Tesla Gives New UK Owners a ‘Reacher’ Stick to Deal with Left-Hand Drive Cars | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Gives New UK Owners a ‘Reacher’ Stick to Deal with Left-Hand Drive Cars

carscoops.com

64 pointsTomte80 comments

Driving any LHD car in reverse converts it to RHD, with the additional safety benefit of a longer crumple zone between the driver and oncoming obstacles. I'm surprised Tesla didn't come up with this simple solution.

Yes. Also, one could quite trivially turn the driver’s seat and steering column 180 degrees in the UK model, yielding the benefits you mention, as well as that of facing the direction of travel in reverse gear.

I bet getting the self-driving software to work in reverse would only require flipping a sign.

Very surprising indeed, the endgame must be to eventually replace driver and passengers with the upcoming Tesla Bot.

Remote controlled through VR they would allow the user to live vicariously without risk of injury when doing things outside of the comfort zone.

Nah. They're more likely to replace the steering wheel & pedals with an Xbox controller so you could drive the car from any location.

Not a Logitech one?

too much of an implosion risk

I had to give them some credit.

Like in Men in Black 2?

>the additional safety benefit of a longer crumple zone between the driver and oncoming obstacles

and even better if you have some baby seats strapped into the (formerly) back seats, those things are designed to be tough and safe!

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. I've shown this article to multiple friends and they all immediately ask if it's a parody.

Tesla is number 50 of the Fortune 500, and you're telling me they can't figure out how to make this work profitably? Surely other car manufacturers have figured this out.

They certainly do know how to make right-hand drive cars. They have just decided it is no longer worth the effort for them to produce versions for the model S and X. Maybe because those models don’t sell in China? Presumably they do still sell right-hand drive model 3 and Y in the UK.

> Maybe because those models don’t sell in China?

Note that cars in China are also left-hand drive/right-hand traffic, same as in the US/continental Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic#/...

Ah, I thought China was on the other side. Good to know. Thanks.

The more I read the article, the more I thought I was reading an Onion-like site. This can't be real, what the hell, ha ha.

I don't know if times are indeed changing, or deteriorating.

"But Brawndo has the nutrient plants crave."

Profit? It makes no sense environmentally - the market size is like 10k vehicles, but they need to put up entire production line. Focusing on making 10M cars for 1/3rd price makes much more sense.

maybe some other uncontrolled decision by Elon? He could have concluded that it is too much friction to have two different types of cars and UK, Australia, Japan, etc. just should align to the rest of the world. Surely stopping production of Tesla for these countries should bring them to their knees and they will gracefully get everyone to drive on the “right” side of the road.

You would be mad to buy a LHD vehicle in the UK. In fact I am surprised it's even allowed.

In the Bahamas most rental cars are LHD to make it easier for US tourists, despite the entire country driving on the left. Though I suppose the difference between mellow Bahaman roads and the whole of the UK road system is a pretty big difference when it comes to safety.

> make it easier for US tourists

That sorta makes it worse. There's something about everything being backwards and looking wrong that reminds you to drive wrong.

The opposite of “right” in this case is “left”, not “wrong”. :P

When I rented a scooter in the Bahamas, I was told to repeat the mantra "right side, suicide"

That is even more mad. A US targeted rental is automatic anyway; so the only important thing is to remember to drive on the wrong side; this would be so much harder if that ment driving curbside.

I had no problem and it was my first time driving in left-driving country. But again, the roads there are fairly simple.

It's outnumbered by the wrong-hand-drive countries that surround it, so LHD cars kind of have to be legal even if only to accommodate lorries and tourists.

You could allow driving but outlaw selling.

Why mad? I see plenty of people in the states with RHD vehicles that mostly seem to be Japanese imports, rarely it’ll be a fancy UK vehicle. (In WA state)

It seems to carry a bit of fashion but not sure if it would translate the same to other places like the UK for example. I personally wouldn’t want a RHD vehicle but more for practicality/parts availability

Edit: not attempting to vouch for Tesla in this case at all, this reacher is ridiculous and a bad move imo

There's two major safety issues:

You can't see around cars to be able to pass. Okay, so you often don't pass.

