And if you’re going to change things around, you might keep in mind that your customers may not be keeping up.
This is just stupid, scary weird…
Drivers in Chrysler vehicles can’t figure out how to put car in park
Electronic gear shifters on some newer Fiat Chrysler SUVs and cars are so confusing that drivers have exited the vehicles with the engines running and while they are still in gear, causing crashes and serious injuries, U.S. safety investigators have determined.
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In the vehicles, drivers pull the shift lever forward or backward to select gears and the shifter doesn’t move along a track like in most cars. A light shows which gear is selected, but to get from Drive to Park, drivers must push the lever forward three times. The gearshift does not have notches that match up with the gear you want to shift into, and it moves back to a centred position after the driver picks a gear.The vehicles sound a chime and issue a dashboard warning if the driver’s door is opened while they are not in Park. But investigators found that the push-button start-stop feature doesn’t shut off the engine if the vehicles aren’t in Park, increasing the risk of the vehicles rolling away after drivers have exited.
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Thus far, the investigation has found 314 complaints, 121 crashes and 30 injuries from the problem. Three drivers reported fractured pelvic bones, while four others needed to be hospitalized with a ruptured bladder, fractured kneecap, or severe leg trauma.
To get to Park, I’ve got to bump the lever forward three times? That’s, like, the least intuitive control I’ve ever heard of for such a vitally important function. But I’ll bet it’s all carefully spelled out somewhere in the middle of the owner’s manual, right? Oh, wait: Cars don’t even come with paper manuals any more.
Anything else I should know before I put my life in your hands? Incantations, maybe? Do I have to hold my face a particular way to get the brakes to work?
Sheesh. The saddest part is that I worked in the industry, with a bunch of powertrain electronics engineers, and there’s nothing about this story I find hard to believe. Once they can do something, it does not always occur to them to wonder if they should.
OK, a broken kneecap is one thing, but how about dozens of deaths all caused by the same simple/predictable human error? http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/02/01/keyless-car-carbon-monoxide-deaths/
Yeah, like that. It would be extremely difficult for a modern (say, built in this century) car to kill you with carbon monoxide, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean it can’t be done. Given a tight garage and an engine running in it all night…I would hesitate to enter that room without opening the big door first.
Sequential shifting? Oooh oooh, it’s like when you’re on a motorcycle, or one o’ those cool Formula 1 cars! Yeah, that’ll work well for your average passenger vehicle!
Well, I actually test drove a car with a sequential auto gearbox, except that it was set up so you moved the stick to the side to get there, and back out to regular auto, and thence to Park. That was kinda nifty. Didn’t buy that car. I think if I were going to get a car with sequential shifting, I’d want the paddles on the steering column. Then the shift lever would retain its usual function.
Speaking of dumb car ideas, fake exhaust noise certainly ranks right up there. What I want is a cabin much quieter than I have now, not more noise being generated to make me feel “cool”.
I would be that somewhere, somehow, there is a federal motor vehicle safety regulation that made this sound like a good idea. Almost mandatory, even.
Back in the ’70s Bridgestone made 2 versions of their motorcycle, a 2-stroke175cc and a 250. Reasonably nice Universal Japanese Motorcycle for the late 1960s / early1970s, but……Bridgestones had a 4-speed gearbox, everyone else’s Japanese motorcycle had a 5-speed gearbox, and everyone’s motorcycle followed the same shift pattern: from neutral, push the shift pedal down for 1st, lift up up through neutral for 2nd, lift up for 3rd, up again for 4th, up again for 5th. Simple concept, continually in use before and since and pretty similar to what we’re talking about here on these particular Fiats. (The Brit (and German) bikes did the same thing – which is where the Japs got the shift pattern – but BSA/Norton/Triumph et al were all 4-speeds at the time.)
Everyone’s motorcycle shifter back then (and still does AFAIK) “deadened” after 5th – raising the shifter, as if one were shifting into a nonexistent 6th gear (except the 250cc Suzuki “Hustler” actually did have a 6th gear) – allowed the shifter pedal to move but didn’t move any gear engagement parts inside the gear box (if anyone is interested, shifting involved rotating an internal drum with curved slots for a corresponding mating pin on the shifter fork to follow the slot; rotating the drum moved the forks left and right to move different gears into and out of engagement because gear engagement is through dogs and slots on the sides of the gears.)
Anyway, thing was, Bridgestones were 4-speed boxes, not 5-speed, and the shift pattern was rotary: the rider could – and frequently did – move the shift pedal up for 5th and got 1st instead.
As is frequently said, “hilarity ensued.”
