Prius freakout

[fbhjr]

We had some snow yesterday. Not too much. Maybe as deep as my ankle.
Although a bunch of folks called out, I was in the office and didn’t have too much trouble with it.

Over night, it got colder and much of the slushy stuff froze. So, there was a lot of ice on the road this morning.

As I drove down the highway this morning, I must have gone over an ice patch as the “loss of traction” warning light lit up on the dashboard.
I kept going. I’ve driven on ice before.
Soon, the ABS brakes, brakes in general and general warning light also lit up.

As far as I could tell, my poor little Prius was totally freaking out about ice on the road.
“I can’t feel the road!” it was shouting. “If I can’t feel the road, I can’t stop! I can’t avoid hitting things! We may swerve off to oblivion!”

I checked that the brakes were working. They were. I certainly had enough traction to continue forward.

When I got off on a side road and stopped at a light I cycled the car off and on. At first all the lights came back on. But, when we started to move forward, they all went off.
“Hey, the ground’s back!” the car was saying.

I’m glad it was the computer freaking out about the readings it was getting off of the tires and not a case of my having no brakes as I moved down the highway at speed.
But, since the brakes are the motors that drive the car working in reverse, I wasn’t too worried about it if the car was continuing to move forward.

I do feel bad about the computer freaking out.

I’ve had it happen in real life when I hit ice and did go spinning into the median. I know how freaky that feels. I understand why the computer was upset.
But, I’m glad that’s all it was.