It’s no secret that I’ve not been a fan of yoke-type steering wheels. Sure, they look kind of cool, but they don’t really offer any actual improvement in the way a car is controlled, even in situations where steering ratios are altered or other compensations made. It’s just not making things better. The same goes for Tesla’s implementation of turn indicator controls on the yoke, which they accomplish with a pair of buttons, one atop the other. This approach got an unusual amount of attention recently, as a Tesla owner and fan posted a video on Twitter that suggested the buttons were superior to stalks, and the post got over 16 million views and over 4,000 replies. Clearly, people have thoughts about how they indicate their turns, and, unsurprisingly, so do I. The indication of turns is what separates us from the baser animals, and the methods by which we accomplish this matter. So let’s dig in a bit.
First, if you haven’t seen the post and video, here you go:
To everyone arguing against Tesla removing stalks: what looks easier to you? pic.twitter.com/UE0Cl57xZh
— Jeff 💙✌️ (@JeffTutorials) May 25, 2023
Not much to it, is there? And yet, in these meager six seconds of video, a lot is revealed and, perhaps more importantly, a lot is not. First, the miming of how a hand would activate the turn signal stalk here is wildly exaggerated. Nobody moves their hand like that to flick the turn signal stalk. That’s more like the motion you’d make to shift the three-speed manual transmission lever on a Studebaker, if it was on the other side. You don’t need to put your whole arm into the act of flicking the signal lever; it can be done by extending your fingers as you’re turning the wheel, and the direction the wheel is turning is the direction the stalk needs to move. It’s almost like you just reach out as you’re already going by.
It becomes muscle memory, and effortless.
Maybe we need some diagrams. Here’s the basic situation, with both types of controls in place:
Okay, so let’s look at what it takes to indicate a turn while making a right turn here, without the shitty overdone pantomime of the video:
You can flick the stalk with your fingers as you turn past it clockwise, flicking the lever up; or, you use your thumb to push the “up” button on the wheel. I’d guess once you’re used to it, you wouldn’t really need to look at the wheel to do it, but there is more target accuracy required to hit the button – which is close to the button for the other direction below it – than there is required to flick the stalk, which pretty much just requires extending one or more of your fingers off the wheel and encountering the stalk as you rotate past. As anyone who has ever done this in a car can tell you, it’s tough to miss.
Now, here’s the other significant advantage of the stalk approach: a stalk never moves. Let’s look at where the indicator controls are if you’re already steering the wheel:
Sometimes, you will need to indicate a turn when your wheel is already turned. This can happen in a lot of different scenarios, like when you’re preparing to exit a driveway onto a road or you’re indicating readiness to turn into a parking spot, marking your intended plan, or you’re on a roundabout and need to signal when you’re exiting, or lots of other situations. It’s not that uncommon. And yet, in any case where the steering wheel isn’t dead straight ahead, those turn indicator buttons will be somewhere else. They can be anywhere on the circle of where that steering wheel can turn. They can be 45° above or below where you expect them or 120° away. Once they get to, say, 90°+, the orientation of the controls in relation to one another changes, too.
What was once a button atop another will become two side-by-side buttons. Where top button meant right and bottom means left reverses once the wheel passes that 90° mark. There’s no way that’s better. A stalk stays in the same place, requiring the same motion for left and right, which is how muscle memories are formed. When the wheel is turned, you’d have to give at least some kind of glance to know where the buttons are and how they’re oriented. Sure, if you keep your hands locked at 9 and 3 like they say you should when track driving, I guess that could be okay, but let’s be real: that’s not how people tend to drive.
Sometimes we just hold the wheel at the bottom, sometimes we rest a hand on top, and okay, if it’s a yoke, you can’t do that, and you mostly have to keep your hands at 9 and 3, but, well, that sucks.
I noticed that a lot of the replies imply that people don’t like the buttons simply because of tradition or habit or the unenviable state of being a boomer:
buttons are easier, but people dont like to get out of their comfort zone and try something new… ahem boomers
— Mystic (@Mystic2133) May 25, 2023
I also see replies analogizing this decision to other tech-based interface decisions:
I remember friends telling me the iPhone would never catch on because pressing buttons on the screen wouldn’t provide the physical click feedback .
