We Stress Test the Recalled 2010 Prius Brakes

We wanted to understand the Prius situation better, so we arranged to borrow a 2010 Prius and we took it to the main parking lot at Portland International Raceway. The pavement there is rough and riddled with cracks. Luckily for our purposes, the sky was also pouring down rain, making big puddles about 20 feet across in various places. According to the complaints, the Prius braking problem occurs when drivers apply the brakes steadily on slick or bumpy road surfaces, causing the ABS to activate just as the car switches from regenerative braking to conventional hydraulic brakes.

And there we were, all set up with a surface that was both slick and bumpy. We first ran the Prius through a basic weaving slalom. We drove fast enough to assure that the traction control was working and the pavement was slick enough to allow the car to lose traction.
Then we set up a single cone at one end of 5 acres of wet pavement. That cone represented a little kid who just ran out from between two parked cars right in front of our test Prius. Would we be able to stop in time from 35 MPH on wet, bumpy pavement?

The short answer is:

We Stress Test the Recalled 2010 Prius Brakes | Driving Sports