"Tim (Fractal Footwork)" (fractalfootwork) 01/13/2014 at 12:51 • Filed to: Chris Harris, Twitter, OppositeLock

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carcrasher88 > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/13/2014 at 12:54

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This needs to be on the Jalopnik front page!

The Real Dacia Sandero > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/13/2014 at 12:56

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That pissed me off at the DC show last year. They had the Fiesta ST there, but no one could sit in it. Especially stupid since the car went on sale last year.

wkiernan > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/13/2014 at 13:05

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It's not so much for your protection as for the protection of the other people on the car show floor. You press this button on the dash

and the car goes into Autonomous Driving Mode, where it uses AI to get you to your destination hands-off. The AI software is in early beta, and in a location where it can not get a good GPS fix, such as indoors, it tends to get confused and lunge about randomly; also it has some problems, once the car is turned on, with turning it off again. The car itself has a 662 horsepower supercharged V8.

Jagvar > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/13/2014 at 13:23

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Ford regularly puts this in the window of the prototypes they bring to shows. I've always thought it was dumb.

Stef Schrader > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/13/2014 at 19:09

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It's the Wert Protection Device.

davedave1111 > Tim (Fractal Footwork) 01/14/2014 at 09:33

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Sort of makes sense in a worried-about-being-sued sort of way. Presumably the interior of a prototype hasn't gone through the same kind of quality control as a production interior. There might be sharp edges, or finger-trapping bits, or something, so they don't want people just poking about in case they aren't aware of that and hurt themselves.