The latest Prius one in California sounds particularly suspicious -- IMHO.
As to shifting into Neutral, there's not a lot of heavy lifting involved.
Check out:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100204083409AAokxjS
and this YouTube video of how to do so:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_03lbr-Jw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_03lbr-Jw [/ame]