Has anyone (other than me) forgot to turn off the car?

I have made this mistake and live in fear that something terrible will happen as a consequence. The Prius is so quiet when stopped that it is easy for me to forget that the car is still in ready mode.

 

I guess not everyone runs with the radio on like we do.

 

45 years ago I was visiting my grandparents in Charlottesville. Their next-door neighbor lived at the top of a hill. One afternoon we looked outside the front picture window to see flashing blue and amber lights across the street. My grandfather walked across the property and across the street to see what was what. He returned to tell us that the neighbor lady had pulled up the the top of her driveway and gotten out with the car running to unload the groceries. She had put the manual transmission in neutral but failed to put the parking brake on. When she stepped away from the car, the car rolled backwards down the hilly driveway, straight across the street, through a wire fence, across a small field and into another neighbor's lake. Divers and tow trucks were working to retrieve the car from the lake.

Thankfully there were no kids or other passengers involved. And there were no cars driving by at the time hers crossed the street. The only loss was her car.

I must have been pretty impressionable because I have that in my subconscious every time I stop the car and I always use the parking brake. That's saved me a few times when I've left my car in gear in fact. Funny how that stuff sticks with you.

 

You got used to checking the rear-view mirror (presumably) and also to look both ways before crossing the street and other such things.
You'll get used to turning the car off before you leave it, I promise.
Very few people on the planet are more A.D.D. than I am and I figured it out (my solution is never to use the park button.)

If this is a persistent problem for you then disable the Park button.
I promise you that you'll KNOW IT when you try to get out of the car without turning it off.

 

Considering how dad misplaced the keys to his older pickup a few months ago, I wouldn't be absolutely confident of such claims.

My brother found the keys in the ignition, with the alarm going DING!-DING!-DING! ... the moment the door was opened. But dad's hearing aids were no longer adequate to pick up that sound. He now has better hearing aids, but those do nothing to address any mental attention issues.

 

Just get in the habit of pushing the power button when getting out of the car, then no problem, the parking brake is an optional move, if you want to use it.

 

99% of the time I'm all all right. But sometimes I'm distracted, and don't listen to the warning buzzer. . .

 

This the method I use to make sure I turn off the car. It has not failed me yet. I use my iphone and it is bluetoothed to the radio (using Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and incoming and out going phone calls), when I pull up my driveway, the engine is off and it is in EV mode, I pull into the garage and push the park button, set the parking brake with my left foot, the radio is still on, so I push the power button which turns off the car and turns off the radio. I never use AM/FM on the radio, just bluetooth. The radio playing is the key marker for me. It works for me, but may not for anyone else.

 

I've never had that issue thankfully, because of the car beeping at me if I don't turn it off while leaving.

Regarding locking the car, a few years back in my old Honda Civic I forgot to lock the car while at work since I was running late, and when I came back to it that night, someone decided to steal my car radio. I was parked too far away from the store for the security cameras to really see who took it, and it was a cheap $60 radio anyway, but it still sucked.

Though I don't have anything worth stealing in my prius, unless they really want my registration or owners manual, and I work at a new place with access to underground parking, I still make it a habit to ensure the car beeps when I lock it to prevent something like that from ever happening again. I like that you can lock the prius by touching the door handle in addition to the key fob.

 

In approaching two years of ownership this upcoming May, I think I have exited the vehicle twice without having it shut off. In both cases when trying to lock the vehicle it beeped an extra time or two, and warned me and I caught it before I walked away.

So I would say it CAN happen.

Yes, the two times it has happened to me, I think for some reason I stopped, pressed park, set the brake, then became distracted and hurriedly exited the vehicle.

Which is why, my normal practice is to ignore the park button and simply use the power button, which will automatically put you in park, and of course if pressed will power down the vehicle. The only times I have had any problem are times that for some unforeseen reason I pressed park first instead of simply powering down.

 

I just always press the power button when I leave the car. I see no reason leaving it on, even when I have to post a letter or something. The effort in powering off is the same as pressing the park brake, and when I enter the car I need to put my seat belt on anyway, that can be done in the time the car needs to start.
So, no, I never forget to turn the car off.

 

Recently, I left mine on once in the garage. As I pulled in my cellphone was ringing and I jumped out and stood up to answer it. The garage door opener was still going down and making enough noise to drown out the vehicle's chime. I believe that I touched the POWER button but didn't actually depress it (I almost never use the PARK button). Later in the day I heard the engine running in the garage. That said, having the vehicle turn off a while after the fob is removed from the vehicle is not a good idea. On a couple of occasions, I have dropped my wife off only to realize that the only fob was in her purse. In this case I was able to park the car and go join her (as planned) without any real inconvenience, but this might not always be the case.

 

I leave it on often ... on purpose ... like short trip for groceries/seveeleven/etc. .... but I do lock it with the physical key

 

Well you can broke into any car in that token ... (of course) .... the idea is to save on warm up cycle.

Also just this morning, while walking my dog, I saw that more than half of the cars on the street on my block, was running without driver in it warming up !!! it was a cold and little snowy morning ... today here

 

I was the kid in the car when I was about 4 years old. Thankfully the car only rolled down the drive, into a ravine, and into a tree. No lake involved. I climbed out of the car and waited in the driveway for my friend's mom to come back outside. I think they were suspicious that it was my fault, or else just the angry reaction grownups have when they could have killed someone else's kid.

And it was just this year that I really got in the habit of using the parking brake...

 

Quite a big difference between warming a car up in your driveway and leaving it running while shopping or something. I do the former too, but I'd never do the later, at least not here.

 

half the cars I am talking about are NOT in the driveway but on the street on a residential street ...

just curious why would you warm up your car in Phoenix AZ even in winter time

 

It's only happened once, and it wasn't that I forgot. I was charging a DVD player, so I left the car in ready-mode for a few hours. When I returned, it had shut itself off. There were no apparent ill-effects such as a dead battery. I assume there's some sort of programmed time limit for leaving it turned on.