Hey everyone, I have a 2012 Prius with about 100k miles. This morning I woke up to go to work, drove about 3 mins down the road when suddenly the ABS, brake, and traction control lights illuminated. My brakes felt much more stiff, the car took longer to brake, and I had to depress the brake pedal down much further than normal to get any braking response at all. I turned around to drive back home, and a minute later all the warning lights went off and my brakes returned to normal. I just took the car for a spin around the block to run a errand and it was fine after being off for an hour. I read some stories online that his seems to be a common problem. However I havent read a story where this problem occured and then went away on its own. Im worried that I may experience a brake failure while on the highway, but I don't want to pay hundreds of bucks for a Toyota diagnostic for no reason. Does anybody know why this may have occurered and if its safe to resume driving normally? Thank you
You can search in this forum for several methods of reading the trouble codes; for some, you need to get the equipment, while another method works as long as you can find a skinny wire and count light blinks. Until we have the information on why those lights came on, it's hard to speculate on how reasonable it would be to continue driving.
I had that once in my old Prius I read the codes that pointed to a faulty wheel speed sensor, I took the wheel off and there was some mangled kitchen foil stuck in there. Cleaned it out and the fault never returned in 150,000 miles. Must of ran it over and some got stuck. Good luck and hope yours is as easy to fix. Most common codes can be read with a free app on your phone like torque or carista and a bluetooth obdc dongle. I use the ELM327 - cheap on fleabay but works great
Have you done any maintenance for the brakes? E.i sliding pin lube, brake flush and check the brake pads?
One time @Raytheeagle found a leaf stuck between the brake pad and rotor on my prius, we were lubing caliper pins as one was on the verge to seize. He said he found the problem while holding the leaf haha
I had similar behavior, multiple times, except the text CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM as well. The brakes worked, but felt sorta flat, less efficient/effective. It was tentatively blamed on a ScanGauge I had constantly hooked up to the OBD, maybe causing intermittent info disruption for the computers. I disconnected it 3~4 years back, no repeat of the problem.
