Hey all! I just recently got my first Prius and am completely loving it! I had two concerns however: 1.) Is the Gear stick designed dangerous? I ask because you can easily change from D to R with just a simple "slide" or "push" of the gear. This causes concern on the freeway. Did Toyota install a safety feature in case a passenger accidentally hits the Gear into Reverse on the freeway at high speeds? 2.) Also, since the Park Gear is in a Button, what if this was accidentally pressed on the freeway? Thanks Prius enthusiasts!
If you are going over about 3 MPH, both R and P beep at you and put you in N. This is actually faster than selecting N, so if any Prius driver actually DOES have unintended acceleration, it is a quick way to get in N. Hitting the ACTUAL brake, instead of the one you think you are pressing, also works. Based on statistics, Prius drivers are about half as dangerous as drivers in general. (You could try to claim it is the cars, but I doubt it)
Going from D to R more than a few mph will result in no action so concern 1 is not an issue. Concern 2, again nothing at highway speeds. Only N works in highway speeds.
I recall that software protects the car. Perhaps someone can chime in. One person thought the P for park was P for power mode, so he was accelerating on the freeway on ramp and hit the Park button. Nothing happened. I believe he was put in neutral
and since the shifter returns to the neutral position after selecting d or r, you can't accidentally bump it from one to the other anyway.
I've managed to inadvertently knock the dome lights into 'on' position, but never the shifter on the Prius. On my former vehicle ('94 Chrysler LHS), the shifter was a manual located on the center floor in a much more vulnerable location. On a few occasions over the course of a decade I managed to bump that (usually with a bookbag or briefcase) from drive into neutral. Led to momentary confusion as to why the engine was revving without torque, but quick, embarrassed recovery with no damage, even with a comparatively low-tech vehicle. I don't anticipate any issues with the not-too-low and not-too-high position of the Prius shifter.
I would like to see the drivers face when he stopped and looked at the grill and noticed he killed Bambi
I would HOPE that he noticed when the thud occurred and when the radiator lost all fluid. If it were me I'd have been on the cell phone immediately calling the sheriff for a non-hunting deer tag and the meat processor to make Bambi into neat little freezer-wrapped packages. Still wouldn't cover my deductible however. Needless to say it wouldn't be the first time that I was in a vehicle involved in a deer collision...
Of course it is dangerous. It is a motor vehicle, and motor vehicles are dangerous. But your gear shift concerns are nothing to worry about. There is an action on both concerns: the car goes into Neutral with a double beep warning. There is no damage. In this case, the software is smart enough to protect the car.
While it did not turn out well for Bambi or the vehicle, I do hope the driver and passengers were OK. But let me ask this: How did the deer get "under the hood" in the first place? And it "tried" to tunnel out through the grille? Tell me the driver did not hear any "knocking" and "pinging" under the hood before the critical moment that he realized he not only had horsepower but deerpower as well...
Welcome to the world of Prius: We are actually 'driving' computers with chip resident software that operate the car. Furthermore, the transaxle is special, as there are no 'gears' that shift positions. The transaxle has no clutches or torque converters. Instead, two computer driven motors and a planetary gear 'change' the effective gear ratio. It is all but impossible to trick the computers into doing anything destructive. For example, there is a 'parking paw' that is activated by a computer controlled motor. The computer will not engage the paw if the car is moving at any speed faster than a slow walk. For good measure, try to break it or better still, go of a test drive in a dealer Prius or rental and try to break it. At say 25 mph, try to abuse the shifter and "P" . . . then have fun with your Prius-skeptic relatives. <grins> Remember, April 1 is coming soon. Bob Wilson
Yes, the Prius is dangerous.... to OPEC Never experienced any of those issues in the time we owned either of ours.
Well, apparently I'm an idiot. Driving in the city at about 50 km/hr (30 MPH) Pearl S coolant was getting warm enough for the heater to be turned on. Hit "P", car beeped, lights came on on the dash, car went into "N". Put it back in "D" without stopping, then tried again, again hitting "P". Sigh! On my -third- try I actually turned on A/C auto, my original intention. So no, the shifter is not "dangerous".
I would say that it's not dangerous. The only feature that is truly annoying to me it the delay going into neutral since I like to shift to neutral when I'm waiting at a traffic signal when people are crossing right in front of my vehicle. But, to me, the Prius gear selector layout is simply ridiculous; it's a novelty and not an improvement over the standard PRNDL (PRNDB) ---- except that it saves center console space. I am not a full-time Prius driver and drive a variety of vehicles each week. This may have something to do with my perspective.
