Fuel Pump Nozzles (and other things that have sucky designs)

Ever put diesel in a petrol car, or vice-versa? That's an expensive thing to fix if it ever happens to you, and yet the fix is extremely simple. So simple, this should never have been a thing that ever needed fixing.

It tends to happen if you are distracted, switched vehicles recently with a different fuel type, hired a vehicle and followed your normal routine without thinking, or simply had a brain fart.

The reason it happens is quite simply down to bad design... the design lets it happen. A sticker saying "Hey, this is unleaded" or "Oh, this is diesel y'know" is a hack solution that, whilst encourages prevention, and educates, does not fix the problem.

Fixing the problem is as simple as having different shaped nozzles.

Put simply: DO NOT ALLOW THE PROBLEM TO HAPPEN.

That is a very simple design principle. Yet so many people that design things appear to miss out or blatantly disregard this principle.

Incidentally, that methodology works for everything. If you design a thing that allows misuse, it will be misused. If you design a thing, be it a device, system, piece of software, or process, that simply does not allow misuse, well, guess what... there is a significantly higher chance the problem will not happen.

I'm sure some things are designed with this principle brushed aside purposely as a way to create new revenue streams where the value is in fixing the problem that the design caused. I mean, there's a whole industry built around fixing fuel type mixups that really should never have been needed. Almost feels like a justifiable way to explain corporate extortion.

Do you know any particularly sucky things that allow, or even worse, encourage, misuse?

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