Shouldn't all new cars have electric backup power brakes and steering by law?

[elhigh]

^^ Two speeds, count 'em. And they aren't Go and Stop, either.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

'66 Corvair, Powerglide a/t, no Park feature provided.



Oh yeah- very nice light manual steering and brakes!

The weight balance due to the rear-engine layout makes the steering efforts lighter.

[Frank Lee]

Yup, and the self-energizing four wheel drums give great pedal feel yet you can lock 'em up if desired. And the wheels don't get covered in brake dust. And they work exactly the same whether the engine is on or off.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The original lawsuit was for $20k, which McDonalds refused to pay. A jury later awarded Liebeck $2.86 million, and a judge reduced that amount to $640,000.

Watch Hot Coffee if you are interested in the story. Many people change their opinion once seeing the film. I did not (the lawsuit was frivolous).

$640K is still a sizable award for a frivolous lawsuit. (Actually I'd call it a lawsuit without merit, as the injury suffered by the plaintiff was due to her own carelessness.) I wonder how much the lawyers got from it?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by XYZ

$640K is still a sizable award for a frivolous lawsuit. (Actually I'd call it a lawsuit without merit, as the injury suffered by the plaintiff was due to her own carelessness.) I wonder how much the lawyers got from it?

The basis for the claim was due to other unheeded complaints to McDonalds that the coffee was too hot. Liebeck received a large 3rd degree burn to her groin area (disturbing photos are available if you search). She was "only" awarded something like $18k, but the additional $2.8mil was for punitive damages ("you should have known better, let that be a lesson to all others").

She should have known the coffee was very hot if she had ever had a McDonalds coffee before, and she shouldn't have held it between her legs, especially since old woman skin is thinner and more frail than most people's skin.

[jamesqf]

Of course if you want REAL engineering brilliance, you have to look at the pushbutton automatic transmissions of the late '50s - early '60s. Notably Ford's 'Teletouch' system used on the Edsel:

The single circumstance under which a Teletouch could be put into gear with the car moving at greater than three to five miles per hour was if the neutral button was depressed first, thereby removing hydraulic pressure from the inhibitor switch, and then the reverse or park button pushed. These actions would, as a result, either shear off the parking pawl or suddenly set the rear wheels turning in the reverse direction, effectively locking them up against the road surface and possibly damaging the reverse bands in the transmission

Teletouch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

The only thing analogue to that Teletouch (which I actually knew as Telematic) is the system currently fitted to urban transit buses in my country.