I LOST control of my Prius !!

Brake hard and steer smoothly around the obstacle. Why you would let go of the wheel I have no idea, the stability control needs your input to know where to go.
The stability control kept the wheels down and shiny side up, a lesser vehicle may have ended on the roof.
Lets admit it, you were too abrupt on the steering causing a loss of traction and a loss of control. It wasn't the car that caused this. Once traction was lost the computer tried to make the best of a bad situation. Firstly by regaining traction and keeping the roof upward. Even the most expensive exotic doesn't drive itself, it responds to input from the driver, and thank goodness for that.

Trust me, your Prius is no eggshell car, it has one of the strongest cages of any production road car. Look at those strong diagonal braces that are the A and C pillars holding up the corners of the roof. Then if you have stability control no doubt you have a plethora of airbags to protect you in the unlikely event of a roll over.

I think you wanted to avoid a hit?

 

You definitely should not let go of the steering wheel. You should hit the brake pedal as hard as you can, and steer as necessary to avoid a collision. However if you are traveling at 55 mph I suggest that you do not steer very much or risk flipping the car. Better to hit the deer than to flip over.

 

Yes. When you swerved, the VSC system activated the anti-skid light and buzzer.

As Patrick said, the best thing to do is press the brake and steer to miss solid objects.

 

Agreeing with the rest, let me also point out that it's better to hit a deer than to roll your car, hit a tree, or go head on into oncoming traffic. Swerving to miss animals is usually a bad idea, unless you have plenty of time and space. In this case it worked out because VSC saved your rear end and there was no traffic. People often try to blame VSC for kicking in and causing them to lose control, even though the converse is true: you lost control and VSC kicked in.

Tom

 

whew, a big deer-avoidance swerve at 50-55 mph is not going to be pretty. you're lucky the VSC kicked in and there wasn't any traffic around. just hit the damn deer instead of taking the risk of swerving around an animal at that rate of speed. glad you're ok, though.

 

Well, it's not like a deer through a windshield is a small thing either, but yeah, when it comes down to a deers life or yours, you better be thinking venison.

On a sidenote, once you lose control of the car and start to swerve, depending on the road surface, you don't want to slam on the brakes, but control the car into a straight line before applying brake force. Throwing ABS into the equation get you more sideways than you want to. Luckily I've never been in the same spot in my prius, but yeah, NEVER let go of the wheel - that's just a horrible idea.

 

That's why everyone said brake then steer around the obstacle.

 

According to another poster that attended some sort of emergency driving class, he/she said that braking while turning worked best with the prius as opposed to hard braking, then turning.

 

I think someone misunderstood what they were told.
I was told in my advanced driving lesson which I must do every 2 years, brake hard and steer around the obstacle. I was told the same thing 2 years ago. We also try out the technique on slippery dirt roads.

 

Nope, I was referring to:
http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/54079-took-our-prius-race-track.html#post717882

 

Instinct, or maybe learned behaviour, tells me not to brake hard and steer hard at the same time. And I'd have a hard time steering for the deer, but it would depend on the terrain. But, if electronic controls allow the car to do what it's told, then by all means tell it.

 

A common mistake in a panic stop situation is to look at what you're trying to avoid hitting. I don't know how to learn how to change this typical behavior except through practice. With deer it's even harder because they're often moving, so picking a spot to steer to in tricky.

 

For most modern cars...ones with ABS....you can stand on the brakes and they work well by preventing wheel lockup while providing the most stopping power without loosing control. Let the ABS work as designed, it will modulate the pressure to the brakes.

When a wheel locks up, you loose directional control. A slide or skid sideways is the same to the wheel as a slide or skid in the direction of intended travel.

This is the reason for ABS, to allow directional control during stopping where would otherwise loose grip of the road and lock up.

For older, NON ABS cars, I remember being taught to curl your toes while braking if you start to skid...That motion will lower your pressure on the brakes and hopefully allow wheel spin and directional control.

And speaking as one that has had a deer collision and the dented A pillar to show for it, If there is a choice to be made about going off road/into other traffic or hit the deer, I will choose the deer every time. I will hate to hurt the animal or dent my prius, but with the deer I have more mass and will survive. Choosing to go off road or into traffic may cause bodily injury or death to me and others as well as a greater damage to the prius

 

Seeing that the OP's avoidance situation involved some deer, I just have to
ask:

Do the whistle thingys that I see mounted on vehicles' front bumpers out in
rural/suburban areas around here work?

What, if anything do they supposedly do... scare the deer or just make an
intensely irritating, out of the human hearing range noise... or what?

 

Rokeby -

As a motorcycle rider for over 50 years, my experience and others is that the whistle thingys don't work. I wish they did. I would cover my bike with them if I thought they would work.

Deer move in early morning and late afternoon, usually for water or food. That's the time to be EXTRA alert.