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.)
That’s the BMW X1 and x2 right? I feel the “correct” answer is that the X1/2 is actually minis not a proper BMW since they are built on the “mini” platform and are front wheel driven.
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?
Well, technically, at least in Germany, they are the same. I have a 2021 Mini and it was surprising when I got some paper for taxes to see that the state considers it as BMW car.
The really stupid thing is we have these exact same design of lights on the UK delivered Mini's, however it's just the center horizontal bar that flashes orange.
As I understand, US regulations have stricter requirements on the required light surface area. Presumably this design decision was an attempt to meet those requirements.
Audi models in the US also light their taillights in addition to the scrolling bar they have in the EU.
Hmm, I would not be distracted by this. There are so many different indicators in Europe (we have laxer rule than the US on blinkers) that the "direction" or whatever does not phase me at all.
I have seen all kind of indicators while driving in Europe, and they all share the same basic thing; a flashing light indicating in which direction the car will be turning.
Suddenly seeing a flashing arrow pointing the other way instantly confused me, and I had no idea which way the car would be turning. This is just plain stupid.
FWIW, the answer to that question is yes. We bought a Mini a few years back and the Union Jack indicators were an upgrade (not a cheap one as I recall)
I was trying to find out if they blinked in the weird arrow pattern by configuring one online, but it's impossible to tell (they're not shown blinking).
Kinda surprising that they're not keen on selling potential customers on the upgrade.
Oh, I had no idea it’s supposed to be a Union Jack, though it makes sense after you said it. All it looked like to me was the designer intentionally doing something unbelievably stupid for no reason at all. I guess having a really dumb reason is slightly better.
The salesperson doesn't care, and the dealership sells whatever the manufacturer ships to them. The Mini dealer isn't about to start stocking Kias instead of Minis.
If anyone at Mini sees their 2019 model sold N in the first 6 months, and their 2021 model sold N/2, does anyone at corporate ask the dealerships to explain?
I hope someone would care. What if 90% of potential buyers jumped off when they saw the mileage numbers. Or after the test drive. Or when they heard how long delivery would take.
I'm sure they do, but as a car enthusiast, we're forever frustrated, because the number of people who care is simply miniscule.
I always bought used cars and it's frustrating that, of course, the manufacturers/dealers only care about people buying new.
But now, having bought a new car, I realize they STILL don't care about my opinion, because people who care about the car-like-appliances they buy are in such a minority.
Car dealerships have scads of people lining up to throw money at them for the privilege of having a new car. Look at how various non-enthusiast vehicles become trendy and command huge markups -- eg, the Kia Telluride became the "it" child taxi a few years ago (replacing the Honda CRV) and every self-respecting parent simply HAD to pay thousands over sticker to have the latest status symbol.
Go try to buy a new car and the sales people simply don't seem to care about you wanting a difficult to find color combination from another dealer. They could source one if they wanted to, but they don't. They're catering to the masses who are simply to be allowed to buy a car sitting on the lot. They want to make as much money as possible from each sale; getting a marginal sale to someone who actually cares which option package or color they get simply isn't worth it. There are too few of "us" and too many of "them".
In the US, it's incredibly rare to people actually order a car from the factory the way they want it, because nobody is willing to wait. The buyer accepts that they 'have to' buy whatever is on the lot that day. With most cars, you have very few options you can even select from anyway; they're all bundled in packages of stuff you may or may not care about. To be fair, this is an industry-wide trend; having fewer SKUs, in retail parlance, makes a ton of sense. But I think it's particularly bad in the US.
Why are people in such a rush to get their cars? I understand if your old one broke down and you absolutely need one for a job ASAP, but if you can afford to buy a new car, surely you could afford to wait a bit to get exactly the car you want?
I ordered a car in 2016, and the process is terrible. For one thing, the local dealers didn't seem interested at all, so I had to drive 30 miles away to a dealer that was willing to make an easy sale.
Then, the options really aren't there anyway, depending on the brand. If I want the safety features, I'm also getting 'premium wheels' which I don't want, the gps navigation time capsule because h I'm not paying $100 to update that, and 70 speakers. And it didn't actually come like we ordered anyway (it was pretty close though, had the vacuum cleaner when we wanted a spare tire, managed to find a spot to squeeze in a spare tire). And after all that, it still took 90 minutes to pick up the car when it showed up 3ish months later.
It's much easier to take a car that's already on the lot. Manufacturer's websites are pretty good at finding inventory that's close to what you really want, and you just deal with that.
> Go try to buy a new car and the sales people simply don't seem to care about you wanting a difficult to find color combination from another dealer.
This, and similar complaints about the buying process, always feels so weird to me as a European. Parting with such a huge amount as the cost of a new car, AFAIK pretty much nobody in Europe ever picks a pre-made one from the lot; it's always ordered to spec, with the exact colours and equipment and options you want. What's the huge rush for you Yanks that you don't do it that way? "But that takes weeks!" -- yeah, so what? If you're getting a new car, don't you usually know that a few weeks beforehand?
People at a showroom might not be considered actual customers. We would need to get actual customer who have purchased the car to contact Mini, publically via Twitter, so they could no longer hide behind this statement.
We're supposed to brush twice a day, get regular exercise, eat well, not get drunk, not smoke, have an appropriate work/life balance, limit screen time, get enough sun exposure, not get too much sun exposure, vote, floss, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and change the oil every five thousand miles, too. But how is all that working out?
I do check my car every couple of weeks. I have a routine that takes about 3 minutes total. About twice a month so about 24 times 3 minutes ~ 1 hour per year.
Although I could argue it actually takes zero time because I usually do this while waiting for somebody else to get into the car.
As a side note, if you are too busy to brush your teeth you should consider talking to a health professional about consequences of not brushing teeth. Or maybe your wife/girlfriend.
I also inspect my car pretty regularly in a quick "walk-around", and check things like tire pressure at least monthly, if we're out here collecting anecdotes.
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.
Even if people look at their own cars they'd assume it's fine in the sense that most countries have regulations that cars need to meet before they can be sold.
I got really frustrated when I started to see 3 rapid flashes when a Toyota or Kia driver put on the brakes on the Highway. What had been a common signal for “you’re a little too close” was now shown every time the driver pressed the brake pedal.
I guess I could’ve complained to one of the manufacturers, but what do they care? I’m not buying their cars.
This isn't the manufacturer, they're aftermarket. It started (sensibly) with some emergency vehicles having it to make sure to get the attention of the driver[s] behind them. At some point people in high-traffic areas started thinking their 18 year old Corolla was worthy of the same treatment.
