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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

The central steering wheel is ... different. It's the worst of both worlds. I saw another 80s concept car which had a steering wheel that could be moved from left to right hand side, presumably for people who very frequently cross the Channel.

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Cantral steering is a reality in the Maclaren F1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_F1

granted this is not a mass-produced car either!

Ha I remember that, and i remember that tomorrows world (or whatever show it was) was mind blown by it. 2/3 of the piece was about how the steering wheel moves. I recall the car looked pretty nice at the time though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY1Ka1BlNwQ

I think this was it! OK, it looks terrible, but at the time it looked amazing!

You know what, with todays increasingly drive by wire cars, that could be pretty cheap to pull off in a modern car.

Todays cars still have a very physical steering column and mechanics, not so easy to switch.

My main trouble with right-hand-drive vehicles is that with some models, I put the windscreen wipers on in every intersection. (The turn signal and wiper switches may be either the same way as in left-hand-drive cars, or mirrored.)

I once had rented a (automatic) Nissan for 3 weeks that was left-hand drive, but the controls were mirrored - including the pedals! Weirdest experience ever. I wasn't able to properly operate my own (manual) car for a week.

Even the pedals? I never heard about that before, sounds like an insane experience.

Seems like it was formerly right-hand drive and the guys who moved it to the left switched the pedals for some reason. I don't believe it came from the factory like this.

Fully drive-by-wire cars have been kicking about on various drawing-boards for decades at this point, but they never seem to make the jump.

There might be some regulatory hurdles in addition to technical and commercial ones?

Undoubtedly there are safety concerns in the form of "what happens when the power steering breaks?" With a conventional car the steering gets super heavy, but it's still manageable by most people, especially if the car is moving. In a fly by wire vehicle it's literally a "Jesus take the wheel" moment.

My problem used to be that my right hand would smash into the door whenever I wanted to change gears just after switching LHD to RHD. Highly annoying how ingrained such movements are.

Unimog does that. You hit a lever and the controls slide to either side.

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