> Some comments here completely miss the key point of the article and instead go down the route of whether the shifter itself should change or not.
Well, the point of the article is "bad design can be dangerous", but there is another point that can be discussed which is: why change what works?
Regarding the shifter, the traditional shifter is physically connected to the gear box; in newer cars where everything happens via software, the physical connection no longer exists, and so designers thought there was an opportunity to redo it.
But, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
That said, your point about necessary feedback is extremely valid; it is believed that the crash of the Air France flight 447 in 2009 is due in no small part to insufficient feedback (either pilot could take back control of the plane, without the other pilot knowing they didn't have control anymore).
It was actually worse than that in the Air France case -- if the rudder inputs from the two pilots were different, they were averaged before being applied to the physical control surfaces.
It could work both ways: either with one pilot in control or with both.
The averaging thing was not as stupid as it sounds when values are close.
It's completely crazy when both rudders were in the opposite direction at the maximum (average of -100,+100 = 0), but it must have seemed an impossible case to the designers...
Well, the point of the article is "bad design can be dangerous", but there is another point that can be discussed which is: why change what works?
Regarding the shifter, the traditional shifter is physically connected to the gear box; in newer cars where everything happens via software, the physical connection no longer exists, and so designers thought there was an opportunity to redo it.
But, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
That said, your point about necessary feedback is extremely valid; it is believed that the crash of the Air France flight 447 in 2009 is due in no small part to insufficient feedback (either pilot could take back control of the plane, without the other pilot knowing they didn't have control anymore).