In Europe under emergency braking, the brake lights pulse (I think, i.e. from half-lit to full-lit) and the hazard lights flash too. The hazard lights stay lit if you stop, at least on some cars.
I'm actually not a fan of it. Granted I've mostly driven older cars, without the wonders of ABS etc - but most situations that require heavy, unplanned breaking for me, are also times I really should have two hands on the wheel.
I'm not fundamentally opposed - systems that do it automatically sound like a fantastic compromise. I just think if it's dangerous enough that I feel other drivers need more warning than normal, it's probably dangerous enough that I should have full control.
First, do what you need to get the car under control.
Then, switch on the hazards so the driver behind you gets a heads up. Obviously you don’t risk crashing fumbling for the hazards.
Particularly useful on rural roads with many turns where the slowdown really might be surprising, or on off ramps where the car behind you might not have arrived yet.
Usually there is a buffer where you've noticed a hazard in front and are braking in time. But then your next focus is on what is behind you. Did they notice you braking hard, are the about to hit into you, do you need to move over for them, etc. Hazards just add a bit more warning that red brake lights, because they're so common, can't convey.
It's done afterwards, once you've safely reduced the speed of your vehicle, not during the initial emergency braking.
It's basically a heads up for all the vehicles far behind you that haven't yet noticed a sudden change in the flow of the traffic. Gives them more time to reduce speed without haste.
This is pretty common in Germany on the Autbahn - sudden change in traffic, i.e. much slower going cars and especially when approaching the end of a jam, you turn on your hazard blinkers to signal this to the following cars. It works pretty well and is very useful (especially because people might be going at 200km/h behind you, approaching the end of a jam).
Newer cars have an automatic high-frequency hazard flasher that triggers when heavy/sudden breaking occurs, also to warn the cars behind you.
This is also standard common curtesy on Japanese highways. The biggest part is drivers behind the original signaler will turn on their hazards to communicate backwards in the chain. Thus everyone can anticipate the slow down before the slow down would be visible. It is a big deal in Japan where even the raised highways and especially tunnels under Tokyo are curvy.
If you're suddenly going so much less than the prevailing speed that you're a hazard then turning on your flashers makes sense since that's what they're used for.
Trying to encode extra info into the brake lights is a fools errand.
> > What had been a common signal for “you’re a little too close”
> I've never seen or heard of this.
If you're being annoyingly tailgated, rapidly tap your brakes a couple times to signal the tailgater that you have brakes -- if you need to use them for real, he'll crash into you, so he should back off.
Used to be standard communication in Northern Europe, i.e Germany up through the Nordics, but may have fallen somewhat out of the public consciousness recently (Geroffmylawn, damn millennials, etc).
This is the Pulse[0] "safety system". I was trying to buy a new truck this spring, and going through the back-and-forth of talking to a number of dealers. I had a vehicle specced out, and ready to commit to, and I asked to review the final paperwork. There was a $400 charge listed that hadn't been disclosed earlier. I was frustrated because I'd asked numerous times, "Am I going to see any additional charges on the final paperwork?"
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 brake pedal, it doesn't go off all the time and actually means something to other drivers. The Pulse system is just a $30 part that's spliced into the wires right behind the brake light, that the dealer gets to charge $400 for it. And it annoys everyone driving behind you.
I live in a small town on an island with 14 miles of road. There were about five vehicles here five or ten years ago with this system, and they stood out because we all start to recognize each other's cars in an isolated town of 10,000. All of those cars are gone or have had the system removed. I told the dealer I'd look like an a***e to bring that system back to our town. He called back later to say I was lucky and they hadn't installed the system on this particular vehicle yet, and he got special permission to sell me one without Pulse. I told him I found a dealer that wasn't trying to upsell useless parts and hung up.
I've heard of people buying new without running into this kind of tactic. But this is the first time I've ever bought a new vehicle, and I ran into almost every issue I've read about when dealing with new car dealers.
> 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 brake pedal, it doesn't go off all the time and actually means something to other drivers.
Good god, slimy sales tactics asides that sounds like complete cargo-culting of the feature making it not just useless for its original purpose but actively misleading.
And I would expect the original feature grew at least in part from the common habit (I don't think it's ever required) of enabling the hazards when reaching an unforeseen obstruction: on many cars these days the hazards will automatically switch on during emergency braking (usually detected via an accelerometer, it tends to come on at the same time as brake assist though I don't think the two are coupled), it's possible that on some the brakes will also flash though I can't remember ever seeing that.
Of course many US cars have red turn signals / hazards, and US standards even allow brakes and turn signals to use the same lights, which is… not sane.
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 coast.. for now).
One particularly awful safety feature actually ramps up brake force assist when it "detects" emergency braking behavior; typically abrupt lift off of the throttle and subsequent application of the brake.
They never considered that maybe I WANT to abruptly lift off the throttle and then GENTLY apply the brakes, without having my head thrown towards the steering wheel.
> 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?
Interesting. I suspect the way it works, since the vehicles I'm thinking of have an additional set of stop lamps that illuminate, is that a 2nd set comes on and one or the other set flashes, but the others stay illuminate the whole time.
It's extremely distracting while driving, and if more cars adopt that, then everyone will be worse off. I wish they were illegal (and I wonder if they technically are, because flashing means that for a brief second the light is off while the pedal is being pressed, and I have to imagine the law is written that the brake light must be lit when the brake pedal is pressed).
Flashing red lights are generally illegal and reserved for emergency vehicles. Pulse skirts this by claiming it's not a flashing light, but a pulsing one.
"Pulse is the only pulsing third brake light that meets regulatory requirements for use in all 50 states. Step on the brake pedal and Pulse goes to work pulsing, rather than flashing, the third brake light. What’s the difference? NHTSA regulations restrict flashing lights to emergency vehicles. Our award winning rear-end collision deterrent technology causes the third brake light to remain steady burning, even while the light pulses."
IMO it would be better for NHTSA to create rulemaking that would regulate pulsing brake lights for use under heavy braking conditions similar to Europe. Effectively making it a safety feature instead of yet another annoying distraction on the road that this pulse system puts out.
Pulse has a "Gross Margin Analysis" spreadsheet published (probably unintentionally) on their website[1]. It shows that they're charging dealerships $59.00 for the part and it installs in about 15 minutes.
At a 500% markup, it feels less about your safety and more about the dealerships/pulseprotects income safety.