— Pango (@Nateyesme) May 26, 2023
These aren’t really germane, not just because we don’t have decades of muscle memories for smartphone controls like this, but also because we’re not controlling 4,000 pound machines going at high speeds with our phones. Well, most of us aren’t.
There are also many replies stating much of the same things I’m saying here, too. It’s remarkable how many people feel strongly about all of this, and, really, why shouldn’t they? Change can be important or scary or needed or difficult or frivolous, or maybe even all of that, but when a change seems to be happening for reasons that don’t actually improve things, I think people are pretty good at assessing that. If there’s some huge advantage here, usability-wise, I don’t see it. What a number of replies have been suggesting as a valid reason is cost:
Cost Keith, No stalk saves how much? say $2 x how many million? Ever notice Elon keeps removing parts not adding parts, cut part cost + production cost. And you thought he did it for our convenience😆
— robert baillie (@robertbaillie16) May 26, 2023
…or just the idea that nothing can be better than something:
https://twitter.com/fabianrudengren/status/1662081355386068993?s=20
I am curious to hear what you, the Autopian Collective Mind, think of all this. Is there some advantage I’m not seeing? Am I just a pawn of Big Stalk? I’m willing to listen, especially to people who don’t flail their arms to turn on their blinkers.
What blows me away is the lack of spatial correlation. Turn signals indicate left and right, which are static to a seated driver. So Tesla made the brilliant choice to put the buttons…..top and bottom? With one just slightly more left or right? Look at the amount of real estate on that surface. You could easily have put them side by side. Or one on either side of the (terrible and ridiculous) yoke. It would be like Tesla having you swipe diagonally up and left to put the car in reverse. They don’t do that because relative to the car it wouldn’t make any sense.
Side note, someone posted the same thing while I was typing this but in two sentences. Brevity is not my strongpoint sometimes….
Other cars have eliminated the stalk, but they have done so correctly, by placing buttons on either side of the wheel. Stacking them is supremely dumb shit.
The one thing I disagree with in your assessment is that you make it sound like the turn signal should be enabled at the time when you’re turning the wheel. I think the vast majority of the time, I’m turning the signal on a few seconds before actually turning. Additionally, my hands are fairly small and it’s a stretch to say I can toggle the stalk with my hand still (mostly) on the wheel.
Nonetheless, I do think the stalk is the superior option–always in the same place; muscle memory; movement almost always correlates with steering direction (exception for times when you have to put on the right turn signal to indicate you’re going into a parking spot on the right, but you then pull to the left so you can back in, but that’s a situation I just think car indicators aren’t ready for).
That video makes me feel like I’m watching an infomercial where they present using a blanket or a kitchen knife as something cumbersome and difficult.
To be fair to those infomercials, the products are usually intended for people with physical disabilities (such as Parkinson’s, for example) but rather than show people with disabilities, they use exaggeratedly incompetent people. Kind of a no-win situation from the advertiser’s perspective, I think.
My old coworker Bob chopped off most of his left thumb with a compound sliding miter saw, I think he would definitely prefer a stalk over these buttons. Anyone with finger and hand issues like arthritis would be fall into that category too.
I don’t wave my hand around like search for the last grip before I fall. I can hit the signal with my fingers.
Then again you cannot argue with Teslastans. Granted the button push is just as easy, but making look like you doing “paint the fence” is not the way to show how much easier it is.
Buttons need more manual dexterity, a monkey can bat a stick.
I think turn signals should be at least 3 menus deep on the A3 size screen on the dash. Maybe put them with climate controls, or mood lighting.
Maybe it could be a physical button, but it’s inside the glove box, which you have to open by scrolling 3 menus deep. Even better!
I just use voice control or the little wheel to get to it. Only noobs go through the menu options. Duh
In Musk’s future, cars communicate with each other continuously and with his neural implants, you don’t need a wheel or yoke, much less turn signals. Your mind tells the car what to do, and the car tells others cars what it’s going to do.
“You don’t need to put your whole arm into the act of flicking the signal lever; it can be done by extending your fingers as you’re turning the wheel, and the direction the wheel is turning is the direction the stalk needs to move. It’s almost like you just reach out as you’re already going by.”
