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Parking on a Steep Uphill or Downhill !

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by jack sparrow 111, Sep 3, 2020.

  1. jack sparrow 111

    jack sparrow 111 Junior Member

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    Hello Guys,

    I have a Prius 06 and i park most of the time on flat surfaces so i never use the foot brake

    Yesterday, i have parked my car on a steep uphill without using the foot brake, i forgot to put it on and then when i got back to my car and put the car on D , it kind of made a funny noise and the car kind of shook

    My question is how to properly park when you are on an uphill or downhill ? Do i have to put the foot brake on first before switching to P, or i put it first on P then put the foot brake on ?

    Also when i am about to take off, do i release the foot brake first then put it on D or the opposite ?

    I read this online :

    Answer: Any time you park a car with an automatic transmission on a steep hill or incline, you are running a risk of transmission damage if you don't exercise a lot of care. ... If the car is parked on a very steep hill, the pawl or gear can be damaged and will eventually require costly transmission repairs.

    Thank you so much for your time and help
     
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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    foot on brake, car in neutral, press parking brake, release foot brake to make sure car doesn't roll. repeat until achieved, then hit park and shut down.

    when starting, foot on brake, power up, hit neutral, release parking brake, hit drive
     
  3. jack sparrow 111

    jack sparrow 111 Junior Member

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    Thank you so much..i appreciate your help ;-)
     
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  4. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Brake pedal pushed firmly, set parking brake firmly, hit stop/start button (shuts car off and puts it in park).

    Additional, if there's a curb:

    Pointing up the hill, get close, angle steering wheel towards centre of road, shift to neutral, release foot brake slightly to roll front tire against curb.

    Pointing down the hill sim to above but angle steering wheel towards side of road.
     
    #4 Mendel Leisk, Sep 3, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2020
  5. jack sparrow 111

    jack sparrow 111 Junior Member

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    Thank you so much for your help. I appreciate it
     
  6. dolj

    dolj Senior Member

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    One slight variation, when starting, foot on brake, power up, put into D, apply a tiny amount of accelerator - just enough to hold the car stationery when the brake is released, slowly release parking brake and apply more accelerator as required to move off.

    This is the basic hill start procedure. Do US drivers not learn how to do hill starts as part of driver's ed?
     
  7. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Our driving requirements are a little different than they are in most other countries - and we do not require much in the way of driving tests....and even if a physical driving test is required it is generally given only once in a lifetime.
    Fortunately....some US states are considering increasing these requirements for the very young and the very old....especially the latter.
    It should not be very surprising to you (especially these days) that very VERY old people are allowed to drive (and do other things!) without much in the way of intervention.

    In most US States, and ALL 52 of them are different!! - one only has to have 15 or 16 candles on their birthday cake and guess a few questions correctly in a written or computer test formulated at about a 6th grade level, and driving licenses (unlike SOME other licenses I can mention!) are universally recognized in the other states.

    Fortunately, most of our roads are about twice as wide as yours, and are generally either flat or very moderately graded in the bumpy areas.
    Our parking spaces are about 30% larger and very few people have to parallel park.
    "Clutch" is generally a metaphor that is used in our football games - which are ALSO much different than they are in other parts of the world. I will leave it to your fertile imagination to decide if in THIS case "ours" is better, worse, or just different! :D
    We generally do not "allow" municipalities to use red light or speed cameras - although this will change soon.

    Oh....and you'll REALLY like this.
    When I got my international driving license????
    I only had to go to an Automotive Association and show them my Indiana driver's license. :eek:

    Folksy Anecdote:
    When my grandmother was pretty deep in her 90's she had to get her driving license renewed and her 4 daughters sat her down and tried to talk her into giving up the car keys.
    She wasn't in frank cognitive decline (*cough! COUGH!!!*) but the reflexes and eyesight were starting to deteriorate rapidly.
    In Indiana, you have to renew your license every two years if you are over 85, so this would seem to be a self-solving problem but on her next birthday she woke up early, got dressed up in her Sunday best with hair and makeup, and drove herself to the nearest license branch and got her license renewed!
    I told 'the sisters' to double down on her insurance and leave her be.....and she probably only drove another 100 miles for the rest of her life.

