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

381–390 of 448 posts

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

#381

Post by culturestate »

dwighttk wrote: post #373
Reason077 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually yes. But in urban areas (where there are lots of street lights, and lots of cyclists), people often forget to turn their lights on. I guess it's becoming less of a problem now that most cars have auto lights, but I still see cars driving around without lights pretty regularly.

Yeah I’m astonished at how often people drive with headlights off. Why is it even an option for lights to be off when in drive? I can understand wanting to turn them off sometimes, but not while moving.

I think the proliferation of daytime running lights is partly to blame here, because you still get some light out of the front even without headlights on.

The thing that always gets me is switching between (rental) cars that have automatic headlight sensors and those that don't.

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

#382

Post by u801e »

spockz wrote: post #175
shotta wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad put little mirrors in the garage so he can check the blinkers easily without leaving the vehicle.

I just check my lights in either glass window reflections or paint reflections from parked cars depending on how and where I’m parked. The only car that needed the engine oil checked regularly was our second car, a 12 year old Opel Corsa. All other cars kept their fluid and just needed the oil changed at the regular intervals.

My 2000 model Audi actually has a indicator light on the dash that only comes in when the stop lamp is not coming on, but only when the brake pedal is pressed.

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

#383

Post by floatingatoll »

bagels wrote: post #345
cratermoon wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when it's dark. I'm imagining a cyclist or pedestrian seeing only the blinking light and maybe a vague outline of the vehicle at best, seeing the 1 https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2019/04/08/whats-a-right-...

If it's dark, I would assume it is likely that the taillights are also on.

That is not a safe assumption if you're a bicyclist or pedestrian at night, especially if the area is well-lit with cool light (such as white LEDs) that share a general color with headlights.

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

#385

Post by thaumasiotes »

lmm wrote: post #372
thaumasiotes wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't kill very many people. We established that several comments up.

It kills a lot of people. Whether the mechanism for it killing a lot of people is a large number of miles driven rather than a high rate of deaths per mile is neither here nor there.

It does not kill a large number of people in relative terms. In absolute terms, it kills an extremely tiny number of people; the death rate from traffic accidents in the US in 2018 was 0.01%.

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

#386

Post by dboreham »

jen20 wrote: post #378
ashtonkem wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the amber horizontal bar in the middle for EU cars is an acceptable design. Cutesy, but no risk to the health and safety of the driver and others. It's the US spec that seems incredibly poorly thought out.

Even though this is a particularly egregious example, poorly thought out indicators are not exactly new in the US though - it is unfathomable to me why people thing that making the turn signals the same colour as both tail and brake light is a good idea...

It was almost certainly a grandfathered cost reducing measure.

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

#387

Post by lmm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #385
lmm wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kills a lot of people. Whether the mechanism for it killing a lot of people is a large number of miles driven rather than a high rate of deaths per mile is neither here nor there.

It does not kill a large number of people in relative terms. In absolute terms, it kills an extremely tiny number of people; the death rate from traffic accidents in the US in 2018 was 0.01%.

It's one of the biggest killers of young people (e.g. looks like it's at least 25% of deaths of people aged 20-24?), so in terms of years of life lost it has a big impact.

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

#388

Post by mmwelt »

MattRix wrote: post #161

I’m on mobile so I don’t have ads blocked and Jalopnik is just awful to read. There’s a giant ad every sentence or two. The modern web is a disaster.

FYI, Firefox has limited support for addons on mobile devices, so you would be able to us Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin, AdGuard, etc.

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

#389

Post by xyzzy21 »

icedchai wrote: post #131
Bud wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MINI is actually not a BMW, although it is true that it is made by BMW. Nor are MINI drivers really very much like BMW drivers, in fact I'd say that overall as a population, they are quite different. (I had a MINI from 2002-2020. Put about 300k miles on it.)

The Mini and BMW dealers near me are, indeed, separate. They are right next door to each other, and appear to share employees and a repair facility. Strange isn't it?

The Mini and BMW dealers near me are the same and use the same service shop.

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

#390

Post by dustintrex »

H8crilA wrote: post #160
dorkwood wrote: post #157

To me, this sends another signal. One that says "don't work at Mini". If something like this is able to make it all the way through design, production and testing -- with no one raising a red flag along the way -- what other less visible but equally bone-headed ideas are making it into their cars?

You have a point, but it's not that clear cut. Large corporations are quite non-uniform and decision making is sometimes random. For example, remember YouTube Red? A quite boneheaded decision, yet I'm told there are many many good areas to work in at Google.

You can't really blame Google's engineering department for naming decisions made by branding/marketing.

In the Mini case, though, both had to sign off on the feature, since it's implemented in hardware.

Post reply on HN