Is it feasible that cars would be made with a central driving position?

Question

On the world of Ruquelis, I'm contemplating having cars (currently at circa 1920s levels of development and styling) having a central driving position, not because of some recent design decision, but because that is the way it has always been on that world. Most cars would be single-seaters, two seaters (driver with passenger behind), three seaters (driver between passengers) or six seaters (2 rows of 3), though other variations would exist.

Ruquelis is inhabited by humans, but there are three sexes, men, women and lilim, born in equal proportions. Men are what they sound like, as are women, while lilim are female, have batlike wings in addition to arms, taloned feet and can fly. However, the population is comprised of roughly equal numbers of men and lilim, while women comprise about an eighth to a fifth of the population, depending upon the nation, since women very rarely live beyond 30 years (most die between 9 and 30, with a mean of 21) while the other sexes have normal human lifespans.

All females are born flightless (about 2/3 of all births), while lilim differentiate from women between 6 and 9 years of age, beginning to grow wings and talons at that time, the change taking 3-4 years to complete before they can fly.

Thus, men are the usual drivers, with some women driving occasionally, while lilim seldom drive thanks to their ability to fly (and due to their different feet), and if they do get into a car, it is often as a passenger in a vehicle with a driver and at least one other flightless passenger, since most lilim are capable of flying easily with a single adult passenger or two or three child passengers, and can fly faster than it is safe for a car to be driven.

I'm currently debating the pros and cons of a central driving position with myself, and I'm not quite sure whether the pros or cons would win.

On the pro side, these cars would be fully usable in any nation, whether they favoured driving on the left (LHT) or right (RHT) side of the road. Visibility would be the same to both left and right. Tooling for car manufacturers selling to both LHT and RHT nations would be cheaper. Changing cars from centre-drive to left or right hand drive would result in existing drivers being uncomfortable with them at first, and a potential increase in accidents.

On the con side, with cars that would be mainly front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, the steering mechanism could be more complicated. Getting in and out would require that the driver cross over the passenger seat on either side. Visibility of the centre of the road would be poorer (though I seem to recall that IRL there have been nations in which the driver is on the same side as the side of the road on which they drive).

Additionally, Ruquelis is a world particularly steeped in tradition, since many people have reincarnated memories and skills, sometimes going back several lives.

Are there any particularly compelling non-subjective arguments for a 1920's tech world (as far as cars go) why a car should not be centre-drive that might outweigh the factors favouring centre-drive cars?

I'm looking for either a "No particularly compelling reason" answer or a "it would be changed because of this compelling (financial/ engineering/ safety/ other non-subjective) reason answer. It would need to be particularly compelling due to Tradition! Just 'sort of inconvenient' wouldn't really cut it.

Answer 1

Interacting with anything outside the car is more difficult from the center seat. Anytime you need to pay a toll, or get drive-thru takeout, or deal with a parking attendant, or speak to a police office who pulled you over, it's going to be more difficult from the center.

For someone who regularly has to get in and out of the vehicle like a delivery driver, it'll make little sense to be unable to directly access the driver's seat without clambering to the center of the cab.

Adjusting the windows may also be a pain, as you probably won't be able to reach any manual window controls from the center seat while driving (or they'll need to be mechanically more complex). Rolling down the window for a quick chat with someone isn't so simple anymore.

Some of the pros you mention aren't quite pros, like interoperability of vehicles in different countries - the position of the steering wheel is usually not specified by law, it's usually still legal to drive a car with the driver on the "wrong" side. It's just not ideal because it's unexpected and has worse sight lines. I don't think this is a useful tradeoff, though, as I expect most cars will be driven primarily under one set of driving rules the majority of the time - it's not useful to make a car that's "pretty good" in both left-hand and right-hand traffic when it's driven in one or the other 95% of the time, when you could instead design a car that's made for where you drive it.

All that said, these issues aren't enormous showstoppers that make a center-drive car outright infeasible, and some could be mitigated in various ways. I might still expect that certain types of vehicles like mail or delivery trucks would still have left- or right-hand drive for practical purposes.

Answer 2

I can think of only one practical reason why your automobiles generally have a center-position driver's seat: and the lilim.

