaining so hard up for attention and butt-hurt that their car has a problem that they just NEED to post so many times? This thread is a prime example of the stupidity that has infected PC in the last week. :cheer2:

 

Here here! Let's go back to discussing tuning lifted deisel trucks and AGW!!!

 

I have to agree it is more fun than this BS. lol

 

:thumb:
bulls eye!

 

Uh? What was the target?

 

Since you don't own one, don't drive one, know nothing about the vehicle your posts are less than worthless. You can be tolerated as long as you remain under the bridge.

 

The difference in this discussion is that we have hundreds of thousands of miles of experience under our seats in actually driving these vehicles. So the answer is not that we are assuming anything....we know we've been through these experiences and put them behind us. There are no assumptions here, we are in fact the experts that none of the pundits are.

There is more expertise in these threads, on these boards, than anywhere outside of Toyota and Ford. That's the reality.

 

Yes this would be a great video for Consumer Reports just like they did with the 'braking / shifting to Neutral'.

However one of the posters herein, Blind Guy, gave me an idea that I actually tried last week with a coworker's 2010 Prius.

She got hers in July. Soon thereafter she reported that she had this wierd experience turning into our driveway at work. She was slowing from 20 mph and as she turned she hit a difference in roadway over a small drainage channel and suddenly she 'felt' as if someone behind her had bumped her. She was so surprised that she looked in the mirror but no one was there. Ghosts .

It happened once or twice again. I said that somewhere in the dim past I sort of remembered something feeling like that on my 2005.

When this issue first broke Blind Guy mentioned that he was riding as a passenger in the Prius when the driver noted the same weird feeling. He as the passenger felt nothing; no surge, no bump, no veering, nothing.

So last week when this all broke I asked my coworker to 'show me what it feels like'. She gave me her 2010 and told me how to make it happen and exactly where. I tried it. I couldn't make it go 'bump'. So she drove it the way she does and I rode as the passenger....with my eyes closed like Blind Guy...to see what I'd 'feel'. She did her turn and said 'THERE, feel it?'

No. I felt nothing. What I did feel was something like the car rolling off a slab of uneven pavement, something in the range of 4-6 inches. But she felt the controls of the vehicle transition noticably. Not a lot just noticable.

Since those first surprises she hasn't felt them ever again. Either she understands now how to avoid the situations or she understands how to 'brake though them' or she simply understands that it's part of the feel of the Prius and that there is no actual loss of control so she ignores it.

We should have videos and observers inside and outside of some neutral testing sites to take actual and accurate measurments. At these very low speeds I'm guessing that we're discussing inches rather than feet...if there's any loss at all.

 

The main complaint that I have is that your post doesn't begin with the phrase...

"I don't know anything about this subject because I just began driving a Prius but nevertheless I'd like to voice an unqualified opinion...."

After that everything is clear.

 

With all due respect, DeadPhish, the safety agencies and Toyota have said that this issue and reports are with the 2010 Priuses. If you have information that they are lying to us or misinformed, please share it with us and them. If you have experienced similar unsafe behavior in your generation II please file them with the appropriate safety agency. I would be interested in seeing the report.

Sometimes it takes new eyes to see a problem. There are some people that when GM pisses on their backs they believe its rain. I'm hearing some of these same attitudes on this list.

I have no problem with those that don't agree with me that it is a safety issue, but acknowledge that this is not how the brakes should work. You will note that newby drivers like me first commented that it likely could be fixed in software. Rachel steven's well described the problem so that I was more confident that is was a reduction in braking and not a total braking failure.

To me any problem with braking is likely to cause accidents because of peoples reaction to this bad behavior. There are 3 reported injury accidents, and many more accidents that the safety agencies believe the braking problems have caused. These agencies have been wrong before, but absent any evidence to the contrary, I still believe this is unsafe in GenIII cars. I will be getting the software upgrade as soon as it its available.

 

people that think they know it all.

 

I'm also a proud member of an even bigger cult, dessert lovers. Ice-cream please.

 

LOL
A moment of levity can't hurt.

 

Guilty as charged, I drive a lowly Accord at a mere 30+mpg. However, I will definitely be buying a hybrid in the future, does that count in my favor ? This site has excellent hybrid tech info which is a testament to its members but those same vets here can be harsh on newbies.

 

"Many more" accidents happens to be a total for four.

From the NHTSA press release Thursday: "The Office of Defects Investigation has received 124 reports from consumers, including four reports alleging that crashes occurred."

 

I'm including priuses world wide. Those 3 injury accidents include 2 in the US and 1 in Japan. This is a global vehicle. There are 13 incidents that I know of, and all may be false reports, but i would rather be safe than sorry. This is not anywhere near the level of the unintended acceleration problem.