But much more importantly, car headlights aren't symmetrical. The one pointing towards the oncoming lane has a "cut" beam to avoid blinding other drivers while the other has a taller beam to improve visibility of anything entering the road. When you drive LHD in a RHD country, or vice versa, you are blinding other drivers while having low visibility of pedestrians and animals.

Technology Connections did a great video about this. His solution was to stop driving his RHD car in low light. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2J91UG6Fn8

Headlight regulations seem to be mostly ignored by manufactures of modern cars. Modern LED headlights are insanely bright, and seem to be unfocused or not set up with any kind of "cut" beam. Driving at night is now sort of a game where you get blinded by oncoming headlight glare every minute or two and then hope your night vision recovers in time for you to avoid hitting something you can't see.

It might be good for drivers of these cars, but it's terrible for oncoming traffic.

In driving school we were taught to look at the right shoulder when headlights are coming at you like that. Keeps you from being dazzled and keeps the car in the lane.

Yes, I do that, but some of these new headlights are so bright it's only somewhat effective.

In some cases it's people who have installed aftermarket super-bright lights, most of which don't comply with DOT regulations in the slightest but they are still allowed to be sold "for off-road use only."

But often enough it seems to be new cars with the stock headlights from the manufacturer.

My car has a setting with the lights where the brights are always on and theoretically auto dim when a car approaches. I never use it because brights lack peripheral view which is more important than straight on with a lighted road, but I wonder if a lot of people leave it on and the dimming setting just doesn’t work that well for real world conditions.

Whoa — that's simple and brilliant. (Obvious in hindsight, I suppose, like many good ideas.) I do something similar intuitively, but I'm going to start looking at the shoulder much more explicitly now.

"Driving school" wasn't a standardized thing back when I got my license — in many places, you can just stroll in, pass the driving test, and be on your way. So I guess I missed all the interesting tips they might share in a formal education environment...

Any other learnings from driving school that you find yourself using often?

Well I did driving school in the US. You had to do it unless you wanted to wait till you were 18 to drive. Lets see we discussed how liability vs comprehensive insurance worked, how stopping distances relate to speed, certain state specific laws that might get you a ticket for not knowing them, plus a lot of in car experience building comfort driving at highway speeds with an instructor, or how to parallel park and ace the maneuverability. Stuff like changing tires and very basic maintenance like checking fluid levels too. This was over a decade ago so they probably covered more that I can’t recall. I will say I am a head and shoulders better parallel parker than a lot of other adults I know. Some people are in their 30s and still do not know how to parallel park, give up, even have me do it with their own car sometimes.

> avoid hitting something you can't see

This is extra fun for those of us living in high deer-population areas!

You can have the headlights converted. Shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Higher end cars have hardware to deal with this. You activate a setting called "tourist mode" and the headlight reflectors shift to make the beam throw symmetrical. On older cars it's a physical lever under the hood, and on newer cars it's a software setting the dealer must enable.

I cannot say in the US, but AFAIK in Europe you need to change headlights (or modify them) to have a license plate (for an imported car), i.e. while having the steering wheel on the "wrong" side is allowed, headlights need to be conforming to the local standard or it won't pass the inspection.

Some recent cars have easy ways to modify the beams, but most need some specialized intervention or, in the worst cases, even replacement.

IIRC European cars are required to handle this gracefully.

Some newer cars (at least 2016-ish onwards, potentially before this) adjust automatically based on GPS location from the navigation system.

Teslas are starting to come with matrix lights - does this solve this problem by making it a software setting?

No you still won’t be able to see well because of where the driver is located relative to the headlight beams.

Other commenters noted that many European models have dynamic lights that tie this to GPS location.

Teslas are supposed to configure headlights between LHD/RHD automatically based on GPS.