I suspect there was great demand for the much-advertised “washday miracle” afterward. Much to Bridgestone’s credit, I never saw a blown engine, snapped chain (something Honda became notorious for on pre-K CB750s, but for very different reasons) or trashed gearbox from this. Wouldn’t want to try it on an engine with a cam and valves, though….
I never heard a cogent explanation for that particular gearbox/shifter design; most of us just assumed members of the Bridgestone engineering staff responsible for gearbox design was composed of former LSD testers and let it go at that. The brand was around for several years then quietly disappeared, might still be available in Japan, I have no idea. But, I think I now know where the children of those engineers are working…..
NP, I’m sitting here wondering how I went through my entire young manhood in the seventies and never heard of Bridgestone bikes. Were they sold under a different name, or just regionally, or was I just oblivious? (I’m not doubting you, C is a very possible answer.)
Don’t feel disadvantaged, Joel, Lots of people went through the late ’60s / early ’70s and never heard of Bridgestone motorcycles. I’d offer that many of those who did later may have wished they hadn’t. AFAIK it was sold nationally, probably greater representation on the left coast than where I was (northern mid-atlantic).
I spun wrenches on bikes nights and weekends only to pay for engineering school and moved on after graduation, so by the mid-’70s I couldn’t even spell motorcycle; I worked for several dealerhips, none of which sold Bridgestones (one did sell Rokons alongside the Hondas, and they’re not just rare but pretty esoteric), and during the winter doldrums we’d work on anything that made it through the door. I can’t remember where we found parts for them, but probably there was a Bridgestone dealer someplace in the area. Other than suburban Philly, I don’t recall ever stumbling across a Bridgestone dealer, but there had to be some. It certainly wasn’t a “leading brand” like Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki or even Suzuki (which was pretty small back then), more like a “sideline brand” to offer an alternative to one of the Big Four Japanese bikes. Bridgestones may have outsold Moto Guzzis in the early ’70s, but probably not by much, and likely only because B-stones were smaller and hence much, much cheaper. (I do remember MG’s very odd method of driving overhead cams that involved shafts and brass bevel gears, but that’s a nightmare for another time).
They were reasonably quick, certainly able to keep up with similar-size bikes of other brands, but IIRC they had odd quirks. Which isn’t surprising, since the Japanese were still learning the American market back then and everything had odd quirks, some more than others. (I don’t have any experience with them, but I do remember Honda’s attempt at a CB750 with an automatic transmission.)
I just Googled “Bridgestone motorcycle” and turned up an entry for a 1967 350cc model the picture of which looks slightly familiar, so I may have mis-recollected the 250c engine size. It was probably a 350. Then again, that was 40+ years ago, so even if had fur instead of paint and chrome I might not remember. (no, fur, I would remember….but not much else.)
The oddest bikes I remember from the 70s were the Bultacos. Seems they are back making electric bikes now.
We’ll see.
As for weird engineering and the weirdos who DO that engineering in cars; I was a consulting technician for the Society of Automotive Engineers for a time.
My job was to report back to them, usually with ASE test sheet style questionnaire (Think: multiple guess with terms like: “there’s a clunk when you put your 42re trans in drive; Technician “A” says its the rear annulus ring. Technician “B” giggles like a little girl every time he hears the word “annulus”. Which one is correct?) I was supposed to answer about various factory cars I was working on.
This led to speaking with the guys who designed various parts of the cars.
Oddly…. it led far too frequently to me having to answer as to why OTHER consulting techs did not like something or found it difficult. Now and then this consultation happened regarding vehicles I did not work on. I got the feeling the engineers didn’t car one way or another.
Largely, it was masturbatory because the eggheads in the design bureaus never took what the wrenches said anything remotely like seriously.
So yeah, a shifter you have to bang on three times like it’s a Claymore detonator…….not surprising.
Dude. I wrote technical training programs. I know the sight, smell, taste and touch of professionally-produced futility better than most living humans. And high on the list of futile activities you can get paid to do in the automotive industry is to be an ex-wrench trying to teach an engineer something.
Come on now. It’s no worse than the original design for the F-111 by General Dynamics. First variable wing sweep aircraft for USAF, with a lever that controlled the amount of sweep. Early testing had a significant number of crashes due to the design choice. When you move the lever back, what would YOU expect the wings to do?
Most pilots thought moving the lever back would sweep the wings back, and moving it forward would bring the wingtips forward. The designers thought that moving the lever forward should make the plane go faster, and increase the wing sweep. You want the wing sweep decreased when you land to allow lower landing speeds. Guess what happened?