Trying to lose control in a Toyota Prius (and failed)

[spitfiregirl52]

Can't the "sudden acceleration" feel of a hybrid be attributed to the change from gas engine to electric motor and regenerative braking? I know in my Insight II, I often feel a surge once I pull of the brakes, but my instantaneous mpg also shows that I'm switching from 40-50 mpg to 100+ mpg. When I was talking about my car with a service man from the dealership, he said an elderly woman with the same car was complaining about that. But hybrid's don't drive like normal cars. In regular automatic vehicles I can feel the engine switching gears, but I can't feel that in my hybrid. I believe that people expect certain things without actually doing research about the product they're buying. I agree that this "problem" with Toyota has been blown way out of proportion. And this wouldn't stop me from buying one someday.

[msirach]

That's my belief that could be part of it. Also, if the ABS kicks in they freak and let off the brake and get back on it, it will happen again. So it's just unfamiliarity with the brakes.

[Shiba3420]

I'd like to ask a few quesitons about brakes to those who know, but first...


I think the airline pilot vs driver comparison is pretty darn silly.
The pilots are trained to a greater extent, but on top of that, you have a machine with far greater safety redundancies built it. You have multiple "drivers' as the same time (automatic systems, two pilots, air traffic control). You have a 3rd party agency which looks at every accident and determines how to fix both pilots and planes so things don't happen again, although we know that 3rd party has been slow sometimes. And perhaps most importanly, you don't tend to have nearly the same number of idiots per minute pulling in front of you, tailgating you, and performaing other stupid things around you.
The FAA doesn't tolerate any fooling about in the cockpit. If we ripped away the license of every person who made repeated mistakes or kept breaking the rules, the roads would be much safer, perhaps safer than the skies. On the other hand, there might not be anybody left on the roads.


Back to the brake issues. Wayne, you said something that made a light go on. Pumping the brakes. Its an old idea, and one that shouldn't be practiced with ABS systems, but some people just can't seem to get past it, especially when the car doesn't react the way that its expected. Its like the brake pedal is another way to try slap the car back to common sense. My questions are, assuming the vaccum system doens't have any leaks and that its charged. Should there be any problems ever breaking if you just press and hold, even if the engine isn't still pulling out the air? Do modern brakes, at any point, ever fall back to mechanical methods instead of the vaccuum? Is there any reason to think the emergency brakes, which do use a cable, wouldn't be able to stop and hold a car?

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Shiba3420

...I think the airline pilot vs driver comparison is pretty darn silly.

No, we could not expect everyone in their personal commuter to go thru a checklist like a 777 pilot, etc, but my point is the caution on the roads are polar opposite of flying. About 40,000 Americans die annually on the roads....just imagine if everyone was alert and sober how many of that 40,000 would live - wild guess maybe 30,000.

I think I'm safer in a 2010 Prius than a 1980 Volvo, but an even more critical factor is the driver.

[PaleMelanesian]

Jonathan - that's one reason I prefer a hand-operated emergency brake over the press-on press-off foot operated parking brake. It's actually useful as an emergency brake.

[hobbit]

Oh good, the Canadian article is more fodder for the eventual
combined writeup on all of this I'm trying to pull together.
.
Lemme try to find some middle ground here: I'll agree with Wayne
that a car's systems *should* operate in as consistent a manner
as it's possible to engineer. But the real world is often not
kind to that engineering effort, and conditions outside of that
can be highly variable. Drivers *do* have to realize that their
cars, whatever type and vintage they are, *can* become death
traps if they're not paying attention and have made the effort
to become familiar with its systems. No matter what, a lot of
this *does* fall on the driver even in a presumed panic situation.
That familiarity and remaining mindful of what's going on around
a vehicle would likely help *avoid* going into panic mode in
the first place in most circumstances, i.e. some piece of more
drivers' brains would say "ah, I've seen this before or at least
have thought about it, here's how to respond" instead of a
blind screaming and largely ineffective "oh sh*t" paralysis.
.
_H*

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Jonathan, my understanding is that the old "pump the brakes" procedure was to avoid wheel lockup and loss of control. ABS does that for you now, so it isn't necessary (and also not as effective as the much more rapid pumping ABS does). Tack on a slew of other tech that is intended to automatically correct for sliding and traction problems many times faster than a human could and pumping the brakes becomes a bad thing as it defeats those mechanisms.

As for damage holding steady pressure on the brakes, I don't believe so (though you might end up with glazed pads I suppose). The vacuum should only be used while the pedal is moving, though ABS and traction control systems might also use it (since they fool with brake application?)