Although from my (single) experience of driving to UK it didn’t work.

I mainly see it (in the USA) with contract rural mail carriers. They often use RHD Jeeps or Subarus so they can reach roadside mailboxes. And of course the official USPS residential delivery vehicles are mostly RHD.

Occasionally you see some cars fitted with contraptions that use cables and pulleys to allow control of a LHD car from the right front seat. I'm surprised these are legal.

I suppose it's a bit different from small scale personal imports or niche exotica being wrong side, to having a large manufacturer selling fairly large numbers of LHD cars new? It's certainly not normal for the UK for anything new to be LHD, there's even an RHD Chevrolet Corvette nowadays...

Driving in the UK is very different to driving in America, because British roads are very different to American roads.

Most British roads predate motor cars. Much of the road network is mediaeval, some is Roman, at least one road is pre-Roman.

This[0] is a section of the Icknield Way, the oldest road in Britain. The carriageway is the width of one vehicle. If you meet an oncoming vehicle, either you or the other driver must reverse into a passing place, like the dirt area visible in the link.

This[1] is the A40; until the construction of the M40 motorway, this was the road from London to Oxford. There is a white centre line, but because of the parked cars, this centre line is useless. You can see cars straddling the line, but it is a tight fit in this village. In morning and evening traffic, one normally needs to stop to let oncoming traffic pass. It's important to know the width of your vehicle, and to be able to correctly judge your position in the road, as well as the position of oncoming traffic. This is much easier to do when your eyes are closer to the centre line.

Here[2] is a junction that is particularly problematic in traffic for similar reasons.

This[3] is a roundabout, which is more effective at maintaining traffic flow than traffic lights in low to medium traffic conditions. The basic principle is to give way to traffic already on the roundabout, which requires good visibility to the right. It is crucial to be able to judge this instantly to maintain traffic flow and to prevent the formation of traffic jams, which is easiest when in a RHD drive vehicle.

On a mini-roundabout[4], the 'give way to traffic already on the roundabout' principle becomes 'give way to the right' - again, visibility to the right is improved in a RHD vehicle.

The cognitive load for navigating a roundabout is increased for the double roundabout[5] and reaches a maximum at the infamous magic roundabout[6]. RHD vehicles help with this.

Here[7] is a bus stop. There's no lay by for it; it's just in the road, which happens to be a major trunk road. In morning traffic, school buses will stop here, and traffic needs to overtake the stopped bus. While there is a central reservation, it's a tight fit for larger vehicles, and the ability to see oncoming traffic is crucial. Again, RHD is needed here.

Overtaking is vitally important when driving in the UK, not only because of stopped or parked vehicles. Vehicles that cannot keep up with modern traffic are much more common in the UK than America, such as horses with buggies, or traction engines[8].

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6170961,-1.0404844,3a,75y,21...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6445943,-0.8029467,3a,75y,26...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6450754,-1.0041556,3a,75y,21...

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6064949,-0.6935902,3a,75y,13...

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6449846,-0.731184,3a,75y,120...

[5] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6684331,-0.7022783,3a,75y,31...

[6] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5628488,-1.7715014,130m/data...

[7] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6412382,-0.7853479,3a,75y,28...

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH5pRQwlxc4

Super fascinating thanks for the information.

Double roundabout?!? Madness! I would rage quit and just walk if I encountered anything like this.

It is so absurdly and satirically British.

They would have thought of this before they built the Channel Tunnel, with LHD and RHD cars moving freely between the UK and France, no?

It’s not a car tunnel, it’s a train tunnel. There are trains that carry cars but there were ferries before that. Yes you can drive a U.K. car in France and vice versa, but I doubt anyone wants that experience at home.

One of the original proposals for the Tunnel link included a road tunnel. The problem of coordination was one of the factors that pushed selection towards a rail-only solution.

Unlike cars, there is no distinct LHD/RHD split by nation for trains. French trains tend to run on the left on the up service[0] like British ones do, but Paris Métro runs on the right.

