Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?

[B S Magnet]

Well said.

On cars, I must say that I love the tactile feeling of dials, knobs, and stalks that you can push, twist and turn, and I love to see proper and reassuringly solid analogue instruments, rather than a touch screen - (I detest them even on phones), on the dashboard of a car.

This isn't just about aesthetics (though it includes that) but, also, about ergonomics.

Before aesthetics or ergonomics is just plain public (and personal) safety: one’s eyes should be on the path before them and things happening in the periphery — not staring at… an interface.

Industry-wide regulations on vehicular UI limitations cannot arrive here soon enough.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Before aesthetics or ergonomics is just plain public (and personal) safety: one’s eyes should be on the path before them and things happening in the periphery — not staring at… an interface.

Not for the first time, you are absolutely correct.

Safety transcends everything.

Industry-wide regulations on vehicular UI limitations cannot arrive here soon enough.

Amen to that.

A heartfelt and passionate amen to that.

 

[J.A.K.]

OP = 2016.

Pushing boulders uphill here, people.

 

[B S Magnet]

OP = 2016.

Pushing boulders uphill here, people.

It’s called a community discussion. There is no “use-by” date.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

It’s called a community discussion. There is no “use-by” date.

Not when the discussion is (still) both interesting and instructive.

Not to mention informative.

 

[bousozoku]

Darn northernly flowing rivers in the US; they just refuse to flow South like the rest 😅

Why would you darn them? Are they damaged?

 

[bousozoku]

Really? I’ve never driven a car with just the one scale.

Here in the U.S.A. that you make you a younger person. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were MPH only. I'm thinking that it was late 1970s/early 1980s that they started to implement both, around the time of the 85 MPH speedometers.

 

[bousozoku]

Before aesthetics or ergonomics is just plain public (and personal) safety: one’s eyes should be on the path before them and things happening in the periphery — not staring at… an interface.

Industry-wide regulations on vehicular UI limitations cannot arrive here soon enough.

Here in California, you don't have to worry. People are looking at their phone, and sometimes, it's on the console since they can be arrested for holding their phone while driving.

 

[bousozoku]

OP = 2016.

Pushing boulders uphill here, people.

Yes, we're rocking it.

 

[B S Magnet]

That is, of course, that the water in a Northern Hemisphere toilet circulates counter-clockwise, and oppositely in the Southern Hemisphere. How is everyone dealing with this explainable yet horrific disparity? We Northerners know to a certainty the anti-clockwise direction is the only one true rotation, Southerners are just wedded to ancient practice and we in the right are incredulous at Southerners reluctance to change. Southern Hemispherians likely feel the same way about their Northern neighbors despite being appallingly wrong.

Th… ::sighs:: Thi… ::rubs tired eyes:: This is not how the Coriolis effect works. 🤦‍♀️

 

[B S Magnet]

Here in California, you don't have to worry. People are looking at their phone, and sometimes, it's on the console since they can be arrested for holding their phone while driving.

When I’m a pedestrian or moving on two wheels, motorized or otherwise, I very much need to be worrying about people looking at a screen and not the road ahead. This goes triple for EVs whose tare (empty) mass is up to triple what their ICE-sized counterparts weigh.

When one can witness, say, a Tesla Model 3 turn a Volvo wagon into a metal, glass, and plastic mimic of mincemeat pie (when the two make impact with one another at a major intersection), it illustrates the multiple levels the automotive industry have, incredibly, managed to make public thoroughfares into less safe zones whilst touting “safety features” for occupants within only.

Glass UI dashboards and consoles + lithium battery mass, most of it yielding a very low centre of gravity, work in synergy to become dangerous to all others at pretty much any velocity.

 

[bousozoku]

When I’m a pedestrian or moving on two wheels, motorized or otherwise, I very much need to be worrying about people looking at a screen and not the road ahead. This goes triple for EVs whose tare (empty) mass is up to triple what their ICE-sized counterparts weigh.

When one can witness, say, a Tesla Model 3 turn a Volvo wagon into a metal, glass, and plastic mimic of mincemeat pie (when the two make impact with one another at a major intersection), it illustrates the multiple levels the automotive industry have, incredibly, managed to make public thoroughfares into less safe zones whilst touting “safety features” for occupants within only.

Glass UI dashboards and consoles + lithium battery mass, most of it yielding a very low centre of gravity, work in synergy to become dangerous to all others at pretty much any velocity.

Most of the population doesn't consider physics. Therefore, they speed up to pull ahead of the semi-truck/tractor-trailor/articulated lorry to scoot in front of them, and then, slow down.

I've had close calls just crossing the streets with one car stopping and the opposite car speeding through the stop sign, which is just there for convenience.

