https://www.jalopnik.com/2061179/inventor-little-arrow-what-...
I found out around age 35, I think. From reading it online. I’ve told a bunch of people who didn’t know.
There's even a Snopes entry:
Moylan basically added a modifier icon for clarity.
I've driven 2 models of an Italian brand, my previous car had the gas tank on the passenger side, and my current one has it on the driver side. I do wonder why they changed it.
There's also the issue of pulling to a small road side petrol station, having the fuel door on the passenger side means you don't have to be standing next to the busy road while refuelling.
Depending on model years, it could have something to do with Fiat merging with Chrysler in 2014. European brands usually have them on the passenger's side, while US brands have them on the driver's side. Maybe that new Fiat was designed in the US.
The fuel side indicator is quite helpful to me.
"... many European cars have the fuel door located on the passenger side, while many Japanese and American vehicles have the fuel door on the driver side. Both techniques have valid reasons. European automakers place the fuel filler on the passenger side for the sake of safety when a vehicle has run out of fuel and has pulled off onto the shoulder of the road to fill up from a canister. Meanwhile, American OEMs tend to place the fuel door on the driver side of the vehicle for convenience reasons, so that a driver doesn't have to walk around the vehicle when filling up at a gas station."[0]
[0] https://fordauthority.com/2020/08/ford-designer-credited-for...
I don't ever recall the arrow being paid attention to until listicles and other blog spam were born. It has all the elements of great clickbait.
Id think that for a car you own you wouldnt need it after the first few times though.
I like the way EVs have the squiggly hose icon and that tells you everyting.it doesn't depict the charger station, but the plug point on the vehicle.
*Technically* it could be less ambiguous, but actually it is good enough.
If memorising this is hard, not a big problem, parking next to fuel pump twice is not that huge of a damage.
The design I used to find confusing was the controls for periodic windshield wipers: does the width the triangle indicator represent frequency or period? I eventually just managed to memorize that it means frequency because you get more wiping as you turn it “up”. I don’t think anyone else ever found this ambiguous; we all have our little intuition gaps, I guess.
You don't pull up next to Paris, but I would get a chuckle if the icon had a little Eiffel tower instead of a gas pump.
The fact that it is consistent across vehicles sort of mitigates the problems with it. "Arrow points at fuel door" is not actually hard to remember.
Im not a regular car user, if at all Im renting - but the last 10 times(?) it was always just on the side of the driving seat
Might just be a coincidence
That would mean designing two separate entire fuel tank placements, fuel lines, etc for cars that are available both in left- and right-hand drive variants, with different SKUs for each of the parts needed. There is no way a car manufacturer would do that.
Fun fact, for single exhaust cars, the exhaust will usually be on the driver side, in order to route around the fuel tank :-)
Just think how many billions of times someone has avoided pulling up to the wrong side of the pump because of this arrow - literal lifetimes of effort saved.
And Apple Needs more, for putting power buttons and key ports at that back.
Which way up it should go.
It seems so unlikely that I’ve just searched it to see if it’s possible, but am getting no hits.
That's true, but the difficulty in that case comes from being unable to see the hole or fit into the space between the television and the wall.
For example, plugging an HDMI cable into the back of a monitor involves none of the difficulty of plugging an HDMI cable into the back of a TV, even though the connector and the port are the same in both cases.
Very asymmetric, impossible to plug in backwards, only one possible orientation.
Still absolutely fucking awful. Same for HDMI, displayport.
The RJ series are the only asymmetric connectors I've use that you can easily get in blind.
I’m surprised how tolerable people seemed to find Apples rear ports.
USB.
I used iMacs, mini and pro machines. Any ports in the front would be nice.
My m4 mini does have some front ports. It’s less of an issue now with usb-c but the iMac presumably still rear mounts them.
So does the Mac Pro (well technically they're on the top now) and has on most models since the G5 PowerMac 20 years ago; The single model without front/top ports was replaced in 2019.
So does the Mac mini has two front facing ports now.
So your complaint is essentially about the extremely minimalist, consumer-oriented iMac, or maybe older Mac minis.
Ok. Don't buy an iMac or an old Mac mini then.
My use case seems common. The bulk of my usage of their desktops was during the ultra minimum list era that you mention. I mostly love their machines but some of the form-over-function is rough.
Presumably Pros don’t need access to the power button either.
It's been clear that usb-c is the future for a decade now. How on earth do you still have flash drives that are usb-a only?
I probably use the power button once a month, and I'd say this is the norm for most developers/similar people. It's no harder than accessing the menu button/toggle stick on the back of my dell display.
To make it worse, the machines I use have several USB-A ports and at most, 1 USB-C (any macs being an exception).
This is primary on MRI scanners. We live in a deeply flawed world.
If it's really a significant problem, use the benefits of usb and put a hub or usb extension cord on the desk to connect to.
I just cannot fathom how such trivial factors are a problem for people.
I also don't know anything about any "arrow" signalling anything in my dashboard, maybe it's only on the US-made cars, I wouldn't know cause I generally know on which side I have to fuel my car.
We never, ever use "gasoline" or the Germanic "benzene" for this. Benzene is a specific chemical here, never ever a fuel.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-19/lpg-cars-disappearing...
That must confuse the hell out of the yanks
(I only drive my normal passenger cars, not trucks.)
But I'm me not in the habit of doing that, because it doesn't usually matter for me.
but if you want a more dramatic example, it's right there in the text: Moylan got soaked because of this inconvenience. if he'd gotten a pneumonia as a result of this and died, then that is suddenly much more than a minor inconvenience.
