Jeep/Chrysler's New Gearshift Appears To Be Causing Accidents (roadandtrack.com)

bartle writes: The new gearshift design for the Jeep Grand Cherokee appears to be causing rollaway accidents: 121 crashes and 30 injuries so far. The gear shifter is designed to look and feel similar to a traditional automatic gear shift lever but it is meant to cycle through the gears rather than move directly to a certain gear. A driver who is used to placing their vehicle in park by pressing the shifter all the way forward may instead be setting it to neutral before exiting the vehicle. The NHTSA is investigating.

Comments

So what should we do?

[thechemic]

Should we hold back progress in to protect people from injury, should we penalize the RTFM challenged individuals, or something else?

Re:So what should we do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno. Is this gearshifter 'progress' or is it just a gimmick gone wrong?

Re:So what should we do?

[thechemic]

Well... instead of taking action one time with one lever, they "simplified" it, and now you have to actuate the same mechanism several times in order to achieve the same result. This would definitely be considered "progress" in the eyes of Apple.

Re:So what should we do?

[bev_tech_rob]

Why is re-inventing the wheel called progress? What is wrong with the old system? Like the article says, most folks have committed that shifter operation to muscle memory years ago. Why change the way the shift works 'because it is new' ?

Like working a helpdesk in IT, users are creatures of habit and when you start moving their cheese, this kind of stuff happens.

Re:So what should we do?

[hawguy]

And if you're never allowed to move their cheese, you could never effect "progress" could you. Sometimes you have to move their cheese, and sometimes you have to let "this kind of stuff" happen. Sometimes you even have to do it with very small incremental changes. Since you used the helpdesk reference, perhaps just like the small incremental changes in every iterations of Windows.

You can move the cheese, but don't replace it with a box of poison that looks just like the cheese.

If they want to change the UI for a shifter, they should make it completely different, not make something that looks, and superficially feels the same while in actuality it's quite different. What they did is akin to wanting to have a joy-stick instead of a steering wheel, but instead of just putting in an obvious joystick, they made it look just like a steering wheel.

Re:So what should we do?

[Grishnakh]

He was definitely implying that this new design was progressive. It was not, it's an utterly stupid gimmick, as others have said here. It looks too much like a traditional AT shift lever, but functions completely different, and worse, for no good reason. There's a good reason that most cars these days have standardized on a particular control layout: it works well, people are used to it, and standardization is valuable when people change vehicles. People do rent cars from time to time, or drive other peoples' cars, and making confusing differences just to be "cool" and "edgy" is just going to cause problems like this. This doesn't mean you should avoid change that's actually beneficial, but this shift lever is not an example of this, it's an example of a really stupid change that makes things worse.

Also, if you are going to make a change to commonly-accepted controls, this is a prime example of why you shouldn't try to make it resemble an existing method too much. Make it noticeably different, and people will pay attention, rather than assuming it works the same as what they're used to.

Re:So what should we do?

[djbckr]

I'll chime in with a great example of moved cheese: The Prius. The "shifter" is nothing like any other, and yet it's intuitive. It had a separate button for park (as I recall - I got rid of it). It was very straightforward to use, yet completely different than a standard PRNDL shifter.

Re:So what should we do?

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend has a Charger that has one of these shifters. I've been driving for 20 years, and the times I've driven her car, I have mistakenly put it in the wrong gear several times.

The problem isn't that the shifter operates differently, it's that it feels like a traditional shifter and operates completely differently. Change the mechanism so that it's a push button, dial, switches, whatever. Just not the way automatic transmissions have traditionally been if it's going to act differently.

Having said that, I absolutely hate that part of her car, although I like most of the other features of the car.

Re: So what should we do?

[pixelpusher220]

We're not talking about the rare concept of trying to unlock an auto transmission when the alternator dies so you can push the thing.

This is OPENING THE FUCKING DOOR.

Re:So what should we do?

[thechemic]

If you're the type of person that buys a 3500 pound object that can go 100+ MPH and fail to read the manual which results in the injury of another individual, you're an idiot.

Re:So what should we do?

[Immerman]

Ugh, yeah, I hate those sorts of design decisions. I challenge the assertion that it's a brilliant idea though, except perhaps in a "sounds good in advertisements" way - there's a reason buttons tend to show up in groups, because individually they are an *extremely* limited interface.

You can't efficiently choose between more than two states with a single button - cycling is pretty much your only option without a non-trivial tap-code. And that means, on average, cycling through half of the states to get where you want to be. Multiple buttons can be used to reduce the problem by cycling through orthogonal options, or even offering a discrete button for each state.

Personally I prefer multistate switches: Twist the knob (or slide the slider) to the position that reflects your desire and be done with it. One single motion chooses between several options, and once you establish muscle-memory you can achieve precise results as soon as your hand finds a single control, even in complete darkness.

But sadly cost is typically a high design priority, and buttons are usually cheaper to integrate into a device than multistate switches, and the fewer the buttons the cheaper. Which leads to cool-sounding ad copy being used to spin cost-cutting compromises into slick-sounding "features"

Re: Emergency Brake?

[adolf]

Maybe.

Rented a Chrysler 200S recently. The gear selector was a purely electronic rotary plastic knob with almost zero resistance or mechanical feedback, the parking brake was an electronic button beside it, there was no emergency brake to speak of, and there was no ignition key or mechanical switch, but just a button.

All the R'ing the FM in the world can't fix a stupid design.

Re:Emergency Brake?

[Woldscum]

Also because standard transmissions unfortunately are going the way of the dodo. The CVs and new 5,6,7 and 8 speed auto transmissions get better MPG than the standards. Wild ass guess that 75% of the drivers in the US cannot drive a standard transmission and never use the emergency brake. And I bet that number is in the 95% range in the SUV owner (Soccer moms) group.

Re:Emergency Brake?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

The best anti-theft device you can have in your car is a manual transmission.

Re:User error

[Grishnakh]

Christ america, what is wrong with manual?

1995 is calling, and wants you back.

These days, manuals get crappy fuel economy; autos beat them every time. Autos also beat them in performance: they can shift much faster than you can.

Face it, technology has improved and rendered manual transmissions obsolete.

And they're getting better still: pretty soon, we can expect CVTs to mostly replace traditional automatics. That is, until electric cars render transmissions completely obsolete.

Re:Emergency Brake?

[rmdingler]

One additional clear advantage of the standard transmission is the degree with which you have to be actually engaged with the process of driving.

To be fair, sometimes driving a familiar automatic gets downright, er, automatic... and you actually forget you're driving some number of tons of metal down the boulevard.

Keyless ignition

[jbwolfe]

Anyone recall the Toyota driver whose accelerator got stuck (for whatever reason) and he reported he could not turn the engine off because it had a keyless ignition. Family of three lost their lives. Car makers need to avoid creating a paradigm that offers no benefit.