Center-drive cars are not unknown in the world of humanity, but they're really rare. Why? Pro: the highest safety driving experience exists when the view from the vehicle is identical in both directions, pro: because it better balances the car for performance and con: because it's inconvenient stepping over anything to get to the driver's position. It's that last one, I suspect, that's the reason why we don't see common center-drive vehicles in the world today.

But you have an walloping inconvenience: creatures with claws and wings.

I don't believe your autos would develop with a single front seat holding three bodies, the center body driving the car. I do find it believable that your cars would develop such that the driver was in the chauffeur's position: a single seat forward of all passenger seats that can be easily accessed from either side of the car. This has the huge advantage of allowing the passengers on the driver's right and left to access the vehicle, not just from the sides, but from the front.

And that's useful for the Lilim, for whom stepping straight forward to exit the car would be very convenient. In fact, I can imagine two hybrid Lilim/female seats right and left behind the driver, and one non-lilim seat behind the driver. Rows of seats behind that would be for children since all three sexes could comfortably use bench seating without forward access at that age.

I can also believe those hybrid seats would be designed differently. Wings are a problem with traditional chair backs that are designed to support the shoulders. Yours would be designed to support the back/spine with, possibly (maybe, depends on physiology) a "T" shaped upper area that would support the shoulders above the wings. So, rather than a big fundamentally rectangular seat back, there'd be a narrow seat back, possibly a "T" shaped seat back, so the back fit between the wings and the wings could fall to the floor area behind the seat.

All in all, this design would also permit the Lilim to comfortably drive the car as someone with wings and claws clambering over a seat to get to the controls is hard to believe, but a single forward seat easily accessed from either side (and, thus, with plenty of room for the wings on both sides) would work. Pedals would simply be designed similar to what we humans experience today but with a top bar or hole in the pedal allowing the clawed grip. (I'm not going to deal with digitigrade legs as you didn't mention them. I'm not sure how anything with digitigrade legs could drive a vehicle designed as humanity's cars are today.)

Answer 3

So, Centre-drive cars do exist, my favourite being the McLaren F1 road car from the 90s. There are a number of high-end sports cars that adopt a Centre position today as well.

However, you've mentioned your Tech level is 1920s - there is no mechanical reason why you couldn't have a centre-drive car during this time.

In order to answer the question though in a fully thought out manner, I am going to come back to the McLaren F1:

This has a 3 seat configuration - driver in the centre, two passengers either side and back a bit - the reason for this is for the given limitations of the roads and car width, everyone isn't squished in like sardines (ironically, they still are - because it is a Hypercar and comfort is not really a consideration)

In order to make a 3 seat configuration comfortable (without the use of American style bench seats) - you simply need a wider vehicle.

And this is where the real answer begins

There is an Apocryphal tale (but I think has some kernals of truth to it) that the reason British Standard rail gauge is the width it is, is because it traces it's lineage back to the tracks left by Roman war chariots, because that was the width that could accomodate 2 horses side-by-side.

The reality is that Cars didn't spring up overnight, before cars we had Trams, Horse and Carriages etc. We had bridges, roads, tunnels - all with a limitation on width.

We could easily make cars wider to accomodate a driver (with sufficient room to operate the vehicle) and 2 passengers upfront - but in the modern world, that would require re-doing all of our infrastructure.

If there was not extensive pre-existing infrastructure (or perhaps the infrastructure was designed for a wider vehicle - potentially 3 horses butts wide) - then this would make the whole scenario much easier to justify.

Why would you not have the driver centre and just less seats? - well that's because for a given vehicle size, you would be sacrificing passenger capacity.

Answer 4

Motorcycles and narrow gauge cars

The world is mainly dominated by Motorcycles and other in-line vehicles, where passengers generally sit one after another, as manufacturing tries to make the cars as narrow as possible, mainly to be comfortable for all (Wings and car walls feel cramped), and a two or three-wheel configuration is actually rather easy to make, if it is not too long and thus too heavy.

Answer 5

The rear-wheel drive problem

Let's say I am designing of of these newfangled "car" things that are taking the aristocracy by storm lately.

I need the wheels doing the steering to be in the front, that's non-negotiable, otherwise at "high" speeds it's too easy to loose control and flip the car.

