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Lot of people are dead from doing stupid stuff. I really don't care. The shifter still looked like a normal automatic shifter, He just failed at paying attention.
It looked like a "normal" automatic shifter but didn't function like one. That's why this particular design has earned FCA a good deal of scrutiny and will probably end up costing them a good deal of money. Blaming the driver for a confusing interface is like blaming drivers for getting into an usually high number of accidents if a manufacturer inexplicably decided to put the accelerator pedal on the left side and the brake pedal on the right side, as if their interface design decision wasn't a significant contributing factor to the problem.
It looked like a "normal" automatic shifter but didn't function like one. That's why this particular design has earned FCA a good deal of scrutiny and will probably end up costing them a good deal of money. Blaming the driver for a confusing interface is like blaming drivers for getting into an usually high number of accidents if a manufacturer inexplicably decided to put the accelerator pedal on the left side and the brake pedal on the right side, as if their interface design decision wasn't a significant contributing factor to the problem.
The only difference between a monostable shifter and a "normal" one is that the mono returns to center. I drove a '14 Jeep for 3 years and 60K miles with one of those shifters...and never missed a gear. Never forgot to put in in park, never hit reverse by accident, right along with hundreds of thousands of others. Let's face it - a couple hundred people filing a complaint vs. the 1+ million cars being recalled? Sounds like driver error to me. The shifter still thumps when you hit a "gear" like every other one I've used and still stops when you hit park.
The only difference between a monostable shifter and a "normal" one is that the mono returns to center. I drove a '14 Jeep for 3 years and 60K miles with one of those shifters...and never missed a gear. Never forgot to put in in park, never hit reverse by accident, right along with hundreds of thousands of others. Let's face it - a couple hundred people filing a complaint vs. the 1+ million cars being recalled? Sounds like driver error to me. The shifter still thumps when you hit a "gear" like every other one I've used and still stops when you hit park.
Let's face it, when no other manufacturers has nearly the volume the complaints or accidents or injuries attributed to its shifter design, then one company screwed up worse than the others did. When nearly all of the bad apples are coming from the same orchard, that orchard deserves scrutiny even if most of its own apples aren't rotten.
Among my favorite shifters was used on the mid-'60s to early-'70s Mopars. Not too big, not too small, easy to use and plainly labeled. The one pictured is on a '69 Dodge Dart...
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