4 ms·

It should be illegal to make a gear selector with no tactile feedback. People have died from poorly designed gear selectors. Having the car guess the direction

by knolax 6y ago

It should be illegal to make a gear selector with no tactile feedback. People have died from poorly designed gear selectors. Having the car guess the direction you drive in also sounds like the most braindead thing ever. It won't be long before someone dies from this.

jiggawatts 6y ago
People have died from poorly designed gear selector levels. Anton Yelchin, the actor that played Chekov in the recent Start Trek films died because his Jeep Grand Cherokee has a "joystick" style control for the Park gear selector. It wasn't obvious that it was properly engaged. He got out, the car rolled down an incline, and pinned him against a brick wall until the life was squeezed from his body. Elon Musk likes to joke that cars are two-ton death machines, but this stuff is no joke. https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11978044/anton-yelchin-jeep-recall-confusing-design-gear-lever https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11978044/anton-yelchin-je... https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007862/fca-jeep-grand-cherokee-gear-lever-recall-anton-yelchin https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007862/fca-jeep-grand-c...
- oyashirochama 6y ago
  It was worse, they could be in "P" but randomly were known to slip out of park, which is terrible design and safety.
  - athms 6y ago
    No, the 2015 Grand Cherokee shifter doesn't randomly change gears. There are known cases of it being accidentally hit from a passenger since there is no locking mechanism. That said, it is standard procedure to engage the parking brake and anybody that doesn't is a bad driver.
- athms 6y ago
  That car had two indicators for park, on the center console and the dashboard which Yelchin ignored. Plus, he never engaged the parking brake, which is standard procedure. His death was his own fault.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    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.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Do you recognize current gear by touching gear knob on AT car? I never do that on my linear gear knob.
    - athms 6y ago
      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.
      - ern 6y ago
Animats 6y ago
There are US regulations on this. [1] "If a steering-column-mounted transmission shift lever is used, movement from neutral position to forward drive position shall be clockwise. If the transmission shift lever sequence includes a park position, it shall be located at the end, adjacent to the reverse drive position."[1] So the P-R-N-D-L order is required by US law. GM used P-N-D-L-R at one time, which led to some unexpected shifts into reverse. Ford had to recall and fix the 2015 Lincoln MKC. That had a column of buttons in the order P-R-N-D-S-I, the last two being Sport and Ignition. Ignition was the start/stop button, and if pressed while the engine was running, immediately stopped the engine. This tended to happen when someone was trying to go to "sport" mode and accelerate. Worse, it looked just like the other buttons. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.102 [2] https://www.reifflawfirm.com/push-button-ignitions-gear-shift-quadrants-confusing-drivers-causing-accidents/ https://www.reifflawfirm.com/push-button-ignitions-gear-shif...

by knolax 6y ago

jiggawatts 6y ago

People have died from poorly designed gear selector levels. Anton Yelchin, the actor that played Chekov in the recent Start Trek films died because his Jeep Grand Cherokee has a "joystick" style control for the Park gear selector. It wasn't obvious that it was properly engaged. He got out, the car rolled down an incline, and pinned him against a brick wall until the life was squeezed from his body. Elon Musk likes to joke that cars are two-ton death machines, but this stuff is no joke. https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11978044/anton-yelchin-jeep-recall-confusing-design-gear-lever https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11978044/anton-yelchin-je... https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007862/fca-jeep-grand-cherokee-gear-lever-recall-anton-yelchin https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/22/12007862/fca-jeep-grand-c...

oyashirochama 6y ago
It was worse, they could be in "P" but randomly were known to slip out of park, which is terrible design and safety.
- athms 6y ago
  No, the 2015 Grand Cherokee shifter doesn't randomly change gears. There are known cases of it being accidentally hit from a passenger since there is no locking mechanism. That said, it is standard procedure to engage the parking brake and anybody that doesn't is a bad driver.
athms 6y ago
That car had two indicators for park, on the center console and the dashboard which Yelchin ignored. Plus, he never engaged the parking brake, which is standard procedure. His death was his own fault.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  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.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Do you recognize current gear by touching gear knob on AT car? I never do that on my linear gear knob.
  - athms 6y ago
    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.
    - ern 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

There are US regulations on this. [1] "If a steering-column-mounted transmission shift lever is used, movement from neutral position to forward drive position shall be clockwise. If the transmission shift lever sequence includes a park position, it shall be located at the end, adjacent to the reverse drive position."[1] So the P-R-N-D-L order is required by US law. GM used P-N-D-L-R at one time, which led to some unexpected shifts into reverse. Ford had to recall and fix the 2015 Lincoln MKC. That had a column of buttons in the order P-R-N-D-S-I, the last two being Sport and Ignition. Ignition was the start/stop button, and if pressed while the engine was running, immediately stopped the engine. This tended to happen when someone was trying to go to "sport" mode and accelerate. Worse, it looked just like the other buttons. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.102 [2] https://www.reifflawfirm.com/push-button-ignitions-gear-shift-quadrants-confusing-drivers-causing-accidents/ https://www.reifflawfirm.com/push-button-ignitions-gear-shif...