I also need the engine to be in front, because otherwise all the weight of the car would be at the back (I'm simplifying a bit, this has been done for cost reasons in e.g. the VW beetle and for weight optimization reasons e.g. supercars) and this sends the car into a drift at high speeds. Fun for pilots, not so much for the people with money buying my cars for transportation.

Here's my problem: it's 18XX and we simply haven't invented a cost-effective way of having the front wheels be steerable, powered, and suspended. Sure I could spend a lot of money and R&D time inventing such a thing, or I could simply power the car using the rear wheels, giving me plenty of space for a gearbox and transmission. Right in the middle of the car.

It then stands to reason that I'd like to avoid putting a seat, much less the driver's seat, right above this. Putting it to the side also enables me to have the steering column pass to the side of the engine, which greatly simplifies its design. it also enables me to place the gearbox's shifter pretty much straight on top of said gearbox, which is very convenient for design.

Answer 6

Single-occupant vehicles exist in reality. For your 1920s tech level, consider the Cyclecar, a thin car that was essentially a motorcycle with four wheels, a clutch, and a roof. In the 1910s they were made in single-occupant and two-occupant (one in front of the other). They were never made in very large numbers, eventually dying out in the early 1920s -- with mass production, a cyclecar costs almost the same as a wider two-seater.

Cars were extremely new in 1920. A lot of experimental designs were being tried that didn't pan out in the long term. Cyclecars were only one of them. Your condition that "not because of some recent design decision" is basically impossible to fulfil, because all design decisions were recent at this time. The Quadricycle was state of the art in 1896. By 1920 they were only just barely figuring out what shape a car could be. Everyone who is old enough to drive in your story's present day remembers a time before "horseless carriages"; traditions haven't had time to come into existence yet.

Answer 7

On the con side, with cars that would be mainly front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, the steering mechanism could be more complicated.

I agree with this, though perhaps not for the same reasons.

Automobiles from the 1920s, and for a few years prior and after, would be built with a torque tube down the center. This engineering feature would sort of force the steering column to one side or the other of the vehicle, and perhaps by far enough of a margin to rule out a center drive position even if the car was wider than we'd know in our time line where cars were built to the width of two horse abreast carriages as that was the norm prior to automobiles coming on the scene.

I expect the torque tube could be off center to allow for the driver to be in the center but that could introduce a different kind of torque on the frame. Keeping that torque tube centered was quite important at the time, such that agricultural tractors of the era would have the operator seat off center in spite of the advantages of keeping the seat centered. Later tractor designs avoided this by having the steering shaft go over the engine than under it like a car would, or having hydraulic steering than a direct mechanical connection which would be the norm by the 1960s or so.

There's likely any of a dozen ways to have the driver position centered given the technology of the time if that was believed to be important enough. It would simply be cheaper and easier to put the driver to one side than engineer around this.

As I recall one reason why the driver of a horse drawn carriage was put to one side is so a handbrake would be easier to engineer and operate. The lever and mechanism for the brakes would be run down one side of the carriage, then if linked to an opposing wheel brake then it would be by a shaft alongside the carriage axle.

I expect that many people would not think that a horse drawn carriage would have a brake but something had to be in place to keep the wagon from rolling away when the horses were not present to hold it. Also the brake would allow for slowing the carriage when going downhill and avoid injuring or tiring the horses.

Like with the steering there's likely ways to put a brake on a carriage in the center position if this was important enough. I can think of ways to make it work, especially if the brake was foot operated than by a hand operated lever. But I suspect a hand brake would have been thought safer or easier as the driver would want both feet free to avoid sliding about the seat or falling off as seat belts were not much of a thing then. But then maybe seat belts were a thing on horse drawn carriages in some alternate time line. To be clear not every horse drawn carriage had brakes but those that did were quite simple and part of that simplicity was having the mechanism run along the side of the carriage than worry about how to cut holes or such in the middle somewhere for a handle or pedal.

Answer 8

Quite doable

First, starting cars were single-seated (only the driver), some cars had the scheme of driver+passenger behind, however horse carts were way wider so people eventually made cars as wide, making room for two per row. Some cars (family cars, with 3 rows) do have room for three in back rows, while traditionally the front row is still comprised of two seats.

