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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

I've had a BYD for a month or so now, and the build quality is fantastic. It really feels very premium, and there are some design/UX choices that really surprised me (things like the car refusing to set the parking brake if you aren't wearing a seatbelt).

Overall, I am extremely happy about my purchase, especially at only $40k after subsidies.

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> things like the car refusing to set the parking brake if you aren't wearing a seatbelt

This is confusing to me. Does the car prevent a safety feature (setting the parking brake) from working when one doesn’t wear the seatbelt? Or was that a typo intended to mean that it prevents releasing the parking brake (and allowing the car to move) when one doesn’t wear the seatbelt?

Yes, it prevents you from setting the parking brake if your seatbelt is off, as you shouldn't exit the car while it's still on. I'll double-check, as I might be mistaken, but it has lots of nice little behaviours that show that the manufacturer really thought about the edge cases.

> Yes, it prevents you from setting the parking brake if your seatbelt is off, as you shouldn't exit the car while it's still on.

This sentence is confusing but doesn't seem to make sense either way it can be read. What is the antecedent of "it's" in "while it's still on"? The parking brake or the seat belt?

Why should you not exit the car when the parking brake is set? Alternatively, how could you exit the car while your seat belt is still on?

The car, sorry. You're meant to turn it off before exiting. That said, I just tried it, and I was wrong, so it was some other thoughtful thing that I noticed. I remember thinking "that's really smart, it's so you can't exit the car while it's still on", but don't remember exactly what it was.

Not sure how exiting the car without turning it off can be prevented. Everything the car might do to prevent it seems like a serious safety problem.

Not letting you set the parking brake? That's also known as the emergency brake, you don't want to disable it while the car is moving.

Not letting you remove your seat belt? Obvious serious safety problem.

Not letting you open the door? Super obvious super serious safety problem.

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