More unpleasant surprises thrown up by my Excel 2L Hybrid

[Louie]

Today my Toyota decided to jam on the brakes while i was trying to park up. The first hissy fit was crawling forward facing a brick wall a place i have parked many times before without any issues. The second was reversing very slowly into a minor road from the spot. The Toyota decided to slam on its brakes and stop then after a very long pregnant pause a van passed by very slowly a vehicle I had seen and had taken into account of when reversing. This van was nowhere near  my Toyota. I had already assessed the reversing scenario and the Toyota had decided I was wrong and taken over the control of the vehicle how crazy is that.  Toyota need a rethink here.

[Roy124]

I agree the car is perhaps more cautious than we are.  It ls rear safety zone is large and where you can see the threat receding it disagrees. 

Think though of some impatient drivers, the instant the rear arc is clear,  foot down, full lock, surge back and crunch as the previously receding vehicle or pedestrian has stopped in your blind spot.

I agree it is alarming, especially to passengers,  but it is safe.

[marlot]

Yes, the first time it happened, I thought I'd hit something.  It is very cautious.

[RabButler]

I'm pretty sure you can adjust the sensitivity.

[Cyker]

5 hours ago, Louie said:

Today my Toyota decided to jam on the brakes while i was trying to park up. The first hissy fit was crawling forward facing a brick wall a place i have parked many times before without any issues. The second was reversing very slowly into a minor road from the spot. The Toyota decided to slam on its brakes and stop then after a very long pregnant pause a van passed by very slowly a vehicle I had seen and had taken into account of when reversing. This van was nowhere near  my Toyota. I had already assessed the reversing scenario and the Toyota had decided I was wrong and taken over the control of the vehicle how crazy is that.  Toyota need a rethink here.

Yup, complained about it a few times on here already with my Yaris; Just don't put yourself in positions where you need to reverse and you'll be fine  

(Only half-joking - I always reverse into parking bays now, as going in nose-first and then trying to reverse out after is very difficult to do in a busy car park without the RCTA having a panic attack!  ) 

 

[RzrAzr]

yup, deactivated that feature because I have never had it before and it scared the !Removed! out of me every time it did it. Was either doing it because I was slightly faster into my parking spot as my Corolla would have like, or was backing out of parked position on the side of the road when someone would drive by. I'd say I'm confident enough in my driving skills not to have that feature as opposed to having it annoy me

[Louie]

Thanks guys. 

I presume the settings located on the driver's screen are the one's to be used. Is this self evident in the menu ? or is that setting abbreviated in some way ?

I really need to disable these as my passengers became somewhat spooked.

[Roy124]

11 hours ago, Cyker said:

always reverse into parking bays now, as going in nose-first and then trying to reverse out after is very difficult to do in a busy car park

Once drove my Mercedes nose first into the bay.  Reversing in had not been an option.  When I came to reverse out my exit route was insufficient but I was able to drive ahead through the slot ahead......until another car pulled in.

He was very understanding and allowed me out. 🥲

 

[Stopeter44]

Are we talking about RTCA (real traffic crossing alert, or some such), I can turn it off on the Yaris, but not permanently off. It will warn or slam on the brakes inconsistently I find. Putting the finishing touches to a parallel parking manoeuvre on a busy street is about the worst, but it's not consistent. It will pick up movement on the other side of the street. 

On balance I'm glad I have the pack which includes this feature, but I could live without it.

[AndrueC]

17 hours ago, Cyker said:

Yup, complained about it a few times on here already with my Yaris; Just don't put yourself in positions where you need to reverse and you'll be fine  

(Only half-joking - I always reverse into parking bays now, as going in nose-first and then trying to reverse out after is very difficult to do in a busy car park without the RCTA having a panic attack!  ) 

That is good practice and always has been. If nothing else the RCTA can now be credited with encouraging you to drive in a safer manner 😉

It's just a little worrying that the reason you no longer do something dangerous is to stop your car beeping at you rather than because it's inherently more risky.