Since learning that, I have the confidence to stick it in first time rather than 3rd or 4th.
That's not to say that USB-C isn't a huge improvement that has thankfully resolved having to know that.
Oh wait.
>On a 1978 Buick Riviera, the gas cap is hidden behind a flip-down license plate on the rear bumper.
The fuel filler door is on the left side (driver’s side) of the vehicle. Therefore, the little arrow on the dash fuel gauge should point to the left to indicate that.
(Most Buick Rivieras of that era had the fuel filler on the driver’s side, though official Buick manuals or build sheets from 1978 confirm this location.)
Paid account, ChatGPT 5.2
Share the links, people!
Usually, if the vehicle is of Japanese or British origin, the cap is on the left, otherwise it is on the right.
Source: I’ve driven dozens of different vehicle models all over Europe for decades. This rule always worked well enough for me.
My Forester is likely to be an exception rather than the rule, however I do feel that the everyday person isn’t going to make the connection between the country of origin and filler side, especially so if it’s not consistent.
I never noticed the Moylan Arrow on my Forester for a year in owning it, and often mixed up the side for that time. Interestingly, my 323 doesn’t have the Moylan Arrow, but the Ford Laser equivalent does.
Although, I believe the platform was primarily developed by Mazda so perhaps they didn’t catch onto this arrow until well after my generation of 323 was on the market.
[1] https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/cBUPxJJlgjs6KOI2.f... [2] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Kv4AAOSwt-pjJtKG/s-l500.jpg
I've since met many adults who were unaware of this trick. It's like the real-world analog of an insufficiently discoverable UI functionality.
The fuel gauge would be moved three menus deep and thus impossible to find, then removed in subsequent model years when their telemetry data "proved" no one used it anymore.
You imply they ever had a choice.
Companies like Tesla and Rivian pioneered the trend of bringing webshit-as-an-instrument cluster to the mainstream. Other car companies saw dollar signs, rode their coattails and immediately copied it.
What is a customer supposed to do? Buy a Mitsubishi Mirage? Build their own instrument cluster?
I see no reason to buy new instead of used, and I see no reason why I would change my car to a newer one anytime soon.
I agree that automotive engineers do not work for the end customer leading to shittier cars, but I also think that most people are unable to vote with their wallet (or just don't care).
Speedometer (which starts at 10 mph and I've managed to adjust so it's about right at 40ish but reports 70 mph when you're doing 60), odometer (5.1 digits), fuel gauge (non-linear, but consistent, the top half is a lot bigger than the bottom half, no arrow because it hadn't been invented yet). And then some lights: brake warning lamp (but the bulb is burnt out and doesn't seem replacable), high beam indicator, alternator indicator, turn signal indicator (one led for both directions!), low oil pressure indicator, and EGR indicator which really just turns on 10,000 miles after you push the button on the box under the front of the car.
Don't even need a tach, cause they put one dot on the speedo where you should shift out of first, two dots where you should shift out of second, and three dots where you should shift out of third.
The gauge lights come on when the headlights are on, so that's a subtle indicator too, I guess.
Don't really need much more than that. There was an optional clock in my model year, but mine doesn't have one.
If he so believed in it, may his arrow be pointing up! :)
It was a 1994 Ford Taurus.
I've checked my Toyota Yaris, and it's there!
is this specific to a country? I'm not sure I've ever seen a petrol station that wasn't one-way
In those four at least, traffic can come from either direction so you can have left-handed fills use both sides of a pump.
Here in Finland at least there are a lot of completely unattended pumps that once you exit the road it’s basically just a patch of land and you pull up in whatever direction you want to match the side of your tank to a free pump.
But in the UK where I’m from and just got back from this is maybe less common.
Usually European cars have filler on the passenger side while American and Japanese put them on the driver side.
Afaik passenger side fillers are more safe if you run out of gas and need to fill up from a canister at the side of the road.
While driver side fillers are more comfortable because you don't have to walk as far to get there.
The logic was, if you run out of gas, you can refill on the side away from traffic.
Dumbest design reasoning. Plan the side, for an event most people never experience?! Or if they do, once... and maybe on a rural dirt road, not necessarily a freeway.
Probably wanted an excuse for moving it.
And there is zero indication it will save even one life a decade.
Think of all the drivers pulling over and (gasp!) getting out of their cars for other ressons.
You're just making things up and present as facts.
Edit: though I have never seen / noticed any cars with the fuel inlet on the driver's side some imported cars may have them.
I guess this is a first world problem.
Idea maybe is great but implementation is so so if it’s not immediately obvious for many people
(I bet it is described in the manual; but we will never know - I also have not read it)
Unless you’re a professional driver - you’re in your right. We dont have to learn how to use UI made for people. If that’s the case we could just read where the fricking inlet is.
It’s the design that is bad
And while I am only slightly embarrassed that I did not know this, I am more excited about having learned this now. Yup, I just checked my car and it really is there, guys.
I only learned maybe 5-6 years ago -- but then, I only bought my first car at age 55, because I have a kid and moved to a tiny country with infrequent public transport.
toomuchtodo•1mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_gauge#Moylan_arrow
https://www.vermeulenfh.com/obituaries/james-moylan-2/#!/Obi...
rationalist•1mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker
Also known as the "Window Sticker"
onionisafruit•1mo ago
rationalist•1mo ago
https://www.getgordon.com/faqs/what-is-mansfield-bar/
onionisafruit•1mo ago