Surely you’re not suggesting that we’re only supposed to begin signalling once we’re already turning, right!? As our turn signal liaison, I would have thought you’d embody the gold standard of etiquette signalling your intentions before you make a move.
Yeah, that was my issue here. You signal before turning the wheel in more than 99% of cases.
100%. There are no exceptions here.
BMW motorcycles are guilty of turn signal shenanigans, where they put a button on each grip so you thumb the indicator with the appropriate hand. This defies the Japanese convention of a single nub on the left grip. I could never get used to the BMW cleverness, too many nubs begging for stimulation
Harley used to do the same thing (at least they did a few decades ago…); not sure if they still do it or not.
If Musk really wanted to help society, he’d use that brain implant chip he’s developing to anticipate when a driver is going to turn or change lanes and automatically activate the turn signals in his Teslas.
He could call it Full Self-Turning. I mean, that’s not actually what it does, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him.
Before I got to the tweet about kitchen gadget informercials, I thought of the same thing: The Perfect Pancake. Flustered mom needs to make pancakes. Oh no, it appears she has a condition that selectively forces her into a seizure only when in the act of using a spatula! In comes the perfect pancake! No longer must you suffer cleaning pancake batter off your stovetop burners!
Nobody has ever struggled to use a turn signal stalk (outside of people who ignore their existence). The stalk is basically perfect design, the buttons are obviously dumb. Tesla and their stans give me the vibe of a guy at the bar I reallllly don’t want to be stuck talking to all evening.
Dude, there’s plenty of good things about your Tesla, but you’re not convincing anyone with a brain that a yoke makes sense for steering a damn car, nevermind your dumb signal buttons.
I think people care too much and drivers will be used to it no matter the system
It’s really not much different from turn indicators on motorcycles
Kind of. But your left thumb is always conveniently right by the turn signal switch on a motorcycle. With a yoke, not so much.
Citroën had buttons from 1974 to 1991 on some models, even the quite common folksy BX, that worked just fine. They were usually in the corners of the dashboard dome, just two inches from your fingers. More crazy “satellite” systems on the Visa and GSA..
But that never really caught on. Like their superior suspension.. Yes, that was licensed by Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz, but didn’t spread to any common cars.
I often feel like Tesla tries to be different just to be different, like french cars in the 20th century. They also took the “no dashboard at all just one screen in the middle” idea from the mk1 Twingo.
So even though they have that rocket clown guy and mostly idiots drive them, It makes it hard for me to really hate Tesla.
Citroën is/was great at a number of things, but ergonomics was not one of them. Satellites, bathroom scale speedometers, etc, etc. There is a reason their motto was “complicated solutions to non-existent problems.”
Just leaning my fingers on the buttons in the CX and BX felt quite ergonomic to me..
I prefer a stalk, that’s how I judge part of the quality of a vehicle. If the door makes a solid noise, feels heavy, same for the stalk for turn signals and wipers = good
GM stalks: OK
FCA: Meh, cheap plastic
Volvo: Oh yes, 5 stars
Honda: OK
A close relative had a 2005 Buick LeSabre, and while it was mostly unexceptional compared to newer cars, I still distinctly remember its turn signal stalk. It was straight (rather than having a curve in it), and it was the crispest, most satisfying one I’d ever used.
It resisted moving just a smidge more than most others I’ve used. I can’t find any quick answer on how much force is typical to activate a turn signal stalk, but it needed a little more than that average, and it just felt “satisfying”.
Depends on vintage I guess. 2000s GM stalks in Saturns and Cavaliers are the worst quality single part I have ever had the misfortune of touching on any car.
Yes, GM improved much in the interior department but still lacking a little bit behind but the stalks are good now lol
Agreed, the VW/Audi’s I’ve driven have had very satisfying turn signal stalks.
Just drive a BMW and don’t worry about the turn signals…….
p.s. My turn signal indicator lever is on the dash
Well I prefer the stalk. But I can see some arguments. For instance the normal steering wheel (no capacitive surfaces) requires you to move it now and then to keep the autopilot active. With this buttons might be possible to detect the hand on the wheel without turning it a bit. That’s how the new BEV BMW do it.