[Corollanutter]

Not on a Toyota, but my friend was reversing his new Kia Sportage off my driveway a week ago (in almost darkness) when a cyclist (with no lights) came round the corner very quickly. The CTA saw the cyclist and applied the brakes. No way would my friend have seen him before it was too late. One accident prevented. 

[Parts-King]

39 minutes ago, Corollanutter said:

Not on a Toyota, but my friend was reversing his new Kia Sportage off my driveway a week ago (in almost darkness) when a cyclist (with no lights) came round the corner very quickly. The CTA saw the cyclist and applied the brakes. No way would my friend have seen him before it was too late. One accident prevented. 

The latest batch of safety features, lane depart, rear cross alert etc are specifically designed to reduce these very specific accident areas. Yes they annoy me too sometimes, but they are not put on for fun, they do address specific accidents such as falling asleep at the wheel and pedestrians/cyclists crossing behind a reversing vehicle. I reverse into a space near a skip when in work, one day it must have thought the skip was going to run into me and stopped me smartish, when you think about it, that could have been a child or somebody stepping out behind me

[Chas G]

Parking at Sainsburys recently while in drive with the brake on in my yaris cross,  I opened the car door to see how close I was to the white line of the bay. Car started alarming and turned itself off leaving me half blocking the lane while I gathered my thoughts.

[JayCee88]

21 hours ago, RabButler said:

I'm pretty sure you can adjust the sensitivity.

Yes, 3 levels of sensitivity available in the menu. You need to use the menu in the odometer. 

[Cyker]

4 hours ago, AndrueC said:

That is good practice and always has been. If nothing else the RCTA can now be credited with encouraging you to drive in a safer manner 😉

It's just a little worrying that the reason you no longer do something dangerous is to stop your car beeping at you rather than because it's inherently more risky.

If it just beeped at me I wouldn't care, but it will physically stop the car until it thinks it's safe, and I would argue that it's far more dangerous if it leaves you stuck half-out of a bay and stops responding to accelerator inputs.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about driving nose-first into a bay - It's what any normal person doing a lot of shopping would do, as you can just open the boot and throw all the shopping in. Reversing into a bay makes this near-impossible and at times I've either have to drive out and block the road while I load the shopping or transport one bag at a time into the back seats with my trolley unattended in the road while I'm trying to move the bags between the narrow gap of the cars without scraping either.

It's never been a problem with previous models, although in this one the poor rear 270 degree rear visibility does make reverse manoeuvres in general much more tricky than in previous models.

 

3 hours ago, Chas G said:

Parking at Sainsburys recently while in drive with the brake on in my yaris cross,  I opened the car door to see how close I was to the white line of the bay. Car started alarming and turned itself off leaving me half blocking the lane while I gathered my thoughts.

What do you mean by it turned the car off?  

I've done parking manoeuvres with the door open before and it screamed... uh... beeped bloody murder at me the whole time, but didn't 'turn off'

 

9 hours ago, Stopeter44 said:

Are we talking about RTCA (real traffic crossing alert, or some such), I can turn it off on the Yaris, but not permanently off. It will warn or slam on the brakes inconsistently I find. Putting the finishing touches to a parallel parking manoeuvre on a busy street is about the worst, but it's not consistent. It will pick up movement on the other side of the street. 

On balance I'm glad I have the pack which includes this feature, but I could live without it.

For the record, it's Rear Cross-Traffic Alert (RCTA), and is designed to spot cars 'crossing' behind you and stop you reversing into them (Although its definition of cars also extends to pedestrians, cyclists, trolleys, seagulls, pigeons, shopping bags, crisp packets and bushes??).

I think it uses the sonic sensors as only cars with proximity sensors seem to get it. It does work, but just a bit too well sometimes.

Interestingly, I had to reverse out of a bay in a busy carpark yesterday and it didn't trap me once, so maybe I really was about to run over some unseen person all those other times!  We may never know... What? What bodies?

[Chas G]

@Cyker I think it turned off and I seem to recall i had to restart it. I got in a bit of a panic.

