I love my new Prius but one of the little annoyances is the parking brake pedal. there's barely 2 inches of clearance between the pedal and my ankle when I'm driving and my foot is on the footrest. I'd hate to imagine what would happen to my ankle if I were involved in a major collision. Has this been the case with previous year models? -Adriano
Err are you sure you have the parking brake disengaged? The pedal should be up and away from your leg.
yeah...i'm pretty tall and my foot is nowhere near it...i only saw it a few days ago. i didn't even know it was there...are you a tall guy? adriano, try not to wear your eskimo boots while driving...
I'm not that tall. It doesn't touch my leg but it's pretty damn close when it's not engaged. could it be bent? PS: I like my eskimo boots.
I doubt that it's bent... I'm pretty short and I can feel the back edge of the brake lever with my shin when I have my foot on the rest. Normally, I put my foot to the right of the rest...
Yes that's exactly where I feel the lever. it seems too close for comfort. Maybe I'll take a picture to illustrate what I'm talking about.
I was also surprised by how little leg/feet room there is in the driver's seat. Fortunately, the seat is high enough that my legs don't need to stretch too far out lengthwise, but it is more crowded than my manual transmission Sentra was, and the Sentra had the clutch pedal in there as well (though not the parking brake). It surprises me that the driver's seat doesn't stretch back further; that's the main thing I worry about, more than the location of the parking brake.
your the only other person to mention this problem here. i'm also annoyed by it as i hit the parking brake going in and out of the car sometimes. def. a major concern in a collision.
I'm not concerned for safety as much as I'm just annoyed with the position and the operation. I know why they didn't put a hand brake in... but usually wish they had.
Agreed. While you use your left foot to release the parking brake, you need to put your right foot on the regular brake, then shuffle your left foot there and move your right to the accelerator. Awkward, and not the kind of well-thought out ergonomic engineering I expect from Toyota!
"then shuffle your left foot there" ? I gather you are a left-foot braker. I use to do this on a previous car (gas guzzler) until I suddenly realized that I was letting my foot rest on the pedal and keeping the disks warm and pads nice a dry . Too many things effect mileage on the Prius and now its right-foot brake, right-foot go (unless I'm on cruise control). B)
Well, I am if I'm parked on an incline and want to release the parking brake without rolling! How would you do it in a Prius??? I'm not talking about while driving, here, I'm talking about releasing the parking brake to start moving. No, my previous cars have had manual transmissions--the left foot is for the clutch, silly! :lol:
I haven't received my Prius yet, but I read somewhere that the Prius takes care by itself to not roll back on an incline.
Could be--I've only had my car a couple of weeks, and there's PLENTY I don't know about it (and about a lot of other things, too, but we won't go there)! But since you need to press the brake to start the car, and might want to then ease off it as you begin to accelerate, it still seems more natural to me to be using the left foot on the brake and the right on the accelerator during this sequence. During actual driving, no, I normally use my right foot for everything now that there's no clutch to occupy my left.