Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

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a) My much cheaper car engages the brake automatically when I stop it and turn the engine off.

b) To engage the brake, you have to push the lever, and then it moves back to its original location, like a joystick. This means that there's no positive tactile feedback that the brake is engaged

To quote:

"The problem is that the "Monostable" design doesn’t provide any meaningful feedback about what gear you’re in — it returns to the center position after each shift. To completely confirm if you’re in drive or park or reverse, you have to look at either the LEDs on the shifter (often covered by your palm) or the digital display in the instrument cluster. This has confused thousands of people, led to over a hundred injuries, and now potentially a death. And it’s all because of a design that prioritizes screens over switches."

The 2014-2015 Grand Cherokee was recalled because of 304 vehicle rollaway incidents, 117 crashes, and a death.

There is no excuse for this kind of "too clever" design.

People drive while tired. People drive in emergency situations. People drive while distracted by screaming infants.

You can't blame dangerously bad user interface design on the users. Essential safety settings should be designed so that the operator falls into the pit of success instead of stumbling into the pit of deadly failure.

Do you recognize current gear by touching gear knob on AT car? I never do that on my linear gear knob.

The recall didn't involve any physical change, it was a firmware update that engaged the parking brake when the transmission is shifted into park. This shifter design came over from Mercedes, where it was used successfully.

A motor vehicle is a heavy machine which requires proper operation because it can cause serious injury and death. This is no different than operating a forklift. People need to start taking responsibility for their actions. If folks don't read the operating manual and can't successfully operate a motor vehicle, they have no business driving.

> can't successfully operate a motor vehicle

That's a set of goalposts that move automatically to render any argument against it invalid.

No matter how counter-intuitive, error-prone, or difficult the control interface of an automobile is made to be, you can always say: "Well, if you can't figure it out, don't drive!"

Would you fly on a plane designed with this attitude? "It'll drop out of the sky if you accidentally bump anything, without a noticeable warning, but pilots that can't handle flying shouldn't be in the cockpit anyway!"

But seriously: would you get on a 737 MAX without the MCAS fixed?

Would you get in a 737 MAX with an unfixed MCAS a decade after the MCAS incident, when people have forgotten? With a new pilot that had never heard of the two specific crashes?

Or would you insist in flying in a plane designed not to crash into the ground in ways that's counterintuitive for the pilots to deal with?

Similarly, would you let your relatives drive a 2014 model Jeep Grand Cherokee that hadn't been recalled and had the parking brake changed to be automatic? Would you trust your Grandmother to check the tiny little light every time that will stop her dying, or would you take it to the shop for her so that she doesn't have to?

I read (or skim) car operating manuals, but that's because I'm technically minded, and curious. I know a lot of people who don't bother, and haven't read a car manual in their lives: if they have "no business driving", there would be a lot less drivers on the road.

All aspects of driving should be made as intuitive as possible, from the operator controls to the fonts on road signs. Adding more mental work makes a dangerous task even more so.

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