[0] except in Alsace, where they mimic German trains on the right

Like spending £100k on a car which comes with a squeegee in the glove box instead of windscreen wipers.

I’m amazed it is legal to own a car that doesn’t match the local orientation.

This seems like the kind of joke suggestion that somebody in engineering might make in response to an annoying decisions made in the levels above them.

Yeah, but it's exactly what I've come to expect from Tesla.

It's pretty common for some low production cars. For instance many Lotus cars in continental Europe are RHD, because RHD Lotus are much more common and less expensive.

Wait, why should it be illegal to own a car that doesn't match the local orientation?

Safety obviously. Same as how you can't sell a car that doesn't have airbags anymore (barring some exceptions).

It’s not really a significant safety difference. The visibility difference isn’t that big.

It’s nowhere near on the level of removing airbags.

There are massive safety differences in terms of visibility especially at night. I don’t think they should be banned but heavily restricted and definitely not to be allowed to drive after dark.

It’s more hazardous to drive?

Can't see how that would be possible. All postal trucks in the US are RHD.

USPS has a unique position and a pretty unusual task, I assumed they’d just gotten an exception or something.

Its common to see UK plates all around western Europe. They all are RHD. Its a bit tricky for the first time but you get used to it quickly (or the opposite as I've found out ie in Australia, straight from airport rental into congested highway with tons of roadworks, I forgot that 11h jetlag due to all the adrenaline pumping).

I recall a number of imported cars in England from the USA during the 90s. These were road taxed and MOT'd insofar as they also had British license plates. For added emphasis, these were huge vehicles from the 80s on tiny English roads.

Wherever you're driving you want to be positioned towards the center of the road. Tesla are mad for selling these in the UK regardless of their 'stick'.

"Here is a car that is way harder to drive, but as compensation we've given you a branded litter picker."

I would say your comment is not an accurate reflection of what was offered.

> Customers with a RHD Model S or Model X order had three options; cancel their order, get a RHD Model Y or Model 3 with a £2,000 credit, or get a LHD version of the car they’d already ordered.

I mean its not a great choice is it?

I think its clear your response was not representative of the choices offered. They aren't making the exact model ordered - you can get a refund, get a different model in RHD + credit, or get a LHD version. Those are really the only options once you understand that the car they ordered will not exist.

So ya, those are really the only choices possible. Its just fine. Your comment about the toy picker thing wasn't representative of the actual choices, nor does it create any opportunity for discussion. It was just a disingenuous untruth.

I mean its the basis for the entire article this post is about.

Most people don't buy a car on impulse. They do a bit of research, try things out and select the one they think is best. It takes a while. moreover its normally the second biggest purchase they make in their life.

Once you order the car, to have it cancelled, or offered a car that is materially harder to use (with a discount! but the car is worth significantly less, so its not actually a discount) I would be pissed off. Yes, you can choose another car, but that wasn't the one they wanted.

To then have a branded litter picker added to "sweeten" the deal, is frankly insulting.

Business offers alternative including refund to customers because original item isn’t being manufactured. KaiserPro offended.

Ok then. Have a good one. It sounds like there’s no option that they can do except manufacture the vehicle exactly to not offend you, and they’re not doing that. Permanent unhappy.

Life would be easier if UK switched driving sides.

Maybe eventually but the transition period would be decades of pain. And it would be especially ridiculous if self driving makes it a moot point by the time transition has actually happened.

Different country, smaller population, etc but Sweden did it in four years[0].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

The main difference there is that the vast majority of drivers already had LHD cars.

I don't think Sweden in 1963 had a comparable number of intersections designed with high speed merges in mind...

"Decades of pain" is a bit of an overstatement, given that other first-world countries have achieved it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

Has anyone achieved it that didn't already have the overwhelming majority of their cars in LHD?

Obligatory:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_tK4fd0HFe0&pp=ygUMTmljZSBncmFiY...

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