> Dealership Monthly Investment calculation is based upon a Dealership un-installing modules on vehicles sold without Pulse.
The profit calculation is based on preinstalling the system on every vehicle that goes on the lot, and then uninstalling it on request. This means opting out costs the dealership real money, from installing and then uninstalling it.
Many EU-spec cars have the brake lights flash under emergency braking, and the hazards come on if the car comes to a stop after that. This is how it was implemented in several cars I owned - a C-class, an Audi A5, and now in a EU-spec Model 3 as well.
I think in Europe in case of emergency breaking all turnsignals blink automatically for a moment (not the break lights). You can make all the turnsignals blink manually when you toggle "emergency lights" switch.
This feature is called "Dynamic Brake Lights" and seems to be somewhat common on new vehicles in Europe. Under hard emergency braking, the brake (red) lights flash rapidly. If the vehicle comes to a complete stop after emergency braking, the hazard (blinking amber) lights will turn on automatically until you move off again.
I'm reasonably sure this is because in the US the rear brake lights are often also used as the turn signal and the hazard lights.
Under hard braking on European/Japanese cars the hazard lights will automatically come on. Because they're overloaded in the US it's hard to tell if it's that, or the brake lights flashing unless you're paying close attention to the middle brake light.
Edit: Just seen the comment about the Pulse system - didn't know about that!
> 3 rapid flashes [...] a common signal for "you’re a little too close"
That's new to me as EU driver. What I tend to do is hit brakes three or more times in a rhythmic fashion to signal there's traffic jam ahead; specifically on Autobahn where speeds go high with distances often way too low, instead of turning on alarm blinkers.
I think that was exactly what was meant: A manual[§] signal. Only the context the GP meant, and that I've also seen it used in, was usually a more personal "You're driving too close on my arse; back off a bit to create a safety margin" rather than your warning of stau ahead.
Ah ok, that makes sense; it's basically the same thing. Though there are other nuances to "teach" other drivers behind you, like driving extra-slow or breaking once I guess.
> Though there are other nuances to "teach" other drivers behind you, like driving extra-slow
Yeah, but I don't want to drive extra slow, do I? For one thing, I want to proceed as fast as possible, to get where I'm going. For another, if I slow down, the gap in front of me will widen enough that some fucker -- quite possibly the one now tailgating me -- will squeeze into it, and then I am the one tailgating someone.
> or breaking once I guess.
Quite the Freudian typo... Yes, braking for real while being tailgated is rather likely to lead to things breaking. And since one of those things is me (and another my car), I'd prefer not to.
> The third sentence indicates that they would know if there were any possible concerns because they own a Mini.
It indicates that they're used to that because they own a Mini, and by the first time that it actually matters they're accustomed enough to not recognise the concern.
The human brain is really good about not having to ever consciously think about something if it's had enough exposure in advance.
> Mini has not heard any concerns from customers regarding the rear turn indicators
That perfectly summarize the car industry. Manufacturers only care about the people in the car. It's not their problem if their car are death machines for everyone outside.
Ah, yes. Form over function, the driving principle for many insane UX "improvements" over the past 20 years. Personality is great. It's not more important than clarity or other related concerns though.
Same. I drove a MINI for 18 years partly because they are so quirky and that's enjoyable, but this is simply the wrong kind of thing to indulge quirkiness in.
Turn signals need to function well as turn signals. That's vitally important. You can't fuck with that by making the signal actively and hilariously misleading. It's just not ok.
I doubt anyone would’ve called it stupid when the arrows pointed in the direction the car would be driving. There’s zero common sense in reversing them.
Honestly I'd be fine with blinkers being anything, make them emojis for all I care, _except_ arrows pointing the wrong direction. The quirkiness isn't the problem at all here
Flashing the red brake light is a North American thing. Over in Europe you would have a dedicated amber light and I expect there is a different light than the Union Jack which would be reserved for combined rear and brake lights only.
I’ve seen a mini with these lights recently here in Ireland and I’d expect the driver may find their car burnt out sooner rather than later.
> Flashing the red brake light is a North American thing
Nowadays, the brake light is rarely used. It's usually a different part of the taillight cluster which may be red or amber, and most manufacturers (especially European ones, ironically) sometimes choose to use a red one for NA markets. The complaint here isn't that the brake lights are being used, but that the turn signal is designed like this.
> It's usually a different part of the taillight cluster which may be red or amber,
Which remains one of the issues, even if it's not technically a brake light. In Europe red turning signs are not legal.
But I can see how the same turn signal in amber would help very little, as you'd still have a very clear, very bright arrow pointing the wrong way entirely.
I find it crazy that Americans allow turn signals to use the same red lights as brakes considering how many different safety rules they have. Like how all cars have to have amber reflectors on the front bumpers, which almost all European cars have to add almost as an afterthought [1], or how the door lock pins can't be flush with the door (at least I assume this is regulation since I never see non-flush door lock pins in European cars). And now the most recent one is the mandatory backup cameras, and I don't think I know any other country in the world where those are mandated by law.
America has the highest per capita traffic deaths among OECD countries. Our traffic / vehicle regulations aren’t that strong and are rarely enforced on after-market modifications.
This is getting downvotes, but it’s literally legal to drive a jacked up, high center of gravity pickup trucks in the US. Meanwhile in Europe such a modification would be illegal because it reduces front-facing visibility.
Per miles driven the US has an average number of traffic deaths. The problem is that the country's infrastructure is designed so poorly that the number of miles driven per capita is laughably absurd.
Maybe the root cause is the laughably easy barrier of entry to have a license to drive a death missile?
It's a multi faceted issue of course, but to me, getting better educated drivers on the road is by far the easiest problem to solve around driving.
I would say almost everyone knows not to text and drive, or run red lights or to speed. Yet these are all frequent occurrences. Even proposals to add speed or red light cameras (with strict rules to prevent municipal abuse) face heavy opposition. I don’t think education alone will fix traffic safety.
Taking devil’s advocate here, but people claim that automated enforcement has equity concerns, privacy concerns and immigration concerns. Again, these aren’t my arguments, but:
There’s concern that automated enforcement is a regressive punishment that unduly burdens low-income motorists. There’s a belief that these cameras will be concentrated in low-income or minority neighborhoods.
The privacy concerns are fairly obvious, people are concerned the government is building a database of vehicle locations.
And the immigration concerns are that information could be fed back to ICE to detain undocumented immigrants.
