Quote:
Originally Posted by TorqueDog
Thanked exclusively for this.
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I drove my dad's Rav4 over Christmas, and I finally understand. The vehicle seems designed to lull you into driving slow. The hybrid, anyway, has a fairly strong regen when you take your foot off the gas. So if you are used to coasting a lot, you end up going way slower than you suspect. The digital speedo needle kinda blurs when it is changing, so you don't have a precise indication, and it felt easier to not look at it(and the digital dash is a mess of...stuff). This is an even bigger issue if you are using TACC, and the next thing you know you've gone from 100 to 90 because the person in front of you is going that speed, but you didn't notice because the blurry needle has snuck it's way down.
The vehicle being generally boring and almost encapsulating like it is hugging you, then lulling you with the droning noise from the rear(this may be due to the studded tires my dad fitted) doesn't help, because you just lose any will to drive it in a spirited manner. Stepping on the gas hard makes so much of a racket that it had me backing off, just to avoid the sound of it all. It just feels easier to turn yourself over to it.
In short, I'm not so sure it's the drivers, it's the vehicle.
Another super annoying aside that I only discovered because I had to clear the snow off of it 8 times in Canmore, that's a super pain. With the roof rack and rear spoiler there are so many spots for snow to get jammed up it's a pain to clear. And the cabin air intake is buried, like, 8" below hood level so you have to dig like Oak Island to get all the snow out. Oh, and if you accidentally leave the wipers on auto, they won't move until you clear snow from whatever sensor it is using, and then they will move with zero regard to them being frozen to the windshield or your brush in the way. It's go time and they go.