The Evolution of Buttons

 

But not the sort that keep your cardigan together.

I had a mild panic attack today when a big orange square appeared on my dashboard as I was driving home from work:

It turns out Radio 2 have changed their logo-image thingy on DAB Radio.

I usually listen to Johnny Vaughan on Radio X or Simon Mayo on Greatest Hits when I'm driving home.  But I switch between them when adverts come on and today they had adverts on at the same time so I happened to switch to Radio 2 and up came that big orange square.

Now for some reason, that got me thinking about warning lights and dashboards.

My first car had the Triumph "All Systems Go" warning light cluster - I loved it.

Never managed to light up all 8 segments at the same time though.

The original dashboards had nothing on them - they were the boards at the front of carts that were pulled by horses - they were meant to protect the driver from mud and other unpleasantries thrown up by the horses hooves when travelling off-road.

The name stuck when the first motor cars appeared - logical given that most looked like "horseless carriages."

Eventually, as cars became cars, the dashboards were used to house instruments and controls for new fangled additions such as windscreen wipers - and, as anyone who subscribes to idriveaclassic on YouTube will know, pull switches were very popular for many years right up to the 1960s:

...and beyond for things like the hazard warning lights on my Triumph.

These were eventually replaced by toggle switches:

Then it was the turn of my favourite - the rocker switch!

These prevailed in the 1970s when I was becoming fascinated by cars.  You could could buy them in Halfords and Motorworld to add accessories (usually fog lamps) to your Vauxhall Victor or Ford Escort.

By the '90s - buttons had taken over:

In quite a big way in some cars - My Jaguar X-Type had buttons to operate a phone I didn't have.

I like buttons - not as much as I like rocker switches - but they are tactile and necessary when you need to control lots of things like heated seats and electric windows and climate control.

But, as even more complicated things (like Apps!) are becoming part of motoring, touchscreens are taking over from buttons.  VW famously took them too far and had to reinstate some - it was getting dangerous having to look away from the road to do basic things like put the air on re-circ.

I sometime use the voice commands on my car but I have found myself arguing with it a few times too and voice control is also no use to people with Scottish accents.

My car has a mixture of real buttons and touchscreen which is about as far from the horse and cart dashboard as you can get.

Imagine having to put up with a boring dashboard.

He's done well to get that far.

Couple of BBC News stories got my attention this evening.

The first just begs the question, HOW!?

Look carefully and you may spot something slightly arwy.

Take a look at the footage in this story.

The guy in the car behind was doubly lucky - first he avoided the sign, then another car he shot into the path of avoided him.

Or her.

Anyway, how the hell did this tipper driver get onto the I-70 without noticing that his tipper was up?

Was he wondering why lots of bemused drivers were flashing their lights at him.

Maybe he wondered what the new flashing light on his dashboard meant.

Why do tipper trucks let you go above 15mph with the tipper raised?

There were no injuries reported, why were there no arrests reported?

And where had he been?

Oxfordshire perhaps?

The other article.

Charity Case

 

After the recent Panorama Orange Man-Baby Editing scandal, the BBC could do without another embarrassing story.

So they can justifiably be proud about the 2025 Children in Need campaign raising at least £45.5Million.

I even gave them a fiver.

The chairman of Children in Need must be feeling happy right now.

Pity he's just resigned due to a serious motoring offence.

He badly injured a cyclist that he hadn't seen while turning right in an unnecessarily big BMW.

The particularly stupid thing after watching the video was he was turning right FROM a road not INTO the road.

And she was cycling towards him along the same road.

He wasn't indicating but, as already mentioned, he was driving a BMW.

The other stupid thing about this case is that he has resigned due to his conviction just weeks after taking the job.  The offence happened in June - the trial date must have been known for months.  I guess he thought that if he mentioned it in the interview he mightn't have got the job.

Did he think he wouldn't be found guilty though?

Unlikely given that he admitted it.

A sad state of affairs all around.

Classic!

This weekend just gone I visited the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show at The NEC in Birmingham.

What did I think?

Well, since you ask, I'll tell you.

The free show guide was most excellent - even came in its own carrier bag!

I got close to Mike Brewer and Tiff Needell which was nice.

And to Will & Gus from Flipping Bangers and to a couple of my favourite YouTubers.

And to Frank Stephenson - apparently pronounced Steffanson - not to be confused with Steph Fromidriveaclassic - one of the aforementioned YouTubers.  I didn't realise until he started talking that I actually knew who he was - in as much as he has a regular column in Top Gear Magazine critiquing modern car designs.  He revealed some secrets about his design work on the Mini One - check out how the exhaust pipe is the same as a Budweiser can.

There were loads of Triumph Dolomites there:

BUT THEY WERE ALL SPRINTS!

Some of us owned 1500HL Dolomites.  They did have a few Triumph 1300s and a 1500 too though.

They also had some famous cars like The Sweeney Granada:

The Saint's Volvo:

And Richard Hammond's Oliver:

They had an F40:

And also whatever this is:

The food was crap - and overpriced - but that's the fault of the NEC - should have used the various vans there.

Loved the day - would recommend it to any petrol-head - and even non-petrol-heads - the two I went with enjoyed it too.

It was classic.

Silly Season

Except it isn't silly season.

Never knew it went back to 1861.

Although there do seem to be a disproportionate number of silly stories around today.

This one caught my eye first thing this morning:

What!?  McDonalds are training their staff how to sexually harass?

They had changed the headline by lunchtime.

But that isn't a car story - it was next to one though - this one.

"Tesla boss Elon Musk has had a record-breaking pay package that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn) approved by shareholders."

Did you spot the word "could" in there?

It's doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

It's like in the Webuyanycar.com adverts when Jason Manford says what could happen if you don't accept the low offer from Webuyanycar.com.

To get the full whack, the South African Nazi-type saluter will have to "drastically raise the electric car firm's market value over 10 years."

Given the job he's done this year, I can't see him getting close - especially as this is just more incentive not to buy a Tesla.

"The scale of the potential payout has drawn criticism, but the Tesla board argued that Musk might leave the company if it was not approved - and that it could not afford to lose him."

This doesn't bode well for the future of the company if the board really think that.

Sticking with electric cars, we have a story from my favourite American car journalist in Car+Driver.

Ezra Dyer is telling the story a the importer of Kia cars into Finland giving away free air fresheners to purchasers of the EV4 electric car.

The silliness in this story being that the smell of the air freshener is petrol and the look is this:

They found allegedly "Finland's only perfumier" to create it.  But they aren't doing it any more since Car+Driver asked Kia HQ in South Korea about it.

And they weren't too happy.

Final silly story today is from the BBC again.

I live very close to a place called West Kirby.  Kirby is a corruption of Kirkby - Viking for "church town"

And also the name of a town on the outskirts of Liverpool that is somewhat to the East of West Kirby.

Liverpool's local radio station, Radio City got rebranded last year and lost its localness - you can tell because the traffic news bloke can't pronounce any of the placenames in the vicinity.

Now, judging by this story, I wonder if they've got him painting the road markings?