2016 Toyota Prius - no evidence of steering assistance?

Hi all,

I have a 2016 Prius. I believe it is a VW50 engine based on the 12V battery replacement I just had.

I bought it second-hand from a Toyota dealer in June 2020 and it has a couple months of Toyota used vehicle warranty left.

Over the last ~10 months, I've driven the car ~13K miles all over on rural and city roads. Not once in the entire time I owned it did I notice even the slightest tug back into the lane. Further, there was some time where the wheel alignment was off, so it would not go straight on its own. Despite a slight bias towards one direction, the car would happily let me go off the road despite all of the lane departure alerts going off. I am certain that the steering assistance is turned on and set to high sensitivity.

I am comparing this to a ~2019 model year Camry or Corolla I rented whose steering assistance was obviously present. There was notable, unambiguous feedback in the wheel that made me think "Wow! That's what autonomous cars could be like!" If I even relaxed my grip it would tell me to hold on to the steering wheel. I've only gotten that warning a couple of times in my Prius.

Is my steering assistance broken, or is it literally so weak as to not even be remotely noticeable when it is supposedly active?

To the best of my knowledge the system is on. I get beeps when I start to exit the lane, just no feedback on the wheel or any other sort of automatic intervention from the car to get me back in the lane.

 

Just added some photos above. It appears to be turned on. It does beep when I cross or get close to a line, but no semblance of assistance. If the feature is working as intended, I'd say it's so weak to the point of being undetectable to the extent of being meaningless in operation. Certainly nothing compared to the newer (2018/2019?) Toyota I drove.

 

Thanks! Thing is, I’ve never felt the wheel move for me when I’ve crossed the line (easy to do on the windy roads here when you’re first learning how to drive on the other side of the road). Going on a straight road with a leftward bias caused by former wheel alignment (fixed since), it would have let me run off the road, despite the LDA warning going off. That should have been an easy test case, but no dice?