As I said, I don't have any problem with posters like you fuzzy that have differences of opinion about the safety. My problem is with those posters that are insulting to those reporting problems. Often I believe there age is higher than there iq. I'm not singling anyone out or have anything against the retarded.

 

On the Gen 2's I truly can't remember if I experienced any such issue but somewhere deep in my memory I 'recognize' what's being said. That leaves me to believe that I may have felt it, experienced it, recognized what was happening, realized that it was nothing and moved on and forgot it for the following 140,000 miles.

What I do know is that I can't make it happen on any of the 100 or so 2010's that I've driven and I've tried to do it at all kinds of speeds up to 50 mph and in a variety of circumstances on a variety of surfaces from smooth uneven pavement to pot-holed gravel.

I've driven my 2005 in snow, ice, gravel roads in the country, NYC, DC, Norfolk, I95 at 85 mph and just about every imaginable condition and environment. Nada.

As I noted in the prior post with my coworker I think it's a sensation for the driver in the 'feel of the controls' but one that has no actual effect on the vehicle at all ( inches maybe ). At least that's what it felt like the other day when I was riding as a passenger in her vehicle.

I'd love to make a presentation in front of any authorities questioning this issue. I truly believe it will end up being a customer satisfaction adjustment rather than anything safety related. I know for me there is no loss of control in the 2010's. But I can understand that some might feel differently

 

Seems to me all these brake issues could be explained by one simple fact: regenerative braking ONLY WORKS on the two front wheels. I believe this is an unique characteristic of hybrids in general (perhaps why they are also looking at other manufacturers), and that people should just realize that clearly the "feel" of a car with only front wheel brakes will differ from those (traditional) ones that engage the brakes on all 4 wheels. Given that when you "press harder" or go for the "emergency stop" the friction brakes engage, and that friction brakes work on ALL FOUR wheels just like any other car, there will be no difference at that point. Please, why doesn't Toyota spend some time/money on this PR issue and just point this out - this is a result of the design of the Prius braking system, not a defect. To get the car to behave like a traditional car, you'd have to have 4WD available and use 4 wheel regen braking, something that would probably be prohibitively expensive and heavy.

 

Dealing with this contention once and (hopefully) for all

The thing is this, this contention that if nothing were wrong, the NHTSA and Toyota would be not dealing with this is rather specious. Do some reading on the Audi 5000 SAI reports from the 80's.

To summarize, in the 80's Audi suddenly got very popular. It was the circumstance that Audi's in the general and specifically the 5000 represented a very good value for money, especially since it was a nicely built, european sedan.

A lot of people who had never owned anything but American cars suddenly started buying the Audi. A lot of these people were older and again, used to larger American cars.

About this time reports started coming in that Audi 5000's would suddenly accelerate for no reason, these incidents were called Sudden Acceleration Incidents.

The NHTSA did exhaustive testing (this was in a time before the agency was defunded). They found several things;

-The pedals in the Audi 5000 were much smaller than most American vehicles.
-The Audi 5000 pedal locations were much closer to each other than on most American vehicles.

What they did not find was any direct reason for these SAI's.

Then 60 Minutes does a show interviewing earnest Audi owners who couldn't understand why their car was zooming through the back of the garage even though they were standing on the brake.

Congressional pressure on the NHTSA forced them to release a report that said SAI existed but were unexplained but removed the "driver error" as the main cause. It seems congressional reps weren't comfortable with the idea that their constituents might be the problem here.

All of which is to say the following. There are times when things like this come up and lots of people say lots of things. Lots of things happen, reports are issued, claims are made, often times for reasons that are not directly apparent. I don't know what's behind the 2010 Prius "brake issue". I do know what my own experience is and I hear and read the experience of thousands of Prius owners. Personally, I suspect this is a case of exactly what I said it was in my editorial, a lot of new Prius owners who really don't understand what's going on want their fears to be justified. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm absolutely willing to examine evidence to the contrary. But the idea that Toyota being forced to react to this issue being some kind of confirmation that there is a "problem" is to me, ridiculous.

Along with this comes the idea, usually from non-Toyota owners and other folks with their own agendas that this somehow means Toyota is an evil company that has been hiding dark secrets is silly and frankly, in many cases, self-serving. Again, I point to my own experience and the experiences of thousands of owners I come into contact with every year. I think Toyota is doing its best to deal with this.

That's just my opinion and until some compelling hard evidence is presented to the contrary, I'll stick to that.

 

I'll take humble pie, the music band kicked nice person back in the day...I still enjoy playing some tunes like "I Don't need no Doctor" out of my strat every now and then.

so yeah Humble pie Please..