However if you read the enabling legislation, a lot of these concerns are addressed through data retention, data sharing and safety standards (i.e. tickets can only be issued at 9 MPH over the limit and there must be a warning sign.)
I also think an unspoken part of the opposition is some people feel they can talk a cop out of writing a ticket, but they can’t argue with a machine.
People don't know the basics of changing lanes, passing slower vehicles, u-turns, planning for their exits, etc etc etc. People text and drive due to the most basic misunderstanding of how dangerous driving is and how much damage they can cause to others.
>> Per miles driven the US has an average number of traffic deaths.
> Maybe the root cause is the laughably easy barrier of entry to have a license to drive a death missile?
You're saying we should make driver's licenses punitively difficult to get in order to shift American population structure in the direction of dense settlements?
The reason America isn't densely settled is much simpler than that; there aren't very many people in America.
> You're saying we should make driver's licenses punitively difficult to get in order to shift American population structure in the direction of dense settlements?
I don't think there's anything punitive about proportionately strict regulation for something that kills so many people.
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.
I'll copy paste what i said in another comment:People don't know the basics of changing lanes, passing slower vehicles, u-turns, planning for their exits, etc etc etc.
The DMV test is a joke. The 15 minute test in a quiet neighborhood does not prepare you to be a proper participant on the road.
American's views of freedoms are a little wonky. In most of the world you can go about life with many transport options. You could drive, you could walk, you could ride a bike. While in the US the only realistic option is to drive.
In a personal freedoms sense, I would think that Europeans have more personal freedom since they have more realistic options to pick from.
European Minis have those stupid looking Union Jack light clusters, but IIRC it’s just the horizontal bar that flashes yellow on those, not the extra diagonal bits that make them into reverse arrows.
In the general population no, but for the type of person who engages in antisocial behaviour I fully expect this to happen. The irony is that the they would do it while wearing a UK football team’s jersey.
They're shaped like arrows pointing the opposite way, and we've had arrows for directions long before we had turn signals. If I ever see one of those in the street you bet I'll be confused for a split second. Being confused even for a split second is not a great thing when you're driving a two ton vehicle.
If I were behind that I would not be perpetually confused. But I’d sure as hell have a split second of confusion, and generally we try to avoid those sorts of situations when driving.
The article talks about this: "Now, I think the vast majority of drivers will understand what’s going on and treat them as normal blinking turn indicators, but these indicators hurt your brain, at least a little bit"
I think you are interpreting "confused" as "I can't tell which way the car is turning", while everyone else is talking about "This UX forces me to use my brain when I shouldn't have to".
I think the author is more accurately simulating how his brain will feel when he's flying down the road, tracking the trajectories of the very fast metal boxes surrounding him, and suddenly encounters a non-standard ambiguous signal. Turn signal decoding should be instant and unconscious, and this mini signal disrupts that. If anything I think he's understating the risks.
Yeah, I don't think they're literally meaning "hurt" here.
Maybe a better analogy is where you're having a conversation with someone, and they throw in a double-negative. It's not like you're literally unable to work it out, but you need to engage with it consciously for a second. In a high-stakes conversation, that's just something that's good to avoid.
A memorable example of this for me (if a bit of a tangent) was when Felix Baumgartner was doing his mega parachute jump, and they kept screwing up the comms for which direction the wind was coming from / going in: https://youtu.be/rNhmYaWiPEk?t=4200
(by convention, people talk about wind in terms of the direction they come from).
I think the whole thing here is that driving involves a lot of modelling other drivers and their intentions, so our tolerance for bad UX that requires conscious thought should be really low.
They do not follow the pattern if every other turn signal you have seen, because no other turn signal has an arrow pointing in the opposite direction of what it is indicating.
Can you really not understand how that might cause a moment of confusion? You see a turn signal like normal, but then you notice it is pointing in a different direction… you don’t think that might make some people pause for an instant and think?
We are used to both turn signals and arrows being used to indicate direction… when they contradict each other, it is going to get past our automatic brain and make us think, which is bad when driving.
Okay, maybe your brain is wired differently, just like the brain of the designer who created the lights.
The position of the light on the car is a signal for my brain, but it takes some processing. If it's on the right side of the vehicle, my brain evaluates that to "right" and vice versa, but maybe it's a short car, like a Smart ForTwo or a Fiat 500, and I'm looking at its side, so the right-hand-side indicator is left from the "center of perceived mass", but in that case there should be another smaller light somewhere around the side-view mirror and hmmm, yeah, it's turning right. It just takes a tiny bit of processing power and a tiny bit of time.
But an arrow, boy, I've been looking at arrows all my life. They've been telling me where to go at the train station, which way to turn on Google Maps and sometimes even literally which way to turn the steering wheel, on the outside of a sharp turn. An arrow requires no additional processing and is a strong, unmistakable signal.
So what my brain sees on that Mini flashing its left indicator is something like "Car turning left, btw RIGHT".
I agree! In fact, I’m sick of red meaning stop, and green meaning go for traffic lights. After all, this is redundant information, we all know the arrangement. Why not swap up the colors for fun?
This idea is only slightly worse than using wrong-pointing arrows for turn signals.
There's this trick question among children here. One makes the other repeat "white" ten times and immediately asks "What do cows drink?". The answer is almost always milk. It might even be working without repeating white part [1].
You should have encountered many situations like this before, simple tasks creating cognitive load, how can't you know what the fuss is?
What if you're in foggy weather or bad rain and can't properly see the car in front of you, and you see a "arrow pointing left" flashing ahead... Not only is the arrow pointing in the wrong direction but you may incorrectly assume that the vehicle itself is to the right of that light when it is in fact to the left of it.
Signals are most important in reduced vision conditions, and this reduces the reliability of those signals.
Just looking at the video in the tweet had me slightly confused. Arrows are powerful.
It's like those puzzles or quiz's or whatnot that have the word "red" written in a blue font. Of course everyone can read the word, but in split second decisions the brain is going to grab whichever details it can.
> 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.
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.
The Mini indicators don't look like arrows to me. They look just like basic indicators. I don't know what else to say?
To be honest I think people are massively exaggerating how confusing they are for fun Internet outrage points. People calling for people to be sacked and things. Crazy.
I've worked in places where, if it's a senior VIP's idea, nobody questions it. You just do it. Doesn't matter if it's good, clever, high-value, safe, ethical, legal, or even possible. You just do it and don't ask why, or so much as hint that it's a terrible idea. Everyone just whistles and pretends it's great. I would hope that this wouldn't be the case in a car company, where safety needs to be a huge part of the whole process, but I've never worked there.
