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There was a small and relatively unsuccessful F1 racing team around about 10 years ago, who's name I shall not say here. Internally such teams were known as "pi
by junto 11y ago
There was a small and relatively unsuccessful F1 racing team around about 10 years ago, who's name I shall not say here. Internally such teams were known as "pit dodgers".
When it came to the design of their gearbox, the work was outsourced (as much of it is in F1 unless you are Ferrari).
The primary gearbox designer did most of the work, however reverse gear proved to be a problem, but rather than fix the problem, it was left to the junior designer who couldn't solve it either, who also left it pretty much unfunctional. This was based on the concept that:
a) Reverse is rarely (if ever needed) (sidenote: disqualified if used in the pits during a race)
b) The "pit dodger" team was unlikely to last the entire race anyway, so the gearbox didn't need to standup to a full race duration anyway. The effort put in to designing the components (i.e. precision) can be reduced to match the expectation of success and failure rate of other third party components. Design and production time can be saved and extra profit made.
Thus lies the lesson of the emergency call feature, or any other feature that designers feel don't really require that much attention because they are rarely used. These features are often handed to junior developers and engineers, because of the fact that people have a tendency to deem lesser-used features as unimportant.
Which is fine of course until you have an emergency and you desparately need to make that emergency call because your, or someone else's life, depends on it. Or you need to reverse out of the way of a damn F1 car coming towards you at 150mph down a straight and you are sitting in the middle of the track. WTF, reverse doesn't engage....oh shiiiiiiit....
TLDR: Features that are very infrequently used are not always the features of least importance.
- otis_inf 11y agoA Formula 1 car is disqualified if its reverse doesn't work (and this is the case for quite some time now). Not sure which team you're referring to, I mean Minardi was sold to Red Bull in 2005, so it has to be before that ;)
- junto 11y agoYou are right. It has to have reverse and that can be checked at scrutineering, but it just has to eventually reverse. It doesn't say anything about having to do it quickly, or effectively: All cars must be able to be driven in reverse by the driver at any time during the Event. BTW, for anyone interested, the current technical FIA F1 2015 technical specifications are here: http://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/regulation/file/2015%20TECHNICAL%20REGULATIONS%202014-12-03.pdf http://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/regulation/file/2015%...
- artmageddon 11y ago> (sidenote: disqualified if used in the pits during a race) Off topic, but why would using reverse in the pits disqualify a driver / team?
- 83457 11y agosafety issue i would assume. many pit crew members have been killed over the years in motorsports so precautions and rules have been progressively been put in place to prevent them
- artmageddon 11y agoMakes sense, thanks!
- chx 11y agoYeah but the emergency call feature, as far as I can understand it, is not an important part of this?
- rplnt 11y agoIt's only a tool in this case, yes.
- Someone 11y agoEmergency call is one of the features that must work for a device to pass certification (numbers: 911, 112, and, a third one I cannot remember). In that sense, this is not an unimportant feature. However, AFAIK, not being able to make regular calls without using a password isn't part of certification testing.
- subway 11y agoI think "0118 999 881 999 119 7253" was the third one you were looking for.
- BuildTheRobots 11y agoI believe 999 is the third number.
- Someone 11y agoI think you're right. That's what I vaguely remembered, but didn't dare mention.