Eli5: Why is a cars drivers seat not positioned in the middle?
In: 50
It kind of is in the middle. Not in the middle of the car, mind you, but the middle of the road, since the drivers seat is positioned to be nearest the opposite side of the road.
Doing it that way also leaves room for another seat.
Easiest ELI5 ever: so that a pair of people can easily sit in front. BAM
Really high end cars some times do have the seat in the middle, and no other passengers
The driver’s seat isn’t in the middle because you couldn’t reach the window to use the McDonald”s drive through./s
Actually, there are several cars that had central driving positions. It mainly makes sense for specialty “driver focused” performance cars, like the McLaren F1 and BAC Mono.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/top-gears-top-9-road-cars-central-driving-position
1. Having driver on the side allows for a front passenger seat.
2. Having driver on the left allows front passenger to get out safely.
3. Driver on the left sees better into a right turn.
4. Driver on the left less likely to misjudge side clearance with oncoming traffic
Packaging is what has historically driven a side-by-side seating layout. A front engine located relatively close to the passenger compartment requires the steering column to be offset to one side to clear the engine and transmission, while allowing for a relatively simple steering system. Put the engine behind the driver and you can put the driver wherever you want, but by the time that was done regularly most vehicles had already gone to a side-by-side configuration and only race cars and very specialized road going vehicles (the F1 notably) had a center driver position.
Stagecoaches/carriages had a bench, so its reasonable that people were used to the side by side arrangement and it got carried forward into cars. Cars are just carriages with a motor.
Back in the early days of roads, you had wagons pulled by horses or oxen. If you needed more power, you added more animals. It was convenient to have them pull side-by-side instead of one in front of the other, less reign length, no tripping over each other, can hear commands equally, etc.
The driver of the wagon controlled the animals up front with commands and a whip, typically held in the dominant right hand. To reach each animal equally with the right hand, they sat on the left side of the wagon, and directly behind the animal on the left. This wasn’t a rule, but a pretty common arrangement as there are typically more right-handed people in a population than left-handed.
Now, if you’ve got two wagons approaching each other on the same road, and the road is kind of narrow, you’ve got to watch out that the wagons don’t hit each other. If you’ve got yourself seated on the left side of your wagon, you’ll be able to look at the left side much easier. Same as the wagon that’s approaching. Without any other rules, you’ll probably each want to keep to the right side of the road so you can both make sure you don’t hit each other.
The above situation happened time and time again, until it was codified into regulations as more and more people were using the roads. Manufacturers then built their vehicles to best accommodate the flow of traffic in a region, with vehicles passing you on one side of the road while yourself travel on the other.
By no means exhaustive but the BAC Mono, GMA T50, McLaren F1 and McLaren Speedtail all have central driving positions.
When people ask these questions, do they ever take like 5 minutes to contemplate possible answers in their own?? Or is this a symptom of the beginning of the death of thought and critical thinking?
The new koenigsegg jesko has the driver seat in the middle as well as two front passenger seats. One on each side of the drivers seat. Not to mention two back seats as well.
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