They probably designed the car with Europe regulations in mind first, and then rather than try and design an entirely new brake light for the US just took the lazy/cheap way and lit up the other two available light bars.
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.
I laughed out loud as soon as I saw the gif of the turn signal. This is an unintentional Stroop test in a place where you need to have absolute clarity.
someone sat down, designed those tail-lights. and got all the subordinates to nod, in agreement. then they later went to their husband / wife and little kids with a smug on their face like they did a good job.
Do you know this for a fact? Because it could’ve been some executive told the designer to make a Union Jack blinker. And the designer dutifully did their job, even though they thought it was stupid.
My humble take: it's actually not meant to be an arrow - although it does indeed look like one - but the part of the embedded Union Jack that lights up.
I mean, that’s not a humble take, that’s what the article is about. That the use of the Union Jack has had the side effect of making the lights into arrows, but on the wrong side (when seen as arrows, which is a natural interpretation). Not that they were intended to be arrows.
The turn signals on new Kias that are 11" off the ground on the lowest part of the bumper are ridiculously hard to spot and after fall below the line of vision.
What I failed to articulate (I can’t get my brain to boot this morning) is that a decent amount of motorcycles use arrows as their turn indicators. When I see a blinking arrow at night, I assume it’s a bike.
What if one tail light is slightly defective and you're in the dark. Driving is done with the subconscious and this potentially lethal in the wrong circumstance.
If it is so dark that your headlights are not able to illuminate the car ahead's reflectors and numberplate adequately for you to see them, even if it has defective lights, and react in time, then you are traveling too fast for the conditions.
The correct response to something weird or potentially hazardous ahead is to slow down and try to determine what is going on.
> then you are traveling too fast for the conditions
Oh, yes, absolutely. But you've already made the mistake and there's nothing to be done anymore. We can either make you and everyone around you pay for your mistakes, or try to make the whole environment as forgiving and as safe as possible. Just like in aviation, navy, software development, or most other industries.
> oh, the left hand side indicator is blinking. It's possible they might turn left.
Not hard at all, which is why this isn't a problem if you have enough time to think all that.
This is a problem in the tiny minority of cases where it's night, it's raining, you're either going too fast or maybe blinded by someone's high beams and all your brain can process in a split second is BLINKING ARROW LEFT.
If my visibility is impaired for the reasons you mention, then I’m sure I’m not seeing the “arrow” either. Blinking light comes before shape recognition in the visual hierarchy.
Exactly. The shape is likely only just resolvable at a safe highway following distance, whereas you'll see it flashing from further away. Arguably the visual design might even trigger the "something is wrong" reflex and make you pay attention.
This reminds me of the colour word test, where you have to say what colour a word is but the word itself is the name of a different colour. The cognitive conflict behind this is called the Stroop Effect and I wonder if this isn’t being inflicted on drivers behind these minis.
Personally I find the Audi-style sequential lightshow signals far more stupid - and more distracting.
These look odd in a static image where the reader has been primed by the title, but in real life they are flashing lights on the corner of the car. The animated GIF in the article isn’t confusing is it?
> The animated GIF in the article isn’t confusing is it?
I would say that it, in fact, is: once you see the arrow pointing the wrong way around it becomes difficult to "unsee" it.
I actually missed the issue in the video, the gif and text made the arrow "pop out", and now I can't unsee the clearly right-pointing arrow blinking at me, from a car which is certainly trying to turn left.
Similar situation...the U.S. fire fighting community starting using European-style reflective chevrons in the 2005-2010 period. U.S. apparatus spec is governed by something called NFPA 1901 but is highly decentralized and people were mounting them upside down even though they were conforming to the (nascent) standard for rear reflective surface area. The "V" shape of upside down chevrons can pull people TOWARDS a vehicle vs. direct them away from it. Mostly fixed now but a hot mess.
Gotta love the warning KEEP BACK 343 FEET in the "correct" photo. Where in the world did they get 343 feet? That doesn't correspond to a round number in meters, an integer fraction of a mile, or anything else.
> 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 time I've seen it.
The comment above is clearly controversial, I can't think of driving at night behind a car and not seeing both rear lights, and usually illuminated license plate and illumination coming from the rear window pane. Overall that gives me a full sense of the width of the car.
The indicator light would be relatively to the left/right of the car, and typically would look like a single bulb due to distance and diffraction.
>> I can't think of driving at night behind a car and not seeing both rear lights, and usually illuminated license plate and illumination coming from the rear window pane.
Have you ever driven in a snowstorm at night? (I am not being facetious, there are terrible snowstorms in the winter where I live due to lake-effect snow. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live.)
Visibility is terrible in a nighttime snowstorm.
Reflective surfaces are covered with snow.
Lights can be partially or completely covered so that only a faint glow is visible.
Anything that leads to confusion, such as a backward-pointing arrow turn signal light, could cause confusion that might lead to accidents. It might not confuse some drivers, but it only takes one confused driver to cause a road accident.
> Have you ever driven in a snowstorm at night? (I am not being facetious, there are terrible snowstorms in the winter where I live due to lake-effect snow. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live.)
Yes, once or twice. The general recommendation is NOT to drive during a snow storm. For those that must drive during a snow storm probably aren't driving these Minis.
After all, most cars are not designed for every possible climate/severe weather scenario, I don't see why Minis should be held to a higher regard.
It's absolutely technically possible to drive a Mini in a snowstorm, just like any other car (apart from perhaps super- and "hyper-" sports cars with ~zero ground clearance).
Whether one can follow the common-sense recommendation not to drive in a snow storm is due to all kinds of other circumstances, approximately none of which is related to what brand of car you own.
> Imagine if you can only see the car's taillights and you see a blinking arrow move the opposite way it points. What would you think you saw?
If conditions were that bad and you saw a ‘normal’ indicator flash it would be a 50/50 guess which way it was going. That’s better I suppose but hardly good.
I'd say 90/10. The positioning of the light in relation to the road is usually going to be a very good heuristic.
However if that light was a freaking arrow I'm going to think "oh, it must be one of those 10% of cases, it's a good thing that indicator was designed so well" shortly before I'm killed.
The article's writer agrees with Mini. After several hundred words of mockery they conclude with: "I don’t actually think the design is going to really confuse people...I don’t really think these are actually hurting anyone."
My wife thinks my anti-modern-mini rants are incredibly funny. But I think the car is a list of lazy mistranslations of a design classic. Thanks for adding another example to my list of mini shame.
