Stupid Design

[Ayatollah So]

The traffic lights in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Few of the major arteries have timed lights.

Any traffic light with a left-turn signal that is solid red (instead of blinking as it should, which would allow you to turn when the road is clear) when straight-through traffic has the green. Also, any traffic signal that does not provide green right-turn arrows for the east- and west-bound roads when the north- and south-bound have green left-turn arrows, and vice-versa.

 

[Phlegmak]

Stupid design: The highway system in NJ. The incredibly large numbers of highways just means more dirt is covered by cement.

 

[Great Librarian]

The E.C. Row Expressway in Windsor, Ontario is the most poorly conceived, implemented, costly, shortest (distance) and longest to build expressway to nowhere from nowhere ever constructed. It is in Guinness for a few of those distinctions. Feel free to look it up on wiki and be prepared to be awed into stupefied laughter.

 

[History_Buff]

Oh, Land Deeds. First in time is first in right hey? And it's the realtors job to record things on the Deed?

A forgers dream if there ever was one.

 

[Brighteye]

Saucepans without rounded insides that allow muck to collect in the corners where you can't get at it.
Buildings with plaster walls that merely take up space without doing anything useful such as blocking sound, especially around loos.
Most kitchens: special mistakes include no space for a table, ovens against inside walls so that there's nowhere for a vent, no cupboards, pretty corner shelves which are too small for anything, insufficient storage space (kitchens need a lot!), no surfaces near the sink on which to let dirty stuff stand while it waits to be washed, no space for a toaster and kettle (which shouldn't be used underneath shelves because they damage the materials), plastic sinks that stain and discolour easily with a little turmeric and which melt when touching hot pans (and can't take the wear of heating up and cooling down rapidly), sinks without an accompanying draining sink, surfaces with lots of grouted joins where dirt can accumulate and grouting comes loose, small patches of surfaces where there isn't really enough space to do any preparation (which frequently requires a number of plates and pans and chopping boards together) and no space for a bin except a tiny one in a cupboard...

I think that there are more. I just can't remember them at the moment. Kitchens really aren't designed for cooking any more, but for decoration and microwaved meals.

 

[Ali Zaybak]

Coaxial cables and their attendant wall jacks.
Why, why must we slip a tiny, fragile wire into a tiny hole and then fumble around to try screwing one recalcitrant sprocket-whatzit onto another, when said spinning doodads refuse to couple unless perfectly aligned, which positioning is made difficult if not impossible by the stiff rubbery coating along the cable's body, which seems to want to torque the wire in as many directions as it can that are not the direction you want it to point, forcing the tiny, fragile wire to bend precariously toward destruction and the aforementioned spinning sprocket-whatzit doodads to become mis-aligned, thwarting your grunting, sweating, cursing efforts and reminding you that man is but a misbegotten lump of an ape, piteously clawing and scratching his bestial way toward a greatness he can only barely imagine with his feeble intellect and can never in a star's-age hope to attain, ever plummeting from lofty aspiration to the dismal abyss of defeat, like Icarus unfeathered, like Phaethon unseated, like Lucifer tumbling to the lake of fire-- how can we endure this futile existence?!

Also, packing for many over-the-counter medications. I mean, how much plastic do you really need for one little pill?

 

[gangleri2001]

WHAT?!!!!!

Do you really think that it's a good idea have a penis which erects by modyifing the blood pressure of the whole body while a muscle&bone design will do the same and better? The urethra could pass around the bone, you know?

 

[Rambuchan]

 

[Ultima Dragoon]

I agree, bamboo is a little tough to eat

 

[Steph]

The ejectable seat for helicopter seems to me inherently flawed...

 

[classical_hero]

They have a mechanism that ejects the blades first and then the seat ejects. It is quite good actually.

 

[Brighteye]

Houses with the thermostat in the entrance hall so that every time someone pops outside the heating makes the main rooms even more ridiculously hot. It's done in almost all modern buildings (along with bad kitchens and thin walls that conduct sound from the bathrooms all round the house).

Bedrooms with only enough space for a bed, and sometimes not enough space for the door to open with a bed.

Showers which open outwards, or are hinged vertically and have a section that moves outwards, allowing water to drip all over the floor.

Showers that are too small and can't close once the person is inside. The same for loos.

Cubicles that have large gaps in the 'walls', destroying the point of having walls in the first place.

Fixed head showers that spray water right over the taps, so if it's shockingly cold or scaldingly hot you have to put your hand in it to change it.

