Hacker News Reader

Comment by MarcelOlsz | Hacker News Reader

>I'm usually a defender of the single screen on the Model 3/Y,

Nothing on earth would convince me there is any necessity whatsoever to having a screen in your car, much less a touchscreen. But then again I'm also against power steering, ABS, and generally any and all electronics that obstruct feeling from the steering column. Don't even get me started on automatics. Cars for me ended in the 80's, everything after that has been gravy. I see Tesla as nothing but gravy.

I'd be curious to hear why/how you defend it? I cannot think of a single benefit.

View on HN

You lost me on being against ABS. I understand your position being that automation reduces the senatorial feedback, it is an abstraction with loss of information, but in the case of ABS there is nothing a driver can do better than an ABS, no matter how much feedback they have.

Regarding the other examples of driving aids, yes, those are abstractions with some drawbacks, and a top-of-the-curve driver could do a better job without it. But still they could be a net positive because of the benefit they bring to not-that-good drivers.

Screens though, those I agree 100% shouldn't be on a car.

Ok fair enough on the ABS.

I think drivers education is severely lacking in North America. If it wasn't we wouldn't need to rely so heavily on building $100k armored tank vehicles with .01nm of force behind the wheel that nobody has a chance in hell of repairing themselves. There's no reason Granny shouldn't also be able to catch a slide.

Overconfidence in people who think they know how to drive so they don't trust new fandanled gizmos is also a huge problem.

A human is incapable of performing as well as a modern ABS system which can independently operate each wheel and can adjust hundreds of times per second. Same with traction and other stability assists. Most of these things tend to be unused at highest levels of motorports not because the drivers don't need them but because they're banned so as to make the spectacle more exciting.

Even if you fancy yourself a Colin McRae, leave your electronic assists enabled while driving on public roads.

Irrelevant aside: "Gravy" usually means a nice bonus. Similar to "lagniappe," though I don't know why I'm explaining an idiom by mentioning a far more obscure idiom.

As in: "I made all my money back in the first week, everything since has been gravy."

Ah fair enough thanks. Gravy has always meant unnecessary bells and whistles to me/

Nothing on earth, really? The single most important necessity for having a screen in a car is to show the backup camera.

How about designing cars with visibility behind them?

I notice the kids don’t see hazards (pedestrians) as well on the car with a backup camera as they do in the car that requires you to physically turn around.

The original backup camera was on the Prius because it had a huge blind spot, this fix should have been to th blind spot, not the degraded function of a fisheye lense and a driver facing forward.

I think backup cameras have surpassed the mirrors in a lot of cases. I'm just surprised it hasn't progressed faster and further. Why every car doesn't have the option of an around-view top-down backup system is puzzling.

I find the kids (n=3) make more steering mistakes and see less when looking forward at the screen compared to turning around.

I think the physical action of tuning is a somatic trigger that the steering is different and to swivel the head around for hazards.

In driver's ed we were taught to put our right hand behind the passenger seat whenever looking back to go in reverse. As if to reinforce the modal/perspective change.

Exactly but the kids want to just stare at the screen

Similarly, antilock braking systems (ABS) can have real safety effects if you know how to use the system [0] (though it looks like the effects are insignificant on a population level, as a lot of drivers don't know how to use it) [1].

However, I hear the point of the parent comment that the writing prefers an aesthetic/tactile experience of driving cars in the traditional way with minimal assistive technology (though I personally think that modern vehicles typically give you more control over your car).

[0] https://mycardoeswhat.org/safety-features/anti-lock-braking-...

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/s0001-4575(01)00032-x

To be fair, cars normally don't "need" a backup camera, it is only really essential in bigger bulkier vehicles like trucks and SUVs.

It's a nice addition sure, but hardly a necessity.

I’ve driven a car without power steering (my first car). It freaking sucked to do any turns

I think the trick is to get the car moving even slightly while steering to drastically reduce steering effort.

There's also a corner case - winter driving conditions - where manual steering might give you lots of critical feedback.

(that said, I wouldn't purposefully get a manual steering car anymore)

Also before powersteering manufacturers had to do a compromise between ease of use and available grip. Parking a car with wide tires such as a 70's/80's supercar was a real workout. Hence many cars of that era without powersteering had narrowish tires and thus very poor available grip and emergency braking efficiency.

Powersteering has allowed cars to have much more available grip and it is not a inherently a bad thing although it comes with its downsides too. Mainly fuel efficiency and overconfidence issue.

I agree it's not a necessity, but I simply find that it works very well for me in practice, the vast majority of the time (current UI update aside).

For example, this may not be common, but I find I can glance at the speed/car status section of the screen more quickly than I can glance down at a set of dials in the traditional position, and weirdly the sidways/down glance seems to retain more peripheral vision of the windscreen/road than the downwards glance to the traditional location.

What's wrong with the center console with physical buttons? It's the same thing, except they never rearrange, and you get physical tactility.

>(current UI update aside)

One thing at least I'll never have to deal with is finding a brand new re-arranged center console in my Geo Metro the next morning!

>but I find I can glance at the speed/car status section of the screen more quickly than I can glance down at a set of dials in the traditional position, and weirdly the sidways/down glance seems to retain more peripheral vision of the windscreen/road than the downwards glance to the traditional location.

I think you just got used to it. Tesla adding a touch screen has not magically superseded the tens of millions of hours car designers put into interiors.

I wish these kind of cars with touch screen could be optionnally equipped with controllers on which user could assign and customize whatever function they want. Something similar to midi controllers for DAWs full of knobs, buttons and sliders.

Search 'Akai midimix' to get an idea if what I am thinking at.

That would be pretty cool. Sort of like the Stream Deck with customizable illuminated LED buttons?

Good idea.

Even better, the buttons could have e-paper labels to show what function they perform.

I agree, except for ABS and power steering. As much as I think Tesla is overrated and overpriced, human drivers suck really badly at the edge cases. Certainly the vast majority of people can't out brake an ABS in slippery conditions let alone while still having the ability to steer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com