I remember seeing my friend’s Isuzu Trooper 4x4 in a parking lot next to a “Mini” that dwarfed it. I don’t hate minis, but that moment made me realize what a silly brand they are.
Wow what a circular response - people who buy the Mini have no problem with its stupid features. Of course they don't - they bought the car so you know that already.
That Mini rep response sounds like a lame rationalization.
449 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 323 ms ] thread(I had a MINI from 2002-2020. Put about 300k miles on it.)
That is a true mental clusterfuck.
Audi models in the US also light their taillights in addition to the scrolling bar they have in the EU.
Suddenly seeing a flashing arrow pointing the other way instantly confused me, and I had no idea which way the car would be turning. This is just plain stupid.
I wouldn't expect them to: they cannot see their own turn signal lights while driving.
If they happen to be behind another Mini, they already know about it and it may not throw them off-guard like others who aren't familiar with it.
I was trying to find out if they blinked in the weird arrow pattern by configuring one online, but it's impossible to tell (they're not shown blinking).
Kinda surprising that they're not keen on selling potential customers on the upgrade.
There are plenty of image results searching "Mini rear lights" or similar.
If anyone at Mini sees their 2019 model sold N in the first 6 months, and their 2021 model sold N/2, does anyone at corporate ask the dealerships to explain?
I hope someone would care. What if 90% of potential buyers jumped off when they saw the mileage numbers. Or after the test drive. Or when they heard how long delivery would take.
You know, any process optimization whatsoever.
I always bought used cars and it's frustrating that, of course, the manufacturers/dealers only care about people buying new.
But now, having bought a new car, I realize they STILL don't care about my opinion, because people who care about the car-like-appliances they buy are in such a minority.
Car dealerships have scads of people lining up to throw money at them for the privilege of having a new car. Look at how various non-enthusiast vehicles become trendy and command huge markups -- eg, the Kia Telluride became the "it" child taxi a few years ago (replacing the Honda CRV) and every self-respecting parent simply HAD to pay thousands over sticker to have the latest status symbol.
Go try to buy a new car and the sales people simply don't seem to care about you wanting a difficult to find color combination from another dealer. They could source one if they wanted to, but they don't. They're catering to the masses who are simply to be allowed to buy a car sitting on the lot. They want to make as much money as possible from each sale; getting a marginal sale to someone who actually cares which option package or color they get simply isn't worth it. There are too few of "us" and too many of "them".
In the US, it's incredibly rare to people actually order a car from the factory the way they want it, because nobody is willing to wait. The buyer accepts that they 'have to' buy whatever is on the lot that day. With most cars, you have very few options you can even select from anyway; they're all bundled in packages of stuff you may or may not care about. To be fair, this is an industry-wide trend; having fewer SKUs, in retail parlance, makes a ton of sense. But I think it's particularly bad in the US.
Then, the options really aren't there anyway, depending on the brand. If I want the safety features, I'm also getting 'premium wheels' which I don't want, the gps navigation time capsule because h I'm not paying $100 to update that, and 70 speakers. And it didn't actually come like we ordered anyway (it was pretty close though, had the vacuum cleaner when we wanted a spare tire, managed to find a spot to squeeze in a spare tire). And after all that, it still took 90 minutes to pick up the car when it showed up 3ish months later.
It's much easier to take a car that's already on the lot. Manufacturer's websites are pretty good at finding inventory that's close to what you really want, and you just deal with that.
This, and similar complaints about the buying process, always feels so weird to me as a European. Parting with such a huge amount as the cost of a new car, AFAIK pretty much nobody in Europe ever picks a pre-made one from the lot; it's always ordered to spec, with the exact colours and equipment and options you want. What's the huge rush for you Yanks that you don't do it that way? "But that takes weeks!" -- yeah, so what? If you're getting a new car, don't you usually know that a few weeks beforehand?
You are supposed to inspect your car at least from time to time. This includes walking over to see your turn signals work correctly.
Although I could argue it actually takes zero time because I usually do this while waiting for somebody else to get into the car.
As a side note, if you are too busy to brush your teeth you should consider talking to a health professional about consequences of not brushing teeth. Or maybe your wife/girlfriend.
And I don't drive anything fancy..
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.
I doubt they have seen the back of their own car while they are driving said car.
But with the advent of LED's, I suspect that fewer and fewer people are checking their lights since they rarely fail without physical damage.
I guess I could’ve complained to one of the manufacturers, but what do they care? I’m not buying their cars.
Instead of blinking the brake lights, some U.S. cars automatically turn on the hazard lights under heavy braking. It's standard on mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTXR5JMsR5o
I've never seen or heard of this.
But seeing cars that flash their brake light under heavy/emergency braking is common (typically high-end European brands)
I've done it myself when going from regular speed to unexpected traffic, in the hope that the person behind me is paying attention...
I'm not fundamentally opposed - systems that do it automatically sound like a fantastic compromise. I just think if it's dangerous enough that I feel other drivers need more warning than normal, it's probably dangerous enough that I should have full control.
Then, switch on the hazards so the driver behind you gets a heads up. Obviously you don’t risk crashing fumbling for the hazards.
Particularly useful on rural roads with many turns where the slowdown really might be surprising, or on off ramps where the car behind you might not have arrived yet.
It's basically a heads up for all the vehicles far behind you that haven't yet noticed a sudden change in the flow of the traffic. Gives them more time to reduce speed without haste.
Trying to encode extra info into the brake lights is a fools errand.
> I've never seen or heard of this.
If you're being annoyingly tailgated, rapidly tap your brakes a couple times to signal the tailgater that you have brakes -- if you need to use them for real, he'll crash into you, so he should back off.
Used to be standard communication in Northern Europe, i.e Germany up through the Nordics, but may have fallen somewhat out of the public consciousness recently (Geroffmylawn, damn millennials, etc).
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 brake pedal, it doesn't go off all the time and actually means something to other drivers. The Pulse system is just a $30 part that's spliced into the wires right behind the brake light, that the dealer gets to charge $400 for it. And it annoys everyone driving behind you.
I live in a small town on an island with 14 miles of road. There were about five vehicles here five or ten years ago with this system, and they stood out because we all start to recognize each other's cars in an isolated town of 10,000. All of those cars are gone or have had the system removed. I told the dealer I'd look like an a***e to bring that system back to our town. He called back later to say I was lucky and they hadn't installed the system on this particular vehicle yet, and he got special permission to sell me one without Pulse. I told him I found a dealer that wasn't trying to upsell useless parts and hung up.