Outside piping that breaks when it freezes, especially sewage piping.

Windows that can be propped open but whose fixings break when it's windy.
Windows that open upwards to stop rain getting in, but slide down slightly too, providing a helpful gap at the top for rain to get in.

 

[gangleri2001]

The ejectable seat for helicopter seems to me inherently flawed...

That's not stupid design. It's only to make sure that you die. If they do ejectable seats like this, then authorities don't have to care if there're survivors, since they know for sure that they're dead.

 

[innonimatu]

Houses with the thermostat in the entrance hall so that every time someone pops outside the heating makes the main rooms even more ridiculously hot. It's done in almost all modern buildings (along with bad kitchens and thin walls that conduct sound from the bathrooms all round the house).

Bedrooms with only enough space for a bed, and sometimes not enough space for the door to open with a bed.

Showers which open outwards, or are hinged vertically and have a section that moves outwards, allowing water to drip all over the floor.

Showers that are too small and can't close once the person is inside. The same for loos.

Cubicles that have large gaps in the 'walls', destroying the point of having walls in the first place.

Fixed head showers that spray water right over the taps, so if it's shockingly cold or scaldingly hot you have to put your hand in it to change it.

Outside piping that breaks when it freezes, especially sewage piping.

Windows that can be propped open but whose fixings break when it's windy.
Windows that open upwards to stop rain getting in, but slide down slightly too, providing a helpful gap at the top for rain to get in.

Wow, you've convinced me to make a note not to buy any house in Oxford, ever!

@Rambuchan: they seem well pleased!

Stupid design: those old bloody "cutting edge" devices that will simply not break. People who complain about how modern electronic junk will only last a couple of years should try arguing with accountants that old 10Mbps hubs need replacing. I can't hear "if it works ..." any longer!
Not to mention lab material...

 

[TheBladeRoden]

Duplexes

All the grounds keeping and utility bills of a house with all the noise, neighbor, and landlord issues of an apartment building.

 

[Whomp]

Exploding gas tanks are not cool.
Ford Pinto

 

[GinandTonic]

Brighteye, not all the world is like undergrad diggs.

Stupid design - pedestrian crossings that have a delay before the lights change. Why? Lots have a limiter so they will not do their thing for x time after they have done it, and that makes sense. But lights that wait for 30 seconds before changing hurt everyone, since the pedestrian will generally have crossed unprotected by the time the lights change forcing the drivers to stop for no-one. I just dont see what possible benefit they could have for either party.

These lights are just near my house and are something of a bug-bear, so I've watched them. The lights are far enough from any other lights that they are completely independent - press the button, wait 30 seconds and the red light comes. At a rough estimate I guess that two-thirds of button-pressers have crossed before the lights have changed, putting the pedestrians at risk and pointlessly holding up the traffic.

Why, dear-lord, WHY? If you have the tech to make the button's triggering of the lights be delayed by 30 seconds, how much more can it possibly cost to just have lights that work instantly but only once every two mins or whatever? I might even write to the town-planning dpt.

 

[Brighteye]

Brighteye, not all the world is like undergrad diggs.

I was speaking in general, memories of my parents' house and their house hunt a few years ago fresh in my mind. These flaws are common all over England, especially in new properties which are designed for looks, not function.

I've seen a number of freshly constructed housing estates demonstrating these problems. I never lived in a house as an undergraduate tenant, so that wasn't a problem for me.

 

[GinandTonic]

I was speaking in general, memories of my parents' house and their house hunt a few years ago fresh in my mind. These flaws are common all over England, especially in new properties which are designed for looks, not function.

I've seen a number of freshly constructed housing estates demonstrating these problems. I never lived in a house as an undergraduate tenant, so that wasn't a problem for me.

I was in an undergrad student flat in Oxford today visiting a younger relative. Someone had helpfully printed a lable over the lock on the bathroom door saying "lock turns worng way". Since the lock was on the left side of the door (the wrong side) this could mean anything. That someone had gone to the hassle of printing and fitting a sign so utterly unhelpful rather than doing something like fitting a £1.99 bolt astonished me.

Are the brightest and the best we have to offer really unable to deal with turning a lock, which after all only has two possible directions?

 

[West 36]

I thought this was going to be a thread humorously lambasting intelligent design. I was wrong
I always thought that if God existed, ticks and weeds were incredibly idiotic things to make.