[Cyker]

Weird!

But yeah these systems do seem to be made to panic you as much as possible!  

*nothing* *nothing* beep beep beepbeepBEEPBEEPBEEEEEE *CRKRKRSRRSRKSKSRKRSK* OMG WTF IS GOING ON PANIC AAA

Then you go through the SHUT UP YOU STUPID BEEP- URK! phase until finally you get to the

"*sigh* Don't worry it's just the ADAS ignore it" phase  

 

The infuriating thing is I would just turn it all off, except with all the false positives there have been a handful of times it's genuinely saved me and/or someone else from dinging/scratching/smashing/being crushed by the car... and just because of those I can't bring myself to turn them off!

[Louie]

Sainsburys ?? who shops there? 🙄 i only shop at decent stores with decent parking such as Waitrose  I usually get an attendant to guide me in after he has located a suitable spot for me 😀then i hand him my keys to look after the motta. No seriously folks I  have driven cars and ridden motorcycles for nigh on nearly 55 years without any accidents why is Toyota now teaching me🙁 how to park and reverse its insulting.

[Obsidian Estate]

11 hours ago, Louie said:

  I usually get an attendant to guide me in 

Is that a euphemism?

[yossarian247]

12 hours ago, Louie said:

Sainsburys ?? who shops there? 🙄 i only shop at decent stores with decent parking such as Waitrose  I usually get an attendant to guide me in after he has located a suitable spot for me 😀then i hand him my keys to look after the motta. No seriously folks I  have driven cars and ridden motorcycles for nigh on nearly 55 years without any accidents why is Toyota now teaching me🙁 how to park and reverse its insulting.

Alan Coren once said "I love Sainsbury's, it keeps the riff-raff out of Waitrose" 

[Chas G]

@Louie you need to embrace modern technology ie you do what the car wants to do not what you want to do. Having features that you can disable but which automatically reset themselves every time you start the car is perfectly normal.

I suspect your kitchen appliances aren't WiFi enabled either. Even my lazy boy reclining chair is "smart". If I sit in it for too long it alarms and slowly rises to make me stand up. The only downside is that my cat doesn't understand and when it rises she growls and sinks her claws into the leather upholstery. 

The next generation of smart cars will have face recognition and eye tracking cameras which will register if you do not look in your rear view mirror at least once every 114 seconds, alarm and put the engine in limp home mode for the rest if the day.

Be thankful for the opportunity to engage with your car. You wouldn't want one that you just put fuel in and drive. 

[AndrueC]

22 hours ago, Cyker said:

There is nothing inherently dangerous about driving nose-first into a bay

Oh dear. Another worrying driver.

What is inherently dangerous is reversing back out of the bay.

And I'm sorry if driving more safely inconveniences you but I once spent three months on crutches due to a driver reversing out of a parking bay.

[Big_D]

I always reverse into a parking bay, wherever possible. It makes for a quicker getaway.

[Cyker]

1 hour ago, AndrueC said:

Oh dear. Another worrying driver.

What is inherently dangerous is reversing back out of the bay.

And I'm sorry if driving more safely inconveniences you but I once spent three months on crutches due to a driver reversing out of a parking bay.

I'm sorry, but in my opinion if you can't reverse out of a bay safely, you probably shouldn't be driving at all.

Everyone is taught reversing manoeuvres and how to perform them safely with plenty of observation before they get their license and should be capable of doing them safely when required to.

 

 

[Extreme_One]

2 hours ago, AndrueC said:

What is inherently dangerous is reversing back out of the bay.

And I'm sorry if driving more safely inconveniences you but I once spent three months on crutches due to a driver reversing out of a parking bay.

I'm sorry you were injured. That must have been awful.

Your injury was caused by a bad driver, not an inherently dangerous manoeuvre.

The majority of drivers are capable of looking before performing a reversing manoeuvre. For those that struggle there are beepers and additional safety systems.

A great many pedestrians, on the other hand, appear to be totally oblivious to the inherent dangers of walking in car parks where cars are likely to be manoeuvring.