I've heard of people buying new without running into this kind of tactic. But this is the first time I've ever bought a new vehicle, and I ran into almost every issue I've read about when dealing with new car dealers.
[0] https://www.pulseprotects.com
Good god, slimy sales tactics asides that sounds like complete cargo-culting of the feature making it not just useless for its original purpose but actively misleading.
And I would expect the original feature grew at least in part from the common habit (I don't think it's ever required) of enabling the hazards when reaching an unforeseen obstruction: on many cars these days the hazards will automatically switch on during emergency braking (usually detected via an accelerometer, it tends to come on at the same time as brake assist though I don't think the two are coupled), it's possible that on some the brakes will also flash though I can't remember ever seeing that.
Of course many US cars have red turn signals / hazards, and US standards even allow brakes and turn signals to use the same lights, which is… not sane.
One particularly awful safety feature actually ramps up brake force assist when it "detects" emergency braking behavior; typically abrupt lift off of the throttle and subsequent application of the brake.
They never considered that maybe I WANT to abruptly lift off the throttle and then GENTLY apply the brakes, without having my head thrown towards the steering wheel.
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
"Pulse is the only pulsing third brake light that meets regulatory requirements for use in all 50 states. Step on the brake pedal and Pulse goes to work pulsing, rather than flashing, the third brake light. What’s the difference? NHTSA regulations restrict flashing lights to emergency vehicles. Our award winning rear-end collision deterrent technology causes the third brake light to remain steady burning, even while the light pulses."
At a 500% markup, it feels less about your safety and more about the dealerships/pulseprotects income safety.
1. (warning xls) https://www.pulseprotects.com/wp-content/uploads/Pulse-Prote...
The profit calculation is based on preinstalling the system on every vehicle that goes on the lot, and then uninstalling it on request. This means opting out costs the dealership real money, from installing and then uninstalling it.
And at least in my Auris it also flashed the hazard light indicator inside the car
Under hard braking on European/Japanese cars the hazard lights will automatically come on. Because they're overloaded in the US it's hard to tell if it's that, or the brake lights flashing unless you're paying close attention to the middle brake light.
Edit: Just seen the comment about the Pulse system - didn't know about that!
Better hope it's not burnt out, like I see all too often in North America
That's new to me as EU driver. What I tend to do is hit brakes three or more times in a rhythmic fashion to signal there's traffic jam ahead; specifically on Autobahn where speeds go high with distances often way too low, instead of turning on alarm blinkers.
___
[§]: Well, pedal.
Yeah, but I don't want to drive extra slow, do I? For one thing, I want to proceed as fast as possible, to get where I'm going. For another, if I slow down, the gap in front of me will widen enough that some fucker -- quite possibly the one now tailgating me -- will squeeze into it, and then I am the one tailgating someone.
> or breaking once I guess.
Quite the Freudian typo... Yes, braking for real while being tailgated is rather likely to lead to things breaking. And since one of those things is me (and another my car), I'd prefer not to.
Barring that, maybe some sort of diffuser sheet inside?
>I wouldn't expect them to: they cannot see their own turn signal lights while driving.
>If they happen to be behind another Mini, they already know about it
The second sentence indicates that they would not inform Mini of any concerns because they are not aware there should be any concerns.
The third sentence indicates that they would know if there were any possible concerns because they own a Mini.
It indicates that they're used to that because they own a Mini, and by the first time that it actually matters they're accustomed enough to not recognise the concern.
The human brain is really good about not having to ever consciously think about something if it's had enough exposure in advance.
That perfectly summarize the car industry. Manufacturers only care about the people in the car. It's not their problem if their car are death machines for everyone outside.
Volvo for instance, does a great job of thinking about safety in their cars, and so do the big three german manufacturers in my experience.
So ... zero survival rate?
Turn signals need to function well as turn signals. That's vitally important. You can't fuck with that by making the signal actively and hilariously misleading. It's just not ok.
I’ve seen a mini with these lights recently here in Ireland and I’d expect the driver may find their car burnt out sooner rather than later.
Nowadays, the brake light is rarely used. It's usually a different part of the taillight cluster which may be red or amber, and most manufacturers (especially European ones, ironically) sometimes choose to use a red one for NA markets. The complaint here isn't that the brake lights are being used, but that the turn signal is designed like this.
Edit: here is an example:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0272/7303/5875/products/1_...
Which remains one of the issues, even if it's not technically a brake light. In Europe red turning signs are not legal.
But I can see how the same turn signal in amber would help very little, as you'd still have a very clear, very bright arrow pointing the wrong way entirely.
[1] https://live.staticflickr.com/4623/39623465442_7519e01f0b_o....
This is getting downvotes, but it’s literally legal to drive a jacked up, high center of gravity pickup trucks in the US. Meanwhile in Europe such a modification would be illegal because it reduces front-facing visibility.
There’s concern that automated enforcement is a regressive punishment that unduly burdens low-income motorists. There’s a belief that these cameras will be concentrated in low-income or minority neighborhoods.
The privacy concerns are fairly obvious, people are concerned the government is building a database of vehicle locations.
And the immigration concerns are that information could be fed back to ICE to detain undocumented immigrants.
However if you read the enabling legislation, a lot of these concerns are addressed through data retention, data sharing and safety standards (i.e. tickets can only be issued at 9 MPH over the limit and there must be a warning sign.)
I also think an unspoken part of the opposition is some people feel they can talk a cop out of writing a ticket, but they can’t argue with a machine.
> Maybe the root cause is the laughably easy barrier of entry to have a license to drive a death missile?
You're saying we should make driver's licenses punitively difficult to get in order to shift American population structure in the direction of dense settlements?
The reason America isn't densely settled is much simpler than that; there aren't very many people in America.
I don't think there's anything punitive about proportionately strict regulation for something that kills so many people.
The DMV test is a joke. The 15 minute test in a quiet neighborhood does not prepare you to be a proper participant on the road.
In a personal freedoms sense, I would think that Europeans have more personal freedom since they have more realistic options to pick from.
Forgive my ignorance, does anti-UK sentiment really run this deep in Ireland today or is this hyperbole?
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/feb2007/p2240016.jpg
How does that pass, well, anything at all without someone saying “that might not be the best idea”!