 

[XboxEvolved]

I learned last year that bald eagles sounds like seagulls😐, not what the media portrays in movies and tv.😒 That sound is the call of the red-tailed hawk. The bald eagle is the Mike Tyson of the bird world: big, intimidating, dangerous but that voice.😑

 

[Apple fanboy]

When I’m a pedestrian or moving on two wheels, motorized or otherwise, I very much need to be worrying about people looking at a screen and not the road ahead. This goes triple for EVs whose tare (empty) mass is up to triple what their ICE-sized counterparts weigh.

When one can witness, say, a Tesla Model 3 turn a Volvo wagon into a metal, glass, and plastic mimic of mincemeat pie (when the two make impact with one another at a major intersection), it illustrates the multiple levels the automotive industry have, incredibly, managed to make public thoroughfares into less safe zones whilst touting “safety features” for occupants within only.

Glass UI dashboards and consoles + lithium battery mass, most of it yielding a very low centre of gravity, work in synergy to become dangerous to all others at pretty much any velocity.

My BMW i3 EV weighs a lot less than my VW Golf used to. I’d be more concerned about the size of the SUV’s tbat are popular with some. To keep it on topic my car weighs 1345 kgs.

 

[bousozoku]

My BMW i3 EV weighs a lot less than my VW Golf used to. I’d be more concerned about the size of the SUV’s tbat are popular with some. To keep it on topic my car weighs 1345 kgs.

Whether you measure it in cubic feet or cubic metres, isn't the Golf almost a miracle of capacity vs. its exterior? The only other brand of inexpensive cars that can duplicate that is Hyundai.

 

[B S Magnet]

Most of the population doesn't consider physics. Therefore, they speed up to pull ahead of the semi-truck/tractor-trailor/articulated lorry to scoot in front of them, and then, slow down.

I've had close calls just crossing the streets with one car stopping and the opposite car speeding through the stop sign, which is just there for convenience.

Fifteen years ago, I survived a side-impact from (mercifully) a compact ICE car. It entered the intersection on a red light as I was bicycling in a designated bicycling lane, on green. The intersection had a known design issue (a one-way side street, with vehicles permitted to park all the way up to the intersection).

Although I was brought to triage in critical condition with multiple broken ribs and a pneumothorax, I recovered after ten days in hospital and months of slow recovery. (Yes, I wore a helmet and always do.) Even now, that lung never inflates to its previous, 100 per cent capacity (it manages, on the best of days, somewhere between 90 and 95 per cent).

What I frequently think about, as one who still operates a bicycle for intra-city travel, is whether I’d still be alive now had that car been, instead, an all-lithium-powered EV. I have to pay especial care anyhow and watch all motorists and blind intersections like a hawk, but all the more so when I can see the motorist is operating, say, a Polestar, a Tesla, a Rivian, or a plug-in hybrid (where I live, all of these vehicle types — plug-in hybrids and EVs — are plated in a different colour, so it’s easy to spot them even when one isn’t keeping up with brands and models).

Indeed, when you’re not ensconced inside a protective cage of a modern vehicle, to ignore the physics of those EV and plug-in models isn’t really an option if you want to make it home safely at the end of the day.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Whether you measure it in cubic feet or cubic metres, isn't the Golf almost a miracle of capacity vs. its exterior? The only other brand of inexpensive cars that can duplicate that is Hyundai.

The cabin of the i3 is a lot more spacious tbh. The design of the dash and lack of gear stick etc. basically open plan.

 

[B S Magnet]

My BMW i3 EV weighs a lot less than my VW Golf used to. I’d be more concerned about the size of the SUV’s tbat are popular with some. To keep it on topic my car weighs 1345 kgs.

The mass of the i3 depends on the year and range option of the model. You own the among the heaviest of the variants.

For perspective: the vehicle which struck me was, in physical dimensions, longer, wider, but roughly of the same height as the i3. Its curb weight was 1,100kg. The difference between it and your i3 is comparable to the mass of three fewer, average-sized adults.

For a pedestrian or a bicyclist being struck, say, from the side (i.e., “being T-boned”), this difference in mass, at the same vehicular velocity at moment of impact, can be the difference between surviving being struck and dying.

Also, to the benefit of the lighter of the above: the latter had a low mid-line, bumper, and flatter, more horizontal bonnet and raked windscreen; the physical design of the i3 you mention has, by contrast, a higher mid-line and whose bonnet/frunk area is angled, relatively, more vertical — more along the lines of a cab-forward or cab-over-styled vehicle.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Here in California, you don't have to worry. People are looking at their phone, and sometimes, it's on the console since they can be arrested for holding their phone while driving.

