Another odd thing- 'Check rear seat' notification

I think I had to turn it off twice on the heads up display. Although it showed I'd already turned it off, I toggled it on and then off again.

And there's a place in the app to turn it off.
Account (person pic in top right) -> Account -> Notification Settings -> Rear Seat Reminder

 

You're welcome!

It's a shame that 'safety' feature had to be implemented at all.

 

To use the cliche, "if it saves one life..." Yeah. I can read the manual to figure it out.

Tragedy in the backseat: Hot-car deaths | CNN.

Each year about 37 babies and toddlers die when they are accidentally left strapped in car safety seats or become trapped in vehicles that rapidly heat up.

 

Turns out the multi-information display "rear seat reminder" setting claimed in the manual isn't there in Europe (or at least Finland). Supposed to be underneath the driver monitor, power back door and oil maintenance settings, but nope.

Might be a dealer-only setting? Manual is a bit confused, suggesting two overlapping functions, but maybe we only have the single "Passenger and rear seat reminder function" instead of the "Rear seat reminder function", and maybe that expanded function is not directly configurable due to conform to some local rule. Not aware of any EU-wide thing, but maybe a rule Italy has?

 

I didn't realize they got so granulated on the differences in safety settings per country. Maybe someone else on that side of the pond can help. I wonder how different it is on Canadian models.

 

Yeah, lots of differences per country. It's not so long ago that many cars were US-only or Europe-only due to the hassle in making variants matching both rules. To some extent the rules have converged, but also some of these differences can now be done in software, like this one.

Another difference I noticed - there's an extra Europe + Japan safety function that's not highlighted much:

The Automatic Rear Flashing Hazard Lights is a system that uses the rear side radar sensors located on the inside of the rear bumper. When the system determines that the possibility of a rear-end collision is high, it flashes the emergency flashers rapidly to warn the driver of the following vehicle​

If it thinks someone's about to go into the back of you, it'll flash at them to try to get their attention. That seems to be a safety thing Toyota's been investigating for the last decade or so, looking at papers, and it's made its way into being permitted in the UNECE lighting regulations (called "rear-end collision alert signal" - flashing all the indicators at 4 Hz for up to 3 seconds if time to collision < 1.4s). Looks like some other Toyotas like the bZ4X and C-HR may have it already.

That's not permitted by US lighting regulations. But I think you get the Secondary Collision Brake shown in that video (put the brakes on automatically to prevent hitting something in front in that situation)

(It also flashes the indicators when emergency braking above 55km/h - the UNECE "emergency stop signal". That has been compulsory in the EU since 2019, using either indicators or brake lights. Some Toyota research paper I found suggested indicators worked better. Also not permitted in the US.)

 

I like the auto-braking concept - it could help reduce multiple car incidents. But if you understand how force works it would be best to release the brake altogether and let that energy flow through you and your car into the one in front of you. Eventually the energy will deteriorate and cars will stop hitting each other. But now you could have 10 people with whiplash and busted cars versus 2 seriously injured people and totaled cars.

 

Yeah, I was wondering about that - but I suspect the point is that the rubber-road interface is pretty squishy. It's not turning you into a brick wall.

Decelerating by having rubber scraping against the road is going to be better than hitting another hard object. The initial impact impulse is the same, and you're not going to injure yourself by hard braking after the impulse.

 

Contact your dealer. It's a good thing. Whenever I receive such notification it's for something like a book or bag of food I left on the rear seat. It's a safety feature. There are people who are so busy texting and not paying attention they forget their child is in the seat and leave the car.

 

x2 !

 

Texting? People were doing this long before smart phones.