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> An overwhelming feeling of stupidity hit me almost as fast. Nine-year-old me was not in fact smarter than Toyota engineers. It’s unfortunate how many people

> An overwhelming feeling of stupidity hit me almost as fast. Nine-year-old me was not in fact smarter than Toyota engineers. It’s unfortunate how many people never come to this realization.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
I think we have the opposite problem too. People ascribe way too much intentional design to shit they don't understand even where no such intentional design exists. Like 99% of the stuff you encounter on a daily basis is how it is because of some 3-way trade between aesthetically pleasing, the economic realities of producing that object and "how they've always been." It is not engineered for performance in the slightest other than some basic "yeah that should do" napkin analysis.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Or where the original constraints made sense at the time but they’ve been forgotten and all we’re left with is the end product.
  - timClicks 5y ago
    I think of this whenever I see coat hooks with dual hooks, the top one extending further. I've always assumed that they were designed when people regularly wore hats.
    - maccard 5y ago
      In my house, we use the bottom hooks for "outdoor base" and the longer top hooks for "outdoor top layer". It means you're never putting dry base layers on top of a wet waterproof layer. But your explanation makes _way_ more sense.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      I think it also provides value for people to hang purses. But as other comments mention they found utility in it through layering. It may have been for hats once, but it’s certainly kept around because people found new uses.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > it’s certainly kept around because people found new uses. Yasure that's the reason? I mean, sure, it's possible... But my money is on the "how they've always been" / "the original constraints made sense at the time but they’ve been forgotten and all we’re left with is the end product" mentioned above.
- soco 5y ago
  Happened to me more than once in a new project to come across some old code I didn't like, and when trying to understand it finding out that the old team doesn't understand it either and just does things out of inertia. Now what's one supposed to do here, except starting to refactor to get a feeling what dragons there are?
oceanplexian 5y ago
So to play devils advocate, a seatbelt harness is actually much safer than the seatbelt in a mass-produced automobile. The reason seatbelts release tension is a compromise in safety made for the average driver (i.e lowest common denominator). The engineers probably thought they would compromise on safety because otherwise most people are not capable or willing to operate a harness. Aircraft and high performance automobiles use a design that would make perfect sense to a nine year old.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  First of all, aren't harnesses only safer if you go all the way with roll cages, helmets, etc., and more dangerous if you don't? And more importantly, this misses the point of the original article, in which the author didn't understand how seat belts work at all.
  - ff317 5y ago
    Correct. Multi-point racing harnesses can only be used with a cage. The standard diagonal shoulder belt design allows your body to lean over sideways (towards the center of the car) if the roof of the vehicle caves in on your head and pushes you down. If you're in a harness without a rollcage and the roof caves in, the harness locks your spine upright and you end up with a head/neck/spine injury that's very likely to be fatal. This whole line of reasoning snowballs from there, because beyond that: If you do install a well-designed cage just so you can safely use a harness, now you also need to wear a helmet. A cage without a helmet is begging for a bad head injury, because your head bounces around a little during an accident, and those bars are hefty, rigid, immobile objects mere inches away from your skull. Even in a fairly low-speed incident that wouldn't cause other injuries, the bars would put a dent in your naked skull. You're also going to want a neck restraint system for that helmet (it's like a collar under the harness with little straps to the helmet, so that it can't move far), in part because of the added head weight (momentum) from the helmet and how rigidly your torso is locked in place, to prevent neck injuries. Now that you have all those parts down: the combination of the harness locking down your torso, the neck restraint, and the limited window of visibility from the helmet means you've lost a good chunk of your peripheral vision and can't turn your head/neck to check things either. With your vision more or less locked in straight forward, you can't see all the things you really need to see to drive in normal street conditions safely. The limited vision works fine on a racetrack under racing conditions because everyone's trained the same way and operating in a sanitized environment, with no "intersections" or cross traffic, you have flag workers and/or radios to warn you of some things you can't see, etc. The bottom line is that both street and race car safety systems are a whole complex of things that are engineered together in concert. They're well-tuned to the appropriate environment, and foolishly mixing ideas from the two generally makes you less safe, not more. Random context video showing a race crash from the inside and outside perspective. Loss of brakes at the end of a high speed straight at COTA (he was still moving at 136 mph at the wall impact, after all the attempts to slow it down). The driver walked away fine, thanks to all the safety gear that the cockpit video shows off nicely near the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQitOyEyRd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQitOyEyRd0 .

