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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.
I dunno. Is this gearshifter 'progress' or is it just a gimmick gone wrong?
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.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
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.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Just wait til you hear my idea -- just do the shifting from a touchscreen! I'll link you the Kickstarter once I've filed the patent.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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.
The best anti-theft device you can have in your car is a manual transmission.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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.
Yes, motorcycles use sequential shift standard transmissions - but they don''t disguise it to look like an ordinary gear shift. For motorcycles, one foot works the shift lever, the other the rear brakes. No mistaking that. Also, since it uses a clutch, there is no "park" - just stick it in gear.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Corvette owner dying in the car because he didn't know about the mechanical release levers on the floor, the targa latches on the roof or the hatch release in the rear...
To be fair the most recent case I heard about involved an elderly man and his dog. The man was found with the owner's manual in his lap, trying to find out how to open the door without a functioning electrical system. The mention of the latch location is buried somewhere on page 67 or some shit. It should be in the first few pages.
Almost as good an idea as the Kegel shifter.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Correct for city driving. But this is a more recent development and it's not that much more. If you can keep the engine in the most economic sweet spot longer, you will get better gas mileage. It's hard to do that as effectively with a finite number of gears, even with flawless picking of the shift points by the driver..
However, if you are doing highway driving, the manual wins, every time.
Not true...
This used to be true because Automatics had torque converters with a slip system and Manuals didn't. Manuals lock into a gear and have no slip. Automatics have a slip mechanism that allows the car to stop at a light and not stall. This slip system also meant that there was some slip at higher speeds resulting in poorer fuel mileage in older Automatics.
However, modern Automatics have the ability to automatically "lock" the torque converter into a gear at higher speeds. This negates the advantage that manuals had at highway speeds.
http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/t...
In fact, a lot of the old arguments for selecting a Manual have dropped by the wayside as Automatic transmission technology has improved. There are really only two remaining arguments for get a manual, the first is that cars with manual transmissions cost a bit less and the second is that, for many, they are fun to drive... That last one will never go away...
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.