Need Advice..Gas Pedal

Hi everyone, this is going to sound really weird (actually feel silly having this problem) but I need some advice. I love almost everything about my car but there is one thing that has been bugging me. The gas pedal. Just some background, I am 5'0" and have a pretty small foot, women size 6 to 6.5 depending on the shoe. I'm having a harder time being comfortable when I'm driving and I'm noticing my right leg which I use for the gas/brake pedals is getting more fatigued when I'm driving. I've narrowed the problem down to the fact that the pedal feels really high off the ground.

I came from a 1998 Toyota 4Runner and I was always always able to rest at least my heel on the floor of the car and still be able to push down on the pedal. In the Prius, my foot CANNOT rest on the ground AT ALL when I need to press the gas, so literally whenever I am pushing on the gas pedal, my leg is basically in the air. I asked my bf to try out sitting in my car and seeing his foot positioning and he's able to rest his heel on the ground and is able to push on the pedal with his foot at an angle towards the pedal. Which seems normal. Now I feel like the pedal is small and up so high that someone like me who has a smaller foot can't really press on the gas comfortably. I have tried to move my seat up more but with moving the seat up more, I feel more cramped being so close to the steering wheel and I feel like it's really not that safe if the airbag were to deploy. Where I sit now (without moving the seat closer) feels comfortable for me, I can still reach the gas pedal but it just requires me to have my leg/foot basically up in the air. And driving even short trips is starting to cramp up my leg. I have a few longer trips in the next few weeks and I'm worried that I will just feel extremely uncomfortable while driving and that's not good either. Another issue that I have noticed is that with my foot in the air, there have been times where when I'm pressing on the gas pedal, I'm pressing towards the bottom 1/2 of the pedal and have had times where my foot has completely slipped off the pedal.

So I am just wondering is there anything that I can do about this? Anything that may make the gas pedal a bit bigger or at least be able to extend the gas pedal a little further down so that I can actually rest my heel on the ground and still be able to press on the gas? Any help will be appreciated. I don't have any experience in aftermarket things and I am asking to see if there are any simple fixes. I didn't notice this when I was test driving the car, it felt alright at the time but after driving it for a month I am noticing that it's not as comfortable having my foot in the air the entire time. It's like when you go mattress shopping, you like the bed in the store when you lay on it but it could end up feeling completely different later when you actually sleep on it. I have no problems with the brake pedal, just the gas pedal.

I know that Toyota had some gas pedal sticking issues in the past and that's probably why they changed the design but at the same time, it's really uncomfortable for me. I tried to search the forum for an issue similar to this but didn't see one. If there is already a thread similar to this, I apologize.

So my Prius buddies, any help will be appreciated! The easier the fix the better. Thanks in advance!

 

Thanks everyone for your responses!! I very much appreciate it all. I will try some of these things (the ones that don't need much dramatic changes) first and then move onto something more drastic if some of these things don't work. I tried to roll up a towel I had in my car the other day just so that my heel could at least rest on something and boy did that make a difference! I wish this was a permanent solution but this is not, but at least I know that this is something that I am going to try to adjust.

Neicy, so you've been driving like this since 2009? Have you always noticed it since too? I've only had to drive like this for a month and it's just so annoying. I try not to think about it but that's something that I can't stop thinking about whenever I'm driving. It just gets tiring driving with just the toes and your leg not being supported! I'm so glad that I'm not the only one that has noticed this issue. Felt a little lonely there.

Mad-dog-one, I have my seat at the lowest position possible, and I tried to lower the front part of the seat too thinking that would help but when I tried that, I was actually already at the lowest setting. I can't lower the back end too much cause then I'll feel too short. I just wish there was such thing as adjustable gas pedals and it was just a factory option sort of like a button to adjust the pedals like there are buttons to adjust the seats. Wouldn't that be cool?? I read Ford has something like this in their cars as an option, I'm just wondering why this sort of thing hasn't caught on??

And did Toyota cut off the bottom half of the gas pedal because of the gas pedal sticking issue? If that was the case, it seems kind of silly because I thought it was a mat issue? My 1998 4Runner never got stuck and the pedal is just normal sized and I can actually drive it with more than just my toes.

I tried to google pics of older model Prii and the gas pedals looked bigger back then. =/ I wish they didn't change it so dramatically.