Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 448 posts

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#331

Post by u801e »

rconti wrote: post #180
masklinn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dealer explained that this is a "critical safety feature" that they install on all the vehicles they sell. He then explained that it makes the brake light flash whenever you press the brake pedal. I read about it for 10 minutes, and found there's a legitimate system in use in Europe that detects emergency braking and flashes the brake light. Since that system detects emergency braking and not just pressing the…

There are a fair number of vehicles on the road already with enhanced emergency brake lights; BMW in particular comes to mind. If you REALLY romp on it, another set of segments will light up, I think it might be the rear fogs that come on, along with a single additional flash. Not the godawful strobing every time you brush the brakes like with these "pulse" systems. (which thankfully seem incredibly rare on the west…

> There are a fair number of vehicles on the road already with enhanced emergency brake lights; BMW in particular comes to mind.

FMVSS 108 still requires steady illumination of the stop lamps (including the center high mounted one). I found one article[1] staying that the NHTSA granted a temporary exception to that requirement for Mercedes in 2006. Was that exemption expanded and is it still in effect?

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11351634

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#332

Post by _dain_ »

chrisseaton wrote: post #305
jobigoud wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like every other turn signal you’ve seen in your entire life. You don't know a priori that they work like other turn signals. You are presented with a new paradigm. Blinking side AND arrow direction. All bets are off. You now have to decide whether they indeed kept them on the right side or if they innovated and it's the arrows that are right.

> All bets are off. It's a turn signal on a car. It's not the enigma you're making it out to be. Thousands of these on the road for like a decade. Absolutely nobody is actually confused. A whole lot of people pretending to be mystified for some reason in this thread.

Do you honestly not comprehend the difference between being able to think about this for as long as you want and post comments on HackerNews, and having to make a split-second decision while driving at high speed? Yeah, obviously System 2 gives the right answer. But what about System 1?

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#333

Post by u801e »

reaperducer wrote: post #268
vesrah wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, this is standard on some European market cars under heavy braking.

Meanwhile, this is standard on some European market cars under heavy braking. Instead of blinking the brake lights, some U.S. cars automatically turn on the hazard lights under heavy braking. It's standard on mine.

Which models do that? And do they have amber color turn signal lamps?

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#334

Post by spiderice »

hexa22 wrote: post #292
JDeArte wrote: post #219

California DMV motor vehicle code, in part says 25251. (a) Flashing lights are permitted on vehicles as follows: (1) To indicate an intention to turn or move to the right or left upon a roadway, turn signal lamps and turn signal exterior pilot indicator lamps and side lamps permitted under Section 25106 may be flashed on the side of a vehicle toward which the turn or movement is to be made. If you feel that the mini…

From what I have seen of American cars, this one is completely compliant. The horrible part about this car is that the signals are red and that they are the same light as the rear/brake lights. Which is apparently extremely common in the US.

Yeah that's how a lot of cars are here. It really isn't confusing at all, unlike putting any arrow that points the opposite direction that you're trying to indicate.

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#335

Post by nimbius »

Mini has always struck me as a gimmick on wheels. In the US The cars sole purpose is an ego stroke for insufferable anglophiles... the kind who refer to every bar as a pub and flog the premier league like some sort of religious talisman.

Its built in mexico, owned by BMW and speaking as someone who makes a living working on cars, is a piece of garbage in ways only BMW could aspire to achieve. Agonizing turbo locations, self destructing interference engines that exist to skirt the warranty claims department, and a transmission configuration that makes a lada look positively formula one by comparison.

And now finally the Union jack themes come to bite them in the ass. Save your money and buy a Mazda CX crossover.

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#336

Post by WalterBright »

Reminds me of official aviation-speak where "takeoff power" means firewall the throttle, for things like taking off. Until one day the copilot heard it as "take off power" and chopped the throttle, resulting in a crash. Military aviation had to learn that the hard way, too.

These sort of mistakes seem stupidly obvious, but it's only when you see it. For example, on Windows 95 the "turn off" button was infamously labeled "Start".

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#337

Post by gryson »

siva7 wrote: post #73

In Psychology there is Stroop Effect. Remember the funny game when asked to name the color of the word it takes longer and is more prone to errors when the color of the ink does not match the name of the color? I guess this design can only happen because no regulator thought that a car manufacturer could be THAT dumb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

The Stroop Effect is the first thing I thought as well. "Mixed signals" like this just increase cognitive load and lead to more errors.

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#338

Post by u801e »

AnssiH wrote: post #288
IshKebab wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really the case? In the UK at least indicators have to be orange, so they are easy to distinguish from brake lights. I find it insane that there are cars with red indicators like this one. Definitely couldn't be sold in the UK.

The article writer believes EU spec indicators are just horizontal (amber) lines so they would not have the issue. But presumably those would be too small for US rules so they lit additional segments, making the arrow, which is what the parent commenter referred to.

> But presumably those would be too small for US rules so they lit additional segments

I've seen various Tesla models that just use a single horizontal line of LEDs (either amber or red on color) for their turn signals in the US.

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#339

Post by chrisseaton »

_dain_ wrote: post #332
chrisseaton wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All bets are off. It's a turn signal on a car. It's not the enigma you're making it out to be. Thousands of these on the road for like a decade. Absolutely nobody is actually confused. A whole lot of people pretending to be mystified for some reason in this thread.

Do you honestly not comprehend the difference between being able to think about this for as long as you want and post comments on HackerNews, and having to make a split-second decision while driving at high speed? Yeah, obviously System 2 gives the right answer. But what about System 1?

I don't know what else to say? I've seen them on cars. They really aren't confusing. They've been around for like a decade. Nobody seems to actually have a problem with them. Only people looking at photos of them on a website and discussing on a forum seem to be irate about it.

Re: Congratulations, Mini, you made the stupidest turn signals ever

#340

Post by harshalizee »

argomo wrote: post #54

> there should be no trouble at all for a driver to understand, when seeing the full rear of the car, which direction is being indicated. This response from Mini presumes drivers have the luxury of using "system 2" logical/analytical reasoning in a hectic realtime environment where they must most rely on "system 1" intuitive reasoning. There needs to be a name for this type design fallacy, because it's not the first…

Stroop Effect is pretty much this exact fallacy you mentioned. This inadvertently increases cognitive load on the drivers around leading to mistakes.
Post reply on HN