I had a scary moment the other day. I was with some friends, too many to fit in one car, and we were planning to go somewhere. Nobody knew how to get there, so naturally I plotted a course with my handy Navi so they could follow me. Then my friend who was looking over the map got out of my car, and went to his car. I had already powered up to get directions, so I just put the car in "D." That's when the trouble started, or so it seemed. I got a big red triangle on the dash, and a message on the MFD that said something like "Battery will not charge with the car in Neutral. Place the Car in Park." The message was weird, and that was distracting, and the red triangle was also distracting so I didn't notice the real problem right away. I powered down and started up again. Put the car into "D" and got the same thing. I decided to see if the car would go, so I drove about half a block. Things seemed fine except for the big red triangle of doom and the weird "neutral" message. Then my wife, who was sitting in the passenger seat, said "the door light is on, stupid." Actually she didn't call me "stupid," but that's how I felt. My door wasn't closed. It wasn't even in that partly-latched position you get if you don't push hard enough. I had pulled it almost closed after getting in, but for some reason didn't close it all the way. I closed it and everything was fine after that. So, the moral of the story is, why not put a message like "your door is open, stupid!" on the MFD, rather than something that has nothing to do with what's actually happening!!??
Yeah I think a simple "HAY you #^&@%$& idiot! Your door is open! What do you want to do kill yourself? FINE!" Then the car floors it on it own and swerves left and right until you fall out. Yeah I think they should add one of those. Serious there really should be a "hay your door is open" instead of a generic error. What is the car running? Windows ME?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ May 16 2007, 12:50 PM) [snapback]443457[/snapback]</div> In the 2007 it does tell you the door is open on the MFD.
Well that proves that Toyota learns a LOT faster than Micro$oft. I'm happy for future generations of Prius owners that they won't get scared by that error message. The thing that gets me is, the door-open light is still on, but the warning message on the screen and that big red triangle with an exclamation point in it both get your attention and you forget to look for obvious things for a moment.
