Eli5: Why is a cars drivers seat not positioned in the middle?
In: 50
It is… do you not drive a McLaren F1 like the rest of us?
Because cars are designed to transport the nuclear family of a few decades ago – namely a husband, wife and 2-3 kids. Thus it makes sense to use the space efficiently and move the driver to one side or the other rather than central.
Have you ever ridden in the front passenger seat of a car?
Safety regulations, modern cars cocoon you with airbags and the seatbelt, but it’s not possible to do this with centre seating. McLaren recently and maybe GMA got away with it only because it was low production limited run cars.
There’s mechanical components there. It’s not even possible to sit in the middle in the rear seat due to the weird bump in the center.
(for combustion engines in the front)
Sounds like someone who has never driven or even thought about driving a car. You gain basically nothing but lose a lot.
Ancient Romans were the first people to have major roads and a system of driving on a particular side. They choose the left hand side of the road to drive on. This was so when you meet up with a traveler going the opposite direction, your right hand would meet them to either shake or wield a sword.
Fast forward a few hundred years. Roads were less about transporting military and more about transporting cargo. You would have at least 2 horses in front of you pulling your cart. You would have a whip to control the horses. Most people are right handed, so they would hold the whip in their right hand. To get both horses evenly, they would sit on the left side of the cart with their right hand in the middle. Also to avoid whipping people on the street, they moved to the right side of the road so that their body was in the center of the street. This is why most of the world drives on the right with the drivers seat on the left side of the car. Beyond that, its just convenient to give the driver and passenger their own doors to get in and out of the car.
Why do some countries still drive on the left? England was a Roman colony that had a policy of driving on the left for hundreds of years. Its a relatively small island so its much easier to transport good over boats than long distances over land. there was no reason to move to the right side. By the time the cars came around, this was just ingrained in their culture. England also spread its influence around the world and most places that still drive on the left are former british colonies like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Singapore. Japan drives on the left for similar reasons to England, the military and boats. Thailand was never a british colony but they were heavily influenced by the British and Japanese or a very long time.
Among other reasons, it lets the driver interact with ticket and toll booths. It allows a single booth in the middle of the road to service both directions of traffic.
Where would the passenger sit, genius?
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