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Comment by kloch | Hacker News Reader

This was a real problem until US Gov mandated "PRND" shift order, among other things.

Now, if they could just make the windshield wiper controls all work the same direction...

Why not just remove the physical windshield wiper controls, try to make them automatic, and then bury the overrides in a touchscreen menu 2 layers deep? And what if you got rid of the PRND stock and putting your car in reverse involved making a gesture on the same touchscreen? Genius!

No see to put your car in reverse you need to throw your arm over the passenger seat and look over your shoulder, activating the pressure sensor in the back of the passenger headrest, and the face recognition sensor in the rear window.

To be fair, that's not a bad idea. It'd probably stop a bunch of drivers driving backwards without looking. Let's do it.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but this is a terrible idea. A family is driving on the highway. Kids are fighting in the back seat. The mother, who is driving, turns her head and tells them to stop. The car is rear-ended by a dump truck, and all three are dead.

I have to assume modern auto transmissions have computer lockouts to prevent you from money-shifting it into R while at speed, don't they? I'm thinking like modern dial-a-shift where you aren't directly manipulating the transmission with the shifter.

I've never tried to test it cause I don't like horribly expensive mechanical noises, but yeah.

If only we could have Tesla's excellent electric drive trains without all the rest of their "innovation".

So true. Victims of the 'We are better at this one thing than other automakers, so clearly we will be better at all of the other things too' mentality.' Like seeing metrics that defrost is rarely used so lets bury it in a sub menu.

> Why not just remove the physical windshield wiper controls, try to make them automatic

FWIW, 25 years ago, I had some generic assignment when I was student, I don't remember the exact details, but I made it on auto-windshield wiping tech, and what I found was that multiple patents already existed back then (one from Mercedes or BMW, I don't remember which ; it might have been both). I'm mystified that we aren't seeing those everywhere yet.

I drove a few rented cars in Norway. All automatic windshield wipers sucked. They did not active in a light rain and in heavier rain drove wipers unnecessary frequently. The least bad was Kia. At least they got frequency right.

They might not be common in the US? All the cars I've had in the past ten years (French and German brands) had automatic wipers and they were not expensive models.

Some work better than others, but most of the time when they don't work well it's because the wipers are worn and need to be replaced.

I think I must be missing something in this discussion but my 2014 Golf came with auto-wipers, auto-headlights on, auto-rear view mirror dimming and auto-full beam dipping.

Isn’t this a solved problem and completely standard on most new cars for a few years now?

That has been slowly but surely trickling down. I think the high trim Honda Civics have auto wipers now.

The new tech these days is to spray fluid out of the wipers themselves. The blades have a lot of holes laser cut into them, as the blades move across the windshield they spray fluid just an inch ahead of the blade. It's starting to become very common in the luxury car brands, even the lower tier Lexueses and BMWs are getting them as the newer gen cars are released.

It doesn't sound particularly cool, but when you try using them it is a very nice feature to have.

My Jetta GLI has automatic wipers, I don't quite trust them yet, though. Seattle rain has a way of making things hard to see without much actual liquid happening.

That sounds like a very effective way to replace cheap, generic, easily replaceable windscreen wipers with expensive, high margin, brand specific wipers.

On my old Peugeot 405 (from 1990) that was done by an additional tube attached to the metal of the wipers. The wipers themselves were just standard and not especially expensive.

It was interesting but I didn't find it especially better. They moved away from this and the later models just have normal sprayers. Maybe the very latest have that again, I don't know.

> This was a real problem until US Gov mandated "PRND" shift order

Automakers also equip automatic transmission cars with paddle shifters, which really give you no tactile feedback to let you know what gear you're in. They also make it difficult to shift while turning. A traditional manual with the HH shift pattern gives you that feedback that allows you to know what gear you're in and doesn't limit your ability to shift while turning.

Conversely it's an automatic car - generally speaking you're not shifting. The flappy paddle style is just for the pseudo-racecar feel, not practicality.

When driving in mountains with a lot of downhill shifting gears is must unless one wants to melt the brakes.

You don't need paddle shifters or a manual transmission to do that, though.

Some automatics don't really give you much control over what gear you're in. I have a 2012 Honda Odyssey with a PRNDL button. With L, you can drive in first gear up to red line (not sure of the speed). There is a D3 button that will downshift to 3rd gear if the shifter is in the D position. You can downshift to 2nd if you move the shifter to the L position when going less than 60 mph, but that's not obvious. The car will also downshift to 1st if your speed drops below 30 mph and won't upshift to 2nd even if the speed goes above 30 mph (meaning I have to shift it back to D and then back to L if I want to keep it in 2nd). 3rd gear doesn't really provide much in terms of engine braking when going less than 50 mph

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