> An overwhelming feeling of stupidity hit me almost as fast. Nine-year-old me was not in fact smarter than Toyota engineers. It’s unfortunate how many people never come to this realization.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

I think we have the opposite problem too. People ascribe way too much intentional design to shit they don't understand even where no such intentional design exists. Like 99% of the stuff you encounter on a daily basis is how it is because of some 3-way trade between aesthetically pleasing, the economic realities of producing that object and "how they've always been." It is not engineered for performance in the slightest other than some basic "yeah that should do" napkin analysis.

vlovich123 5y ago
Or where the original constraints made sense at the time but they’ve been forgotten and all we’re left with is the end product.
- timClicks 5y ago
  I think of this whenever I see coat hooks with dual hooks, the top one extending further. I've always assumed that they were designed when people regularly wore hats.
  - maccard 5y ago
    In my house, we use the bottom hooks for "outdoor base" and the longer top hooks for "outdoor top layer". It means you're never putting dry base layers on top of a wet waterproof layer. But your explanation makes _way_ more sense.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    I think it also provides value for people to hang purses. But as other comments mention they found utility in it through layering. It may have been for hats once, but it’s certainly kept around because people found new uses.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > it’s certainly kept around because people found new uses. Yasure that's the reason? I mean, sure, it's possible... But my money is on the "how they've always been" / "the original constraints made sense at the time but they’ve been forgotten and all we’re left with is the end product" mentioned above.
soco 5y ago
Happened to me more than once in a new project to come across some old code I didn't like, and when trying to understand it finding out that the old team doesn't understand it either and just does things out of inertia. Now what's one supposed to do here, except starting to refactor to get a feeling what dragons there are?

oceanplexian 5y ago

So to play devils advocate, a seatbelt harness is actually much safer than the seatbelt in a mass-produced automobile. The reason seatbelts release tension is a compromise in safety made for the average driver (i.e lowest common denominator). The engineers probably thought they would compromise on safety because otherwise most people are not capable or willing to operate a harness. Aircraft and high performance automobiles use a design that would make perfect sense to a nine year old.

josephcsible 5y ago
First of all, aren't harnesses only safer if you go all the way with roll cages, helmets, etc., and more dangerous if you don't? And more importantly, this misses the point of the original article, in which the author didn't understand how seat belts work at all.
- ff317 5y ago
  Correct. Multi-point racing harnesses can only be used with a cage. The standard diagonal shoulder belt design allows your body to lean over sideways (towards the center of the car) if the roof of the vehicle caves in on your head and pushes you down. If you're in a harness without a rollcage and the roof caves in, the harness locks your spine upright and you end up with a head/neck/spine injury that's very likely to be fatal. This whole line of reasoning snowballs from there, because beyond that: If you do install a well-designed cage just so you can safely use a harness, now you also need to wear a helmet. A cage without a helmet is begging for a bad head injury, because your head bounces around a little during an accident, and those bars are hefty, rigid, immobile objects mere inches away from your skull. Even in a fairly low-speed incident that wouldn't cause other injuries, the bars would put a dent in your naked skull. You're also going to want a neck restraint system for that helmet (it's like a collar under the harness with little straps to the helmet, so that it can't move far), in part because of the added head weight (momentum) from the helmet and how rigidly your torso is locked in place, to prevent neck injuries. Now that you have all those parts down: the combination of the harness locking down your torso, the neck restraint, and the limited window of visibility from the helmet means you've lost a good chunk of your peripheral vision and can't turn your head/neck to check things either. With your vision more or less locked in straight forward, you can't see all the things you really need to see to drive in normal street conditions safely. The limited vision works fine on a racetrack under racing conditions because everyone's trained the same way and operating in a sanitized environment, with no "intersections" or cross traffic, you have flag workers and/or radios to warn you of some things you can't see, etc. The bottom line is that both street and race car safety systems are a whole complex of things that are engineered together in concert. They're well-tuned to the appropriate environment, and foolishly mixing ideas from the two generally makes you less safe, not more. Random context video showing a race crash from the inside and outside perspective. Loss of brakes at the end of a high speed straight at COTA (he was still moving at 136 mph at the wall impact, after all the attempts to slow it down). The driver walked away fine, thanks to all the safety gear that the cockpit video shows off nicely near the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQitOyEyRd0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQitOyEyRd0 .