Now, let's say that planet's horses were quite a lot more powerful, so the default cart size happened to be wider, say about 2 meters wide, which is enough for three to sit, also cabs went wider because of some reason why there are lilim and a reason to have a threesome in a car, also it was pretty fun having three people control a horse-driven high speed cart (Russian "troika" as an example, although European horses usually were employed in pairs or 2x2), or there was a grave reason in the past to have two shieldbearers on both sides of a cart driver, therefore it was pretty common to have a trio of people on the front row of a car when they started to be carrying passengers. Perhaps also the drivetrain of early cars was pretty cumbersome, leading to a configuration where the driver is located way forward, "shieldbearers"' seats yet absent, but passenger seats are located in the middle of the car on each side of the drivetrain.

Then, as mass production appeared, the Ford of that planet was a tad more clever, and mass produces two types of cars: narrow, with 1+1 seats, and wide, with 3+3 (+3, or cargo) seats, with the narrow variant employed by those who need to get somewhere fast, the narrow profile helped the car to maneuver in traffic, and the wide variant used by cargo haulers, families, companies and the like. Past that point, making cars with two front row seats hit a problem: they were not too narrow to fit two in a lane, and less voluminous to house a family of three (MWL without children - why are there lilim after all) without either W or L feeling "discriminated" by not being at the side off a driving M.

Answer 9

We often referred to cars as horseless carriages. Have a driver sitting exposed at the top front and the passengers inside of an enclosed compartment, just like a carriage. Why? tradition that is how we drove carriages.

Answer 10

Start with a good reason for narrow cars

We're starting with cars that don't have a passenger on either side. That way, it makes perfect sense to have the driver in the middle because there IS only the middle.

Now, why would you not have two or three seats? Because the roads are too narrow to have such a wide vehicle.

And why are the roads narrow? Because it's hard and/or expensive to make them wide. Maybe the trees are super tough in your world, or maybe the reason we have a winged third sex is because it's all mountainous, with the "roads" really being winding paths along or between the peaks.

So we started with narrow cars (and before them narrow horse carts), driver in the middle/only seat, passengers and/or cargo behind. We could stop here, but you seem to want three seats with a passenger on either side. How do we get to those?

The luxury of sitting side by side with BOTH your loved ones

Maybe they were developed as luxuries. By and for the wealthy people who live in flat places where the roads are wide enough for that - the fertile valleys. There, they wanted a car(t) where they could have both their spouses with them, instead of behind them (where they would have to show preference to the one allowed to sit closer to the driver!). What a luxury, to be able to just look left and right and see and talk to your loved ones! Great material for the advertisements!

And well, once that became what the rich do, people who want to SEEM rich do the same. And so it became the norm.

Answer 11

the real 1920's was really close ot what you want.

You need a culture that does not care about saftey, and you need to push technology closer ot the 50's.

What you want kinda existed, they were called motorcycles, scooters, and bench seating. The scooters are shunned by culture with cheap fuel and all are shunned for saftey. Bench seating was the norm in the 1920's but motor cyclers were very uncommon so you need ot push tech forward a little bit the 1950's which saw both in full swing.

the big advantage of single seater vehicles is they are both very cheap to buy and very cheap to use. Single seater vehilces are actually faily common, just not as much in North America.

The big advantage of bench seating was you could cram as many people as you wanted in them and they were cheap to build. But you needed huge cars, to fit 3 people in them so fuel needs to be cheap. You also dont want airbags because variable seating and airbags don't mix.

Center drive just requires rear engines, otherwise your steering is strongly competing for space with your engine which will never work. You either need 2 tiny engines or one tiny one, both solutions suck so just put the engine somwhere else. there is not much reason to have your engine in front in heavy 1920's vehicles.

Your biggest problem is you need an excuse to keep 2 (side by side) and 4 seaters from existing. That will be hard because if you can built the others then 4 seaters are easier, cheaper, and more fuel efficent or they can be faster and more powerful thats the real thing you need to overcome. Note 3 side by side would just be a bench seat pickup truck.

You also need people to not care about the pain in the ass of having to slide into your 6 seater car to drive it by yourself. You might be able to pull it off with really strong sexism and positioning stereotypes. Men in center women on the right lilith on the left kind of thing. So cars either have central steering or you are admiting you will never have a lilith. But that means at least one gender is going to be treated poorly for driving at all, not that that is unrealistic for the 20's. this does mean 2 seater front and rear will need to be rare and only for special circumstances like taxis.