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Star Trek Actor's Death Inspires Class Action Against Car Manufacturer (cnn.com)
Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the new Star Trek movies, was killed Sunday when his own vehicle rolled backwards. Now Slashdot reader ripvlan writes:
It has recently emerged that his vehicle was a Jeep. As discussed on Slashdot previously consumers are having a hard time knowing if the vehicle is in "Park." A new class action lawsuit is gaining momentum... Also Maserati has a similar system and can join the class action.
In fact, Maserati "is recalling about 13,000 sedans that have the same sort of gear shifter that was used in the Jeep that killed Yelchin," according to CNN Money, and Chrysler Fiat had in fact already filed a recall notice with federal regulators in April for Yelchin's band of Jeep, "but owners had only received a warning and not an official recall notice at the time of Yelchin's death". The lawsuit claims Chrysler "fraudulently concealed and failed to remedy a gear shifter design defect affecting 811,000 vehicles and linked to driverless rollaway incidents," including 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokees, 2012-2014 Chrysler 300s, and 2012-2014 Dodge Chargers.
In fact, Maserati "is recalling about 13,000 sedans that have the same sort of gear shifter that was used in the Jeep that killed Yelchin," according to CNN Money, and Chrysler Fiat had in fact already filed a recall notice with federal regulators in April for Yelchin's band of Jeep, "but owners had only received a warning and not an official recall notice at the time of Yelchin's death". The lawsuit claims Chrysler "fraudulently concealed and failed to remedy a gear shifter design defect affecting 811,000 vehicles and linked to driverless rollaway incidents," including 2014-2015 Jeep Grand Cherokees, 2012-2014 Chrysler 300s, and 2012-2014 Dodge Chargers.
"The gear selector in these vehicles always remains upright. The driver moves it forward or back to select a gear, but it then returns to its original upright position."
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
I was of the same impression till a friend showed me his jeep. The design is flawed. First, the indicator on the stick shifter is not red, so in bright light it not possible to see what gear selection you selected. There should be no question if the car is in park, the driver should not be covering the handle to create a shadow in order to see the gear indicator on the shifter. Second, you have to pull the handle forward and wait for it cycle through and put it in park, so if you don't hold long enough it won't go into park. In my opinion, when in park, the gear shifter should stay forward in my opinion.
The objection is that this is a serious deviation from a longstanding and well-understood interface. In all other cars, you can tell by feel or by position of the shift lever whether it's in PARK or not. Making the driver depend on a display -- in a different view angle -- is a crappy kludge to cover a serious design bug.
I recommend reading AskTog's columns on UI design, as well as Joel Spolsky's articles on UI and general app design. You'll see the reasons this joystick-shifter design is a disaster.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
These days, you are pretty much SOL for buying new cars then...
That's a very flawed analogy since the bike sequential gear shifter design does not involve a position for safety.
As soon as you have a system for safety you need to have a solution that clearly indicates that it has a safe position.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Sorry, no. The new UI is an accident waiting to happen since it makes itself look and feel like a different interface that has been around for decades.
Everyone "knows" that if you press the button in and push the shifter forward until it stops you are in park. Everyone but Chrystler, that is.
Actually, making that motion will put the car in NEUTRAL. While the pushbutton won't turn the engine off that way, it is way to easy to push the button and not notice the nearly silent idling becoome completly silent.
The whole thing with push to start and the new electronic shifters sounds like the work of marketing weenies who gave zero thought to real world use cases.
When I test drove my car (which has this shifter), I complained about it straight away, I find it hard to believe no one voiced concerns. After 2 weeks I got used to it. In bright sun you cannot even see which gear is lit up on the shifter. It is a terrible design but at least there are a few blatant signs that the car is still in gear when you try to stop it:
1 - Attempting to stop the engine while in gear results in a tone sounding, and the engine continues to run. Ideally with push-to-start cars you should be in the habit of looking for the "run" light to disappear when doing this. I believe I can override by pushing it again, but I have never tested this.
2 - The car radio will not turn off upon opening the door when the engine is still running.
3 - If the car is in reverse, the backup camera will be displayed (assuming you have one), another sign that you're not in the right gear.
That said there have been situations where I've gone from reverse to neutral instead of drive because I didn't perform the right ritual to get the damn thing to shift properly. They had a perfectly good design in the Challenger, Chryslers, and the 2011 and earlier Chargers, as well as the police version of the charger (though that's a dash mounted shifter). Why they didn't do the same for Jeeps and the other cars mentioned in this article is a mystery to me...
You are part of the problem.
The hand brake is the thing meant to safely and effectively immobilise your car when needed; in front of a traffic light, parking spot, driveway, garage.
The "P" position of automatic gearboxes is a gimmick without obvious use. When used while driving or on a hill it can even damage the gearbox.
You guys simply do not know how to handle a car properly.
OMG, have you been driving a car with no idea what he handbrake is used for? I drive a manual, and have for about 30 years now. It's a preference, but I still know that every single car I've ever driven, and this is hundreds of them of all sorts...all have a handbrake - which you might call an "emergency brake".
When you park your car you are meant to:
* turn off the ignition
* drop it into first gear if a manual or park if an auto
* pull on the handbrake
None of those steps are optional.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
You're also supposed to park with the wheels turned so you'll hit the curb or roll more onto the shoulder if no curb so the vehicle won't roll away.
I've never experienced a tranny popping out of 1st or reverse when parked but have experienced my parking brake freezing up over night and learned not to use the parking brake in winter or if the vehicle is parked for a long period. I've also had my vehicle creep when parked in gear so park in such a way that it won't go far. Many parking brakes seem like crap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Safety engineers are pretty low on the totem pole in the auto design process. One of the safety engineers at BMW gave a guest lecture in my grad school structural engineering course. You'd think with a luxury brand like BMW safety would be a priority, but no. The artists do their thing first - they get to design what the car's shape will be like and where all the main areas like seating, wheels, trunk, etc. will go. Then the engineers who make the essential components like the engine and transmission have to figure out how to install their components into the shape and layout predicated by the artist. The safety engineer comes dead last. He's given a weight budget of x kg of steel, and has to decide where to put it to make the vehicle pass government crash safety tests, while staying within the bounds of the artist's body design and avoiding other already-designed components like the engine.
So the "morons who designed this" probably never had to take a basic course on ergonomic and safe design. They're free to design whatever the hell they wanted, and it was up to people who came after them to make it functional and safe. I suspect that's why the Teslas do so well on safety tests. They probably put the safety engineers higher in the pecking order, so they can actually put the strengthening beams and crumple zone in the optimal place, and it becomes the artists' and other engineers' jobs to work around these structural elements.
Sounds entirely plausible. The same thing is true for software security experts. That is why most software is badly insecure.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.