I think you are interpreting "confused" as "I can't tell which way the car is turning", while everyone else is talking about "This UX forces me to use my brain when I shouldn't have to".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
Maybe a better analogy is where you're having a conversation with someone, and they throw in a double-negative. It's not like you're literally unable to work it out, but you need to engage with it consciously for a second. In a high-stakes conversation, that's just something that's good to avoid.
A memorable example of this for me (if a bit of a tangent) was when Felix Baumgartner was doing his mega parachute jump, and they kept screwing up the comms for which direction the wind was coming from / going in: https://youtu.be/rNhmYaWiPEk?t=4200 (by convention, people talk about wind in terms of the direction they come from).
I think the whole thing here is that driving involves a lot of modelling other drivers and their intentions, so our tolerance for bad UX that requires conscious thought should be really low.
Can you really not understand how that might cause a moment of confusion? You see a turn signal like normal, but then you notice it is pointing in a different direction… you don’t think that might make some people pause for an instant and think?
We are used to both turn signals and arrows being used to indicate direction… when they contradict each other, it is going to get past our automatic brain and make us think, which is bad when driving.
The position of the light on the car is a signal for my brain, but it takes some processing. If it's on the right side of the vehicle, my brain evaluates that to "right" and vice versa, but maybe it's a short car, like a Smart ForTwo or a Fiat 500, and I'm looking at its side, so the right-hand-side indicator is left from the "center of perceived mass", but in that case there should be another smaller light somewhere around the side-view mirror and hmmm, yeah, it's turning right. It just takes a tiny bit of processing power and a tiny bit of time.
But an arrow, boy, I've been looking at arrows all my life. They've been telling me where to go at the train station, which way to turn on Google Maps and sometimes even literally which way to turn the steering wheel, on the outside of a sharp turn. An arrow requires no additional processing and is a strong, unmistakable signal.
So what my brain sees on that Mini flashing its left indicator is something like "Car turning left, btw RIGHT".
This idea is only slightly worse than using wrong-pointing arrows for turn signals.
You should have encountered many situations like this before, simple tasks creating cognitive load, how can't you know what the fuss is?
[1] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/01/what-do-cows-drink-...
Signals are most important in reduced vision conditions, and this reduces the reliability of those signals.
Surely you understand this.
It's like those puzzles or quiz's or whatnot that have the word "red" written in a blue font. Of course everyone can read the word, but in split second decisions the brain is going to grab whichever details it can.
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.
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.
https://trafficsafetyzone.com/product/magnetic-led-direction...
or this which looks a lot more like the Mini indicator:
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/2304413-red-light...
Of course you can work it out with context and time, but are you sure your reflexes can work it all out quickly?
To be honest I think people are massively exaggerating how confusing they are for fun Internet outrage points. People calling for people to be sacked and things. Crazy.
How do you draw an arrow?
https://harishsnotebook.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/what-do-you...
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.
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.
It's common bloody sense.
This is honestly manufactured outrage.
Is that a motorcycle? I can’t tell. I guess that motorcycle is turning left.
The correct response to something weird or potentially hazardous ahead is to slow down and try to determine what is going on.
Oh, yes, absolutely. But you've already made the mistake and there's nothing to be done anymore. We can either make you and everyone around you pay for your mistakes, or try to make the whole environment as forgiving and as safe as possible. Just like in aviation, navy, software development, or most other industries.
Not hard at all, which is why this isn't a problem if you have enough time to think all that.
This is a problem in the tiny minority of cases where it's night, it's raining, you're either going too fast or maybe blinded by someone's high beams and all your brain can process in a split second is BLINKING ARROW LEFT.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
These look odd in a static image where the reader has been primed by the title, but in real life they are flashing lights on the corner of the car. The animated GIF in the article isn’t confusing is it?
I would say that it, in fact, is: once you see the arrow pointing the wrong way around it becomes difficult to "unsee" it.
I actually missed the issue in the video, the gif and text made the arrow "pop out", and now I can't unsee the clearly right-pointing arrow blinking at me, from a car which is certainly trying to turn left.
I've noticed Teslas, at least newer ones, do the same. But maybe it's less stupid and distracting when American companies do it...?
Incorrect: https://ambulancevisibilityblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/...
Correct: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bright-neon-yellow-and-red...
Just why?: https://svigraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Curbside-...
tl;dr you can meet a safety standard and make things worse at the same time...
Is there any actual evidence of this? It seems roughly the same in terms of effect and attention getting.
Just to leave a nice uncluttered center area as background for the shield. Everyone knows the sanctity of graphic design trumps puny safety regs.
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 time I've seen it.
I suppose the Mini designers have never driven in fog, poor lighting, storms, or at night? (When you might not see the full rear of the car)
Imagine if you can only see the car's taillights and you see a blinking arrow move the opposite way it points. What would you think you saw?
Or better yet, if one of the taillights is out, what would a driver behind the Mini think?
The full rear of the car is still illuminated.
The indicator light would be relatively to the left/right of the car, and typically would look like a single bulb due to distance and diffraction.
Have you ever driven in a snowstorm at night? (I am not being facetious, there are terrible snowstorms in the winter where I live due to lake-effect snow. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live.)
Visibility is terrible in a nighttime snowstorm.
Reflective surfaces are covered with snow.
Lights can be partially or completely covered so that only a faint glow is visible.
Anything that leads to confusion, such as a backward-pointing arrow turn signal light, could cause confusion that might lead to accidents. It might not confuse some drivers, but it only takes one confused driver to cause a road accident.
Yes, once or twice. The general recommendation is NOT to drive during a snow storm. For those that must drive during a snow storm probably aren't driving these Minis.
After all, most cars are not designed for every possible climate/severe weather scenario, I don't see why Minis should be held to a higher regard.
Whether one can follow the common-sense recommendation not to drive in a snow storm is due to all kinds of other circumstances, approximately none of which is related to what brand of car you own.
Only if the headlights are on. And many do not put them on in rain/storms/fog.
If conditions were that bad and you saw a ‘normal’ indicator flash it would be a 50/50 guess which way it was going. That’s better I suppose but hardly good.
However if that light was a freaking arrow I'm going to think "oh, it must be one of those 10% of cases, it's a good thing that indicator was designed so well" shortly before I'm killed.
Thing like turn signals shouldn't make you think - it must be automatically, instantly recognizable in every possible way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28661817
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eriksen_flanker_task
I’m with the author, having the arrows point the right way would be cool.
That Mini rep response sounds like a lame rationalization.
> 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.
How do they propose to guarantee that the full rear of the car will be visible in all cases when the turn indicator is observed?