Preventing accidental park

Software lockout already protects your Prius against damage from shifting to Park at too high a speed.

Tom

 

Clever, but keep in mind that pressing the Park button during an Unintended Acceleration Incident is the probably the fastest way to decouple the power to the wheels.

 

lol

 

I can't find the Park button fast enough for that, but can shove the shifter into R (which really goes N) just as fast as I hit the clutch when my old Honda when UA.

And just in case evpv doesn't remember, I do have first-hand experience with UA in a Honda.

 

I did hit Park button around 30mph and all i got was big thud(felt it good) and car went neutral. I was trying to hit HVAC off button but I failed....try it sometimes

 

I can never find the bloody thing. i just use the parking brake and then turn the car off.

 

Summit123, I hate to ask the obvious; is it always your habit to start to reach for the Park button BEFORE you stop? Did you do this in your previous vehicle where you start moving the shift level into Park BEFORE you stop? If so - cut that out! DUH!!! Since you know you'll try it again, I credit your ingenuity for the solution you created that allows you to maintain your habit while not causing any damage.

I have a friend who I observed frequently does that - throws the column mounted shifter up from Drive into Park just before coming to a complete stop (Chysler minivan). Imagine his surprise when the transmission went out at a cost of $4,000. Hmmm, I wonder what problem could be......

 

It was a design decision. It would be easy to require zero speed before activating park, but if Toyota did that we would have people starting threads saying: "I tried to shift into Park to keep my Prius from rolling away, but it wouldn't let me shift. Why did Toyota design it this way?" Toyota limits Park to safe speeds: You can't hurt your Prius shifting to Park while moving.

A fair point, but no different than shifting to N by bumping the shifter. Given the recent rash of SUA complaints, perhaps we should consider this a feature, not a problem.

They could of. It's another design decision, but in this case I don't know the reasoning behind the decision.

Tom

 

I had the opposite problem, at night I had a tendency to press the Auto HVAC Button instead of the Park Button because the Park Button is not illuminated and I couldn't see it. Just pressing the Power Button after setting the parking brake fixed that problem.

 

I accidentally turned on PWR mode in my car one day while meaning to hit the rear defogger button. Didn't look to confirm that I hit the right thing, and when I shifted to park and pushed the gas pedal, the car shot away from the spot I was at.

I think Toyota should put a fix in for my ignorance on this. It really is a big design flaw - Heck, even Microsoft makes me confirm that I want to shut down my computer after deliberately making 2 or 3 clicks in different spots.

Yes, that is a bit of sarcasm, but that actually did happen. When you're expecting to be in "normal" mode and you're in "power" mode, it really does make a difference in the half second after you press the pedal.

 

Like you, I understand that hitting the Park button while moving
won't hurt my Prius but I don't want to test this myself!

Your makeshift safety cover reminds me of the one the late
astronaut Jack Swigert made for Apollo 13. Swigert was in
the Apollo Command Module powering it up, while Jim Lovell
and Fred Haise remained in the Lunar Modular. Swigert had
to flip a lot of switches in a complicated order, and being
groggy from hardly sleeping in two days, he was worried he
might accidentally flip the switch that cut loose the Lunar
Modular while Lovell and Haise were still in it. So, Swigert
taped a piece of cardboard over that switch and wrote, in
big letters, "NO" on it.

 

I was thinking of exactly the same thing, LOL.

My 2 cents:

I never push the park button, just power off, and rely on the car's function which automatically then puts it in park. I can't think of an instance when I'd want to leave the car running and in park.

If you're concerned about this, and could live with just haveing auto-park, it might be possible to disconnect a the wire to this button at the back, without triggering a fault, or messing up the car's auto-park function.

As several responders have mentioned, the car's software will prevent shift into park at higher speeds. You might be able to put it into park at a crawl, and experience a bump, but I believe that's it.

Any chance you can get that glue to come off? Honestly: at trade-in time I don't think any prospective buyer will be interested in this feature.

 

This stuff might do the trick:

3M Indoor/Outdoor Caulk Remover (2153) - Adhesive Removers - Ace Hardware

Test on an out of sight area first?

 

I can conceive of a few instances when you might want to put the car in park, rather than shut it off. There is one that I use every day.

Frex, a neighbor might be passing by, walking the dog, and you want to stop to exchange a few words.

Or it's night, you just started the car, and you want to run back into the house and make sure you turned off the oven, but you don't want the timer to shut off the headlights.

I do it when I pull up to my mailbox to grab the day's mail. It's an awkward reach, and I cant simply keep my foot on the brake and get the thing that's stuck at the back of the mailbox. But I don't want to shut down, and make somebody who needs to get by me wait while the car goes through its start-up sequence.

And, of course we've all been in the situation where our friend has been holding up a bank, we're driving the get-away Prius, and he comes out in a hail of bullets.

 

Like the OP, I've pressed Park before coming to a complete stop too, when I meant to turn off the radio. It's just stupid on my part, but it can happen and yes it sucks.

 

I always thought it was a good thing that he didn't tape it on upside down!

Tom