Re: 3rd Season Enterprise - Carpenter Street - 5 star poll - SPOILERS AHOY!

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cory C. Albrecht) writes:
>Broken, damaged cars, perhaps. But what car is manufactured without a 
>steering wheel, a brake pedal, an accelerator pedal, headlights, turn 
>signals a speedometer and some method to switch between park, forward, 
>neutral and reverse? 

Have you seen the GM hy-wire prototype? No steering wheel, no accellerator
pedal, no brake pedal. For that matter, most if not all cars equipped for
driving by a disabled person lack those three things. Do you really have so
little imagination that you can't concieve of a vehicle control scheme that
doesn't have those things? 

>1. Park, forward, reverse

With a joystick, you don't need a reverse gear. With a zero turning radius
vehicle, you don't need one either.

>2. Steering

The term used by the OP was 'steering wheel', not 'some method of
steering".

>3. Acceleration
>4. Braking

And you need a foot pedal for those?

>5. Signals for indicating change in direction

150 years later? Hell, people don't use them now.

>6. Lighting for night time driving

Have you seen the night driving model of the hummer, with a heads-up
infared display? It's probably *safer* than headlights, because people glow
like a candle in IR.

>7. Reasonably accurate method for determining current speed

Who cares? Again, people don't use them now. And how is Archer supposed to
instantly grok speed limits and lane change etiquette? 

>These things are the _minimum_ essentials for a driver controlled 
>vehicle. We're not talking about power windows here.

And you would be very, very wrong. *
-- 
* PV   something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
       like corkscrews.