Fast Fiction

The thing about being an early adopter of new technology is that you’re a bit of a guinea pig.

My 2004 Toyota Prius (I call her Dyna) had a software malfunction yesterday while I was driving to my whale watch class.

The system threw up an alert on all screens with alerts a’beeping. It continued to function, but just didn’t want me to continue driving.

What happened isn’t clear. I was driving along, actually getting pretty good mileage with my tank total (about 90 miles on the tank so far) at about 53 MPG. My battery was fully charged with all green bars and even though I was driving on battery the full indicator didn’t change for at least a minute. I thought it odd, but then again I was getting an infinite amount of miles per gallon and when driving in rush hour traffice it’s like winning the game. The traffic was moving, at about 25-40 MPH. I was going 38 when the system started its warning. The car was driveable, in fact besides the lights, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the car. I was in the far left lane and I immediately put on my signal to merge off the freeway. The fellow next to me did not immediately oblige so I put on my hazards and everyone let me off. I made it to the Exposition Blvd. offramp and parked myself in the LAPD Internal Affairs office parking lot.

I called Toyota’s roadside assistance and they said they’d tow my car to the closest dealer, which happened to be Carson where I bought the car. In retrospect I should have insisted that they take it to Hollywood Toyota where I last had it serviced, and of course the closest location to my home.

I talked to the service guys this morning and they can’t figure out why the car was giving me the errors and said that it’s driveable and I can come get it. They called Toyota’s helpline for additional guidance and have not heard back from them yet. So I’m going to leave the car with them until they know why it did that. There’s another brake light wiring recall on it right now anyway that I needed to have done and they needed to order the part.

I’ll just figure out how to get to and from work the next couple days and it’ll all be okay.