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The Rise of Touch Screens in Cars Explained
- h2odragon 6y agoTeenage me and crew had a "stunt" car with hideously complicated controls. We had valves for the brakes on each wheel, multiple fluid tanks and pumps to spray them out front and rear nozzles, as well as into the exhaust systems.. oh yeah there were 3 (usually) ways for the exhaust to go, with a big clunky valve to control that sticking out of the floorboard too hot to touch. The electonics were even worse. We ran 2 or 3 batteries and 2 alternators. Many lights, radios, etc etc. Fun project; and a great lesson in the value of simplicity in interfaces. No one could pilot that vehicle alone, really. Just driving it as a car without using any of the stunts was so fraught that only two of us would attempt it. It really did require two people for any safety. Someone had be available to deal with the inevitable leaks and such. I got into a rented new car a few months ago, and had to take several minutes to figure out just the minimal "drive safely" set of controls... They were more complicated and there was more totally irrelevant crap than my savage teenage abandon had dreamed up. We have more buttons to punch, controls to frob, and state to manage now than the Ford Model T; and almost none of it has anything to do with the operation of the car. If we're going to go nuts with controls, lets at least make them control real things, and design them to be useful. Chokes and trottle levers and spark gap timing adjustments FTW.