05.18.07
Toyota Dashboard Safety – Maintenance Icons
There is a fix for being fully informed that your car needs maintenance as your child falls out of the car. (& yes my children are always buckled in – that’s not the fix I’m talking about.)
A while ago (3,000 miles or so) I complained that Quick and Cheap Oil Change didn’t reset the maintenance required light on the dashboard – causing me to discover that in Toyota cars it overrides the door open icon. (Quick – what is more important – knowing that your child might fall out or that you’re overdue for an oil change? Who makes these decisions?)
I discussed it with the nice Toyota maintenance people (top to bottom they do seem pleasant, informed and concerned but it’s an uphill battle to keep me as a customer against ‘minor’ design decisions that are just unsafe for the American chauffeur-mother lifestyle. (and with an SUV they were going for the gay single or midlife-crises male client?)
The Toyota staff listened carefully, agreed that they would certainly notify Toyota of the problem and told me that the manual tells how to get rid of the maintenance light. Just make sure the trip odometer is on trip a, hold down the reset for 30 seconds. (Does anyone hold down the key for 29 seconds accidentally? – seems a bit long unless they think people are resetting milage while driving & are loosing track of the time their hand is through the driving wheel and on the reset button?- but I digress.)
I am a nerdly person. As a small child I read encyclopedias cover to cover. I read the car owner manuals cover to cover for my first three cars. I no longer do this. I read about hybrid operation. I looked up wind shield wiper fluid delivery when I couldn’t figure out how to wash my windows. I would have looked up how to set the clock when the time changed but I managed to figure out the H and M buttons on my own. You look up things in the car manuals that you expect to find there. I do not expect that my husband will be able to overrule a maintenance icon before I’ve had a chance to see it. I expect that this is something that a mechanic takes care of after he fixes the problem (services the car).
Toyota: I am very happy with the motor of my hybid Highland. Could you please spend a little more time on the dashboard/safety programming?