    This is far from a unique story.

    In the US, people drive cars to get their paper out of their paper box.
    We still "go on drives" for the pure joy of going on a drive.
    We don't really "do" public transportation, even in our vast concrete deserts....so our cars REALLY are our freedom!
     
    #7 ETC(SS), Sep 4, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2020
  8. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Hill hold feature will help too, but AFAIK only pointing uphill.



    Addendum to my previous post:

    Whenever hill parking without curb, angle wheels to edge of road.
     
  9. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Except when Toyota introduced the SST technology and you can't depress the brake pedal and accelerator at the same time lol.

    On the plus side, that means they needed to introduce hill hold to all their cars.
     
  10. dolj

    dolj Senior Member

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    No, but you can use the parking brake, which is what you use to do a hill start.

    Plus this is a Gen 2 forum and the Gen 2 does not have HSA (hill-start assist). HSA is not needed as a manual hill start can still be done in cars with SST (smart stop technology). It is more a reflection of declining skill levels as outlined by ETC(SS). However, the heel and toe or two feet techniques, which are not the recommended methods obviously will not work with SST.
     
    #10 dolj, Sep 4, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2020
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  11. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    Yeah I was taught with the handbrake method (ahh. Remember those?) but when we changed our Corolla for the Camry and got a footbrake, I figured if I was applying the brake with my left foot, I might as well use the 4 brake pads I stead of the parking brake so I transitioned to that.
     
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  12. dolj

    dolj Senior Member

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    Yeah, I was taught in a manual (stick-shift) (ahh. Remember those?) with the handbrake method (obviously). Great fun coordinating hand and two feet to get moving uphill without rolling back. If you did roll back on the test, it was an automatic fail. It was considered an uncontrolled movement.
     
  13. Moving Right Along

    Moving Right Along Senior Member

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    52? There are only 50 states. Where are you getting the other 2?
     
  14. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    By subtracting 5 from 57?
     
  15. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    "50 states" leaves millions of U.S. citizens ineligible to have voting representatives to Congress, and without being able to vote for President.

    The U.S. has numerous territories lacking 'official' statehood. Two of them have larger populations than the smallest 'official' states, and have earned their own lines as equals on some U.S. government state-by-state tables, but lack official statehood and voting representatives in Congress only for reasons of politics. One of them does get electoral votes for President and Vice President, but the other does not.
     
  16. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    In past threads, this is one of several conflicting items I've seen between British and American driver procedure. Brits were required to be able to hold a car on an upslope with just the clutch and throttle, no brake, and to start uphill with zero rollback.

    But learning to drive farm equipment well before driving age, I was explicitly forbidden to use the clutch that way, as it supposedly led to premature wearout. Later in driver education, when starting uphill in the manual transmission vehicle, some minor rollback (normally just a few inches) was expected. When pulling up behind another car at an uphill intersection (stop sign or traffic light), we were required to leave enough space for the car ahead to exercise significant rollback. If we stopped too close to see the tire-pavement contact point of the car ahead, we received a demerit point.

    My official driver education class was split evenly between a manual and an automatic transmission car, in an era when half the cars on the road here were still manuals. Students had to pass the class on both, but then could take the state test on a car and transmission of their own choice.

    Excepting the Prius, my household still owns just manual transmissions.
     
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  17. ETC(SS)

    ETC(SS) The OTHER One Percenter.....

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    Asked and answered.
    DC is going to be a state soon and they are a de facto state presently.
    It's all about the "senators" and no....I'm not referring to the baseball team.

    PR is a little bit stickier, but some day they will be forced to either poop or scoot.
    I'm predicting that they will be our 51st or 52nd state soon, and for 99.999999 percent of the purposes of daily life they also are a de facto US state.
    They have driving licenses and more or less (usually more) follow the same driving laws as their fellow citizens who live in "real" US states.
    The other four permanently inhabited US territories are more or less content with their status as "just" a territory, for now.
    Opinions vary, but hey.....why buy an airline just to get a bag of peanuts, right? ;)