Standards

It seems like a lot of people hate it when you mention standards. This can especially be true in a development environment, although there are some things that you can look at that easily remind you of the usefulness of standards. Of course, some items are so entrenched, part of laws, etc.. that we just take them for granted. Just think if every town came up with it's own traffic light colors and sequence of the lights.

I am certain what I have been witnessing lately is simply driver error, but I have seen this happen more and more frequently lately. A person performing a right turn when they have just signaled with their left turn signal and vice versa. What if every make, model and trim level of vehicle had blinkers (turn signals) that were activated differently on each one. How well could you get into a vehicle with turn signals activated the opposite of what you are use to after having driven for many years and have any luck trying to change this habit simply for the duration of driving that car for the day.

I read an article several years ago about an early automobile that had a manual transmission. Nothing special about that except that pedals were in a different configuration. I believe the middle pedal was the clutch instead of the brake as most of us that know how to drive a manual transmission (seem to be fewer and fewer of us) in the US would be accustomed to. Yeah for standards!