Terrible Industrial Design: An Example

What you're seeing here is the console of my car, a Subaru Outback 2014, directly above my left knee. There are two buttons side by side.

The one on the left is called Hill Holder, and it's a lifesaver for Seattle drivers. I have a manual transmission, and on Seattle's hills a manual transmission should be a nightmare, but hill holder makes hills simple: whenever the car is being driven on an upward slope and comes to a complete stop, hill holder automatically applies the brakes, and when I apply the gas it releases the brakes in a smooth transition to driving. It's a freaking miracle of modern science.

The one on the right is the ordinary parking brake. You know, the brake you leave applied whenever you park your car and leave it. It's essential that the button be available for manual cars because hill holder doesn't detect downward slopes, nor slopes too gradual to be problematic.

We have two buttons, side-by-side, down in an obscure, out-of-the-way corner of your dashboard. One of them you press every time you drive your car. The other you should never, ever have to press. The button's only purpose for being there is to deactivate hill-holder should you need to tow the car.

I am now in the habit of having to check, every time I start the car, to make sure I have not accidentally deactivated hill-holder. I should not have to make that check. But I do, because some engineer at Subaru didn't think far enough ahead about this incredibly useful feature.