Does driving a Prius make you a better driver?

It does for some.
For others....who pulse and glide through those nasty old stop signs, or those that become a hazard to road navigation while trying to use the acceleration lane portion of an interstate on-ramp, or for people who think that drafting isn't just for NASCAR?????
Maybe not so much.

I've actually seen people IN THIS FORUM ask how to override the VSS safety feature for the GPS, or if they can watch DVDs with the OEM head unit.

Driving a HMMWV makes you a better driver.
Diesel is expensive, and the mileages for those things is really bad.
You're not on the road as much that way.

 

^ yeah, but a Humvee can't fit in our garage

 

has made my attention to the road more difficult, and thus, more exciting to those around me. as i read about more and more infotainment systems being installed in new cars, this hazard is surely going to get worse until we have self driving cars. hopefully, they will be better at multitasking.

 

I'd say yes. Still, with any car where the primary focus is good fuel economy, you tend to slow down, abide by the speed limits, keep a decent following distance.

 

I am glad my Prius doesn't have a lot of goo-gahs…I get distracted, and ultimately disgusted, if someone merely tries to carry on a conversation with me while I am driving, I can only imagine if I had an infotainment system on my car…I usually just tell people when I take them somewhere, "My mind is on the road, so don't expect me to answer you"

 

Then....you'd better stick with the Prius.

The good news is that Priuses are fairly reliable and they're cheap to feed.
Oh.....and they're small on the outside.....and big on the inside.

That means you'll have room left over in the garage for lots of other stuff.

 

yeah…all of our $#!& that we kept from our move from a 1500 sq foot house and 1300 square foot office building…and my partner's HyCam

 

Does driving a Prius make you a better Driver?

Before owning a Prius I would of said No to that question.

But after owning and driving one for now approaching 2 years, I'm going to say Yes the Prius does encourage potentially better driving.
Since The Prius and most of it's gauges are all designed to give feedback encouraging efficiency, it does lead you to be a less aggressive driver.

Maybe, I'm getting older, but I've noticed that Urban, and even most Suburban driving is mostly a "race" to the next stop light. I'll watch vehicles and drivers now aggressively zoom past me, only to end up at that same stop light...maybe one or two positions ahead of me.
Hey, I'm getting 50 mpg, and I don't care if you get the front row view of the stop light....welcome to it.

If I'm driving the speed limit, and carefully accelerating does that make me a better driver? Well clearly I think it often is safer, If not better.

The Prius is no longer the only vehicle with gauges and dials and feedback designed to promote efficiency. But as a Hybrid I think the message is underscored by the vehicle itself, and conceivably "efficiency" is why a great deal of us purchase The Prius in the first place. If we had wanted a 0-60 in under 4 seconds "Sports Car" we would of bought one.

Am I a better driver because of The Prius? .....I'm still going to say no, but I am more attentive to driving efficiently, and efficiently I think often means less aggressively, and that is often a safer way to drive.

 

^^^ Nicely reasoned and nuanced response.
I agree with TEM but think in my case the overall slowing has led to more situational awareness of what is happening in BACK of me as I try to minimize any impact I have on the pace of traffic. Safer? Not sure. But higher workload for sure so I have offloaded all other functions to copilot, otherwise known as DW.
It would be interesting to get heigh mileage Prius drivers in a driving simulator and track both behavior, eye movements, and outcomes to driving situations. At the macro level, insurance records or transmitted reco dings of driving parameters might also shed light on changes in driving behavior. Hmmmm.

 

YES! Than's why I get 50+ miles to the gallon. ( It becomes a game to keep driving conservative )

 

Similar experience, except sometimes they make that light, carry on weaving in-and-out while I coast to the red. STILL don't give a rat's @ss.

 

I've always been a pretty good driver; maybe safer

 

No, the older you get and finding someone dead at the wheel from an accident makes you a better driver

 

I definitely think that switching from a Camry to a Prius slowed me down. But I see a lot of Priuses driven very aggressively, so I don't think there's a general rule.

 

Good point. Lot of Vancouver cabs are Prius, some drive pretty aggressively, typical for the profession. Some seem cooler tho.

 

For me, coming from a WRX to a Prius definitely made me a safer driver and reduced my stress levels

I sometimes call it my Zen mobile. I don't think you can get 60mpg out a Gen 2 if you have any stress in your body. Probably why I can't usually get there, but I keep trying. I am a leaf, floating on the breeze

Its also made me pay a lot more attention to the vehicles around me as I try to time lights / traffic, and see whats going on behind me to judge how much gliding I can get away with without getting in anyone's way

 

Though, in their defense (possibly), if there is somebody in the passenger seat it's a pain in the a-- when they can't change anything while the car is moving. Seems like Toyota should be able to tap into the seat sensor used for the airbag to determine whether somebody is in the seat, an release the controls for navagation or DVD.

 

Heck no. I much more aware of gas millage and how my driving affects that. All the fancy "milage aids" are a distraction. At times I am trying to squeeze the very last bit of gas out … so I am paying more attention than to what I am doing (as much as I hate to admit it). As I have the car longer I am less likely to do that and don't play such silly games in traffic as much. In general Eventually I will stop the milage crazy ness but I think the Prius is fairly unsafe … can't really tell where the car is and the large blind spots (and yah I did the mirror thing as stated on this site some place) do not really help. I have always been a fairly conservative driver and always try to be polite and not demand the rite of way. But really … while it's economical it is still not a car I feel really safe driving. Hopefully this will change.

 

And I've become more acutely aware of that drawback on this most recent vacation. On our previous vacation last year, I did a lot of preplanning and stored a lot of addresses/POIs, so I wouldn't have to try to search for them while driving. On this trip, it's been just the opposite, very little preplanning and the inability to have my wife search for things while the car is moving has been a real drawback. It wouldn't be so bad if the POI voice commands could actually find anything, but unless you know exactly what you're looking for, it's a crapshoot. I've ended up using my Garmin Nuvi more times than I'd like. I have been able to find things in the Nuvi and then quickly enter the addresses into the Prius when stopped at traffic lights, etc., but the lockout is a flaw that needs to be resolved. Garmin has an option to lock out controls while moving, so should the Prius, leave it up to the driver, not the corporation to make that decision.