The other thing with the pressing of the buttons with the turned wheel is a non-argument. You are supposed to press those buttons (i.e. signal direction turn) approximately 5 seconds before you turn, let’s say about 2-3 seconds before the turn happens at any rate. At that point the steering wheel is normally still in the neutral position so there is no spagat to reach it. But there are many bad drivers, not us here for sure!, who signal while they’re turning, which is too late.
Nicht blinken ist nicht blicken, loosely translated not blinking is not (pre)thinking.
But in the context of BEVs, I have another proposal. Take the blinkers off the steering wheel, and put them as proper buttons in the middle console, where the right arm rests. You don’t need the right hand on a BEV really, since all commands are voice actuated. So yeah that’s what the right hand could do and it would be more comfortable to blink in advance.
I have no problem with using buttons but having them above each other is just idiotic.
The left indicator button should be on the left side of the steering wheel and the right button should be on the right. That is logical and correct.
Having worked with human factors for driver interfaces at numerous OEMs I can just conclude that designers nowadays come from a reality where interaction is the goal, like in a phone where you WANT people to look at the screen as much as possible.
They don’t understand that driving is the primary task and that other interactions are considered secondary tasks and thus needs to be kept at a minimum in terms of time and effort.
Same goes to these steering wheel buttons. People that have never driven a car finds out a cool solution. Then, if no one objects, this will be the design throughout the development process until it is actually to late/expensive to change it.
I have no issue with indicator stalks but I also rarely am in a situation where I need to indicate when the wheel is already turned, even if turning out of a drive or something because I usually flick the indicator on before I start rolling forward (or back). Also, every motorbike I have owned has had an indicator switch block on the left handlebar, flick left with thumb for left, right with thumb for right, press the button in to cancel. Works great. Basically, would not be too concerned if my next car moved the indicators to buttons on the wheel. I don’t like wheels that aren’t completely round though as I’m a shuffler.
Difference is, the motorbikes handlebars doesn’t basically rotate and you’re holding your left hand at same position all the time, unlike with cars and steering wheels.
How many times must we rethink and rehash the classic fable of Jack and the Blinker-Stalk before we learn our lesson?
Things are just fine how they are.
“Fee, FSD, Fo, Fum! I smell the blood of a pedestrian!”
Well played.
This is the same problem I have with shifter paddles, and at least in the cars I’ve had with those there was also a stick option that was always in the same place.
The buttons —leaving aside the capacitive issues— might be less of a problem with a yoke, since you always have to hold it from the same places. On the other hand the yoke is also a problem for precisely that reason ????????♂️.
Tesla is clearly aiming for the BMW market… “Are you confused by that stalk-thing on your steering column? Buy a Tesla and you will be confused to a much lesser degree by a couple of really small buttons!”
I bet Tesla’s website and touchscreen have all kinds of “UX” (user experience) testing done… so why not physical controls? And I don’t buy the old argument (attributed to Steve Jobs, who knows if it’s true), to not ask the customer what they want because they don’t know what they want. This is not a question of want, it’s a question of what UX is the safest and most intuitive.
And what better analysis of safety, than by the company that brought you “Fully Self Driving”, which is both safe and intuitive? /s
UX for a phone is designed to get the user to engage. UX in a vehicle should be the opposite. It should be designed to take as little of the user’s attention as possible. Since, ya know, our attention should be on the road. That’s the problem with a “disruptor” tech company like Tesla redesigning the UX in a vehicle.
> And I don’t buy the old argument (attributed to Steve Jobs, who knows if it’s true), to not ask the customer what they want because they don’t know what they want
That argument goes back well before Steve Jobs’s fetus had grown a pancreas. Iirc there was a henry ford quip about if you asked people what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse. And I’m sure the same has been true in the trades for eons.
The customer may not know what they want but they’ll sure let you know what they hate!
The point of ergonomics is that it is in the comfort zone. The Elon taint-lickers can justify anything. They are the (wannabe) emperors parading around naked talking about the majesty of their new clothes. (Edited to be less harsh.)
> Edited to be less harsh
> Elon taint-lickers
Glad I didn’t see the harsh version