Why is it that car manufacturers place cup holders every where, but no tie down points in the trunk. Not universally true, but close enough. I wish there was an approved tie down points on the body, but hey, the front passenger can choose from 4 different cup holders.
Reminds me of a story of some workers at a foreign factory. One looks at the plastic device and says “what is this thing?” the other worker says “People hang it off their car door to hold their drink.” After thinking for a bit he replied “That’s crazy.”
I guess the real sad part of it is that there are so many cup holders and so little tatting. Granted, I have made a fishing net big enough to be a hammock, but that isn’t really tatting and it would not make a good doily.
Well, since we’re on this topic, let me add my semi-related annoyance with cars. I think cars should have universally and easily replacable car parts. Break a bumper? Just un-do the two clips and buy a universal replacement bumper. Mirror keeps falling off the front window? Don’t install the mirror there for goodness sakes, install it from the roof on a clip. Wanna bigger better fancier mirror? Remove the mirror that came with the car and easily replace it yourself with a fancier mirror. Don’t like the cupholder or the placement of the cupholder in your car? Buy the universal cupholder of your choice and optimally place it in any one of the universal multiple accessory attachment devices located conveniently throughout the car.
I know the downfall of my idea is that people wouldn’t trade in cars every five minutes and would drive them forever and that’s bad for the car industry but that’s good for the environment.
Volkwagon Passet has tie-downs. I have a seine net but I don’t put it in the Volkswagon but the truck which also has tie-downs but I use the drawers that I installed in the back except when the seine net is wet after catching whitebait. I keep a Yucatan hammock in the truck in case I have to stop and take a nap or read a book, it’s no good for catching fish. I use to spend some time in Florida on hardwood hammocks looking for wildlife, lots of snails.
My car design pet peeve is fuel fillers-- why not standardize them so they’re all on one side?
My car’s is on the passenger side, but my wife just bought a new Mini (most excellent!) with the filler on the driver’s side. I just KNOW I’ll keep driving in for gas on the wrong side…
I love my Outback. “Only” 4 cup holders, but many tie-downs and three 12V electrical outlets. We can charge a lantern, and with a couple of inverters, an iPod and laptop. It will also hold 10-foot pieces of lumber or pipe.
If all cars had their tank on the same side, the optimum gas station layout would have only a single lane between pumps, and every pump would have only one nozzle. This is because in many situations - at the side of a highway, for instance - nearly every car enters the station from the same direction and approaches the pump in the same orientation. With two lanes between pumps & two nozzles, each pump can serve two cars at a time only if there’s a rough 50-50 split in tank location. If they’re all on the same side, half of the capacity is wasted.
In other words, gas stations would have to be laid out like highway toll booths, because the drivers are all on same side and the cars are all gong the same way.
You write this as if drivers are automatons and gas stations are assembly lines. Every city gas station I know is usually a cluster****, people hoping to find a spot to suit their fuel port’s location, looping around, even backing in…because when someone ISN’T in the way, it’s a minor miracle. I take it you may not fuel up much. Or else Vancouverians have been assimilated and are members of the hive.
You don’t get it. Cars in gas station mill around because they can, and because it pays in saved time to do so. Cars don’t mill around at toll booths because they can’t: the layout is designed only for one flow direction, and does not work - at all - if the current reverses.
The two lane configuration is the most flexible, so that stations work no matter which percentage of cars enter the station from the left or the right at any moment. This means that each car faces approximately the same wait, and the load on the pumps is balanced. If all cars had tanks on the same side, that’s no longer the case. Stations would have to be designed as toll booths are.
I recall a time when fuel ports were all on the same side (right, as I remember, and these were all standard US makes aside from the occasional Studebaker or VW); maybe someone as antique as I can back me up on this (that is, if my memory’s not mistaken). Then one day some model came out with the fuel port on the other side, and I recall being very put out about it. Apparently my irritation wasn’t representative of the population being polled, for the tendency toward no tendency regarding fuel port location increased over time after that. Anyway. My point out of all this is that back in the all-on-one-side day the two-sided pump island was not only present but the norm, and everybody got along just fine. Apparently no one saw that they had to set up one-way fuel lanes; there was no need, for it was already so by virtue of uniformity. But maybe I’m missing something here, too.
Did they? I’d suspect that the earlier status quo reigned when every pump was an island, entire of itself. A filling station was a place with a single pump, or perhaps two on the same island, with all other space around consisting of potential lane. Its not until you get multiple islands that default lane widths have to be defined, and I suspect that this occurred right around the same time that gas tank location standardisation began to collapse, & that the two are likely as closely related as my explanation posits. Oh, do not ask for whom the bell tools; it tolls for the attendant. Ding-ding!
Oh, how I revel in being the smartest. We had cars with the gas cap hidden behind the license plate. So there is actually a third side that is accessible easily from the driver and the passenger side. 'Cept of course, that license plate was prone to snapping shut on your hand like a hungry clam, 'specially in the coldest of weather.
I ride a Vespa. The fueling is under the seat. I can fill up from any side.
It is sad that cars will have multiple cup holders but my Vespa does not have even one. I can put a cup of coffee in the glove compartment and if I’m lucky, not too much of it will spill.
Come to think of it, my bike doesn’t have a water bottle cage. I’ve seen configurations that hold four bottles on one bike. Strange that bikes have their own specially designed water bottles, I wish the cages would hold my Nalgene.
I use Nalgenes, they fit perfectly, I use 22oz. ATB bottles but there’s On The Go bottles, On The Fly Bottles,… There’s even coffee cup holders and cages for bicycles, couldn’t even begin to say how many types. Soma makes a nice one.
I just don’t like one purpose things when I can avoid it, and I already had a 1l Nalgene that I used before they came out with their new one. Even found a nesting cup for it. Right now it seems just as easy to leave it in my pack and stop to get a drink (It’s not like I race).
Took me a while to find a way to quickly attach/detach my LED mag light to my bike, and I find it is much more convenient than any of the alternatives. (I strip down my bike when I go inside)
Not pretty, but a wing nut, hose clamp, and conduit clamp was much better than the commercial light systems at the time.