A driver in Aus. recently got pinged for holding her phone while driving.
The law says the phone must be in a cradle so you can look at it without touching it.
However, the part attaching the cradle to the car was broken.
So, she was holding the phone in the broken cradle, and tried to argue to the patient policeperson that since the phone was in the cradle, it should have been ok, even if it wasn't attached to the car. Sadly for the driver, the excuse didn't wash.

 

[B S Magnet]

Whether you measure it in cubic feet or cubic metres, isn't the Golf almost a miracle of capacity vs. its exterior? The only other brand of inexpensive cars that can duplicate that is Hyundai.

The last car I owned, many years ago, fit this bill, and it was my favourite car of the four I owned before writing off the need for cars (I live in a major city well-served by transit, biking, pedestrian access, and the like, where parking costs come at a needless premium).

It was a fifth-generation Honda Civic hatchback from 1993 — closer to a shooting brake in shape than a classic hatchback, and it was positively cavernous within. (Years before that, I owned a VW Golf I, which was probably the nearest analogue of the Civic amongst the other cars I owned.)

 

[Apple fanboy]

The mass of the i3 depends on the year and range option of the model. You own the among the heaviest of the variants.

For perspective: the vehicle which struck me was, in physical dimensions, longer, wider, but roughly of the same height as the i3. Its curb weight was 1,100kg. The difference between it and your i3 is comparable to the mass of three fewer, average-sized adults.

For a pedestrian or a bicyclist being struck, say, from the side (i.e., “being T-boned”), this difference in mass, at the same vehicular velocity at moment of impact, can be the difference between surviving being struck and dying.

Also, to the benefit of the lighter of the above: the latter had a low mid-line, bumper, and flatter, more horizontal bonnet and raked windscreen; the physical design of the i3 you mention has, by contrast, a higher mid-line and whose bonnet/frunk area is angled, relatively, more vertical — more along the lines of a cab-forward or cab-over-styled vehicle.

The later ones had the bigger battery. But no REX. But the reality is the type of car is not the issue. It’s how it is driven that matters.
I always give cyclists a wide berth. I also don’t race around like an idiot. Live and let live I say.

 

[B S Magnet]

A driver in Aus. recently got pinged for holding her phone while driving.
The law says the phone must be in a cradle so you can look at it without touching it.
However, the part attaching the cradle to the car was broken.
So, she was holding the phone in the broken cradle, and tried to argue to the patient policeperson that since the phone was in the cradle, it should have been ok, even if it wasn't attached to the car. Sadly for the driver, the excuse didn't wash.

I really don’t have the patience or sympathy for anyone to argue, when being pulled over or after they hit something (or someone), that they were looking at their glass screen/UI — whether a phone in cradle or a tablet-styled dash console. As written above earlier, industry regulations around integrated glass UIs inside motor vehicles is long overdue.

 

[B S Magnet]

The later ones had the bigger battery. But no REX. But the reality is the type of car is not the issue. It’s how it is driven that matters.

Physics doesn’t care about how the car gets driven. And every driver makes mistakes. It only takes once. Heck, even autonomous vehicles in existence now make mistakes. Said mistakes, however infrequent, can be (and sometimes are) deadly.

I always give cyclists a wide berth. I also don’t race around like an idiot. Live and let live I say.

From the vantage of being a pedestrian or bicyclist, every motor vehicle is, physically (as in, physics), a latent weapon. From that same vantage, there is no way to be sure the operator of a motor vehicle will successfully avoid using it as a weapon, even negligently so. For the ageing pedestrian (spoiler: everyone who lives long enough gets old), that latent force escalates risk and potential extent of harm from impact.

This is also where transportation planning and design interventions (disclosure: I’m an urbanist by education and training) can reduce the potential harm to come of those latent risks. This means, namely, slowing down the potential, effective velocities a road or artierial is able to support. Drivers may bemoan traffic calming interventions, but those interventions save lives.

So too — to dovetail it with the other, related discussion — does eliminating haptic glass UIs where tactile, proprioceptive-based controls were used previously (and with very high efficacy, minimizing time when eyes are away from the road).

 

[drrich2]

When one can witness, say, a Tesla Model 3 turn a Volvo wagon into a metal, glass, and plastic mimic of mincemeat pie (when the two make impact with one another at a major intersection),

Sounds like a potential advertisement for Tesla! Tesla...when you want to walk away. (A guy boldly strolls 'like a boss' away from a fiery conflagration in the background).

Richard.

 

[B S Magnet]

Sounds like a potential advertisement for Tesla! Tesla...when you want to walk away. (A guy boldly strolls 'like a boss' away from a fiery conflagration in the background).

Richard.

Sure. For the person with an antisocial personality disorder, it would function as an advert.

But, inconveniently for such people, we all live in a society.