Odd computer start-up occurrence

Hey folks,

Had a weird occurrence happen to me yesterday when going to pick up supplies for work. My car was parked in the outside lot across from the office. The day's weather was a bit warmer and sunnier then the past few weeks. If I recall correctly, I had driven the car to the office about an hour prior to the incident. I also just put the parking brake for the first time in the season, since the weather was above 50 degrees F.

So I head back into the car. Something I do at least 3-4 times a day. I sit inside, turn on the car, and while I'm reaching to pull for the safety belt, I realize that the center console screen lights up with practically all the alarm lights, as well as a constant 'buzz' sound (not intermittent, but continuous). As well, I hear and see the hazard lights blink about two or three times while this is going on. It lasts for a few seconds, but the shock of it made it seem longer. Afterwards, the 'Prius' welcome screen goes into effect like normal, and the car is operating like normal.

I'm not sure why this happened, or what could have caused it to occur. As I said, the only difference I noticed during my usual driving this season was applying the parking brake before exiting the vehicle earlier.

This is the first time this has happened to me while starting up the car, but I now recall something similar happened about a year back while I was waiting for someone outside their home. Although, I had just driven up to the location, and had just placed the car in 'neutral' while stopped and this had happened again. I figured I'd just pressed the hazard lights on by mistake.

Now, I know that the car will alarm you if you have the door open while trying to change into gear, so I know it's not the cause this time since I had already closed my driver door before startup.

I'm not too worried about this, since I'm close to 40,000 miles of pretty much worry-free driving. I just figured I'd throw this out there (since I can't seem to find similar posts about this on PC), and see if anyone else has experience this.

The vehicle I have is one of the earlier builds, since I picked this up in May of '09. Any have any thoughts to why this occurs?

 

I can't recall seeing that message light up. Since it was in the afternoon, the sun was making it a little harder to see everything clearly, yet I do recall seeing the instrument panel light up like Christmas.

As well, I always keep my key fob in my pocket, so I know it wasn't that. However, I hadn't stopped to think that it may just be a slight glitch in the car not being able to 'pickup' the key fob while it's starting up. Hmmm.

 

I guess that's probably what it is. Like I said, I have no worries about the car. Just figured since it happened more than once, I'd just throw it up here and see if anyone else had the same thing happen.

Makes me wonder if my fob battery is going out, but I just tried it from my second story office window (with the car a good 100+ feet away from the building) and the door lock still activates.

Guess I'll just chalk it up to freak occurrence. Thanks for your input!