Why does every single car manufacture make wipers go the same way? They need to be flip-flopped.

I never really realized that the left wiper stops right in front of my line of site, until I was driving at night in heavy rain. The windshield had a memory of this, and a buildup of a line of water was very distracting. It wasn't just drops on the windshield, it was a visible line that we permanent. I couldn't keep my eyes off it. And yet the passenger side was perfectly fine. It was so bad and distracting, that I stopped in the middle of the pouring rain during a 5 hour drive to pull out my rain-x try to remove the line of water. Just visualize this. A guy stops at a rest stop during a downpour, goes to the back of his trunk to get a bottle of rain-x and towel, and washes his windshield. I bet the rest of the rest-stoppers were like, "WTF is he doing?"

Also, when it snows outside, I tend to open my door, turn on the car, and wipe/scrape the windshield. But there are times when I forgot that I had the wipers on, and it dumps all that snow into my open door.

But how simple of an idea is it to flip-flop their direction? To me it makes sense. Why hasn't this been done before?

 

They Work Perfectly in Australia!

 

Most people do a conversion to the single wiper design if they don't like duals.

 

Never noticed this problem.

 

mine go the other way mine actually go both ways

 

The reason they go the way they do is because it wipes more of the space in front of driver. Look how much it not caught by the wiper in the upper right hand corner in front of the passenger. It's for safety reasons. Drive a car in Ireland or England. They wipers go the other way because you sit on the other side of the car. BTW. How cars about wipers. If your going to spend time modifying your car, do something people will notice. There's a reason why wipers are hidden and black. Because no one cares about them.

 

When i was a kid i always wanted wipers that folded out of hidden compartments in the A pillars and then would slide from top and bottom and wipe entire window.

 

I *LOVED* my '66 T-Bird wipers because they worked right the left one was mounted at the left side, the right one on the right side, and they slightly overlapped in the middle.

Didn't hurt that mine was one of the only ones which had a working 'tension break' system, the precursor to the delay we have today. It basically had a slight pressure on the blades, but they wouldn't wipe until there was enough moisture to lubricate them... then they'd pop into action, once, maybe twice... then cut off. You just set the little lever a little bit... or a little bit more... etc, until you got the pressure vs sprinkling trade off you wanted.

It was really keen. Wish we had those kind, but not on running on vacuum.

But yeah, what woody said, because I don't get it that an american car has a european wiper system, and they have since the 60s. What's up with this?

/Will not go single wiper... I did that on the HoopTBird... it looked stupider than the line of rain does.

 

I can understand the reasoning. But I don't think I'll have to worry about cars coming at me from the upper right.

It was just a very tense night of driving. 5 hours on a busy interstate, friday after work, pitch black, and visability was already very short. And all I could focus on was how there kept getting a buildup inbetween wipes. Even when it was on a high wipe speed. I hadn't noticed the problem until that night. I also noticed that with that buildup, if you drive under street lights, it makes visability that much harder. It lights it all up and produces a glare.

 

Go speed racer go!

 

Interesting idea, but you can't patent it anymore because you've just made it public. Sorry! :-)

 

Hey bro,

buy a german made car with 1 wiper they go all the way across and back, or just be cheap and find somone who sells Aquapel windshield treatment and your water will just run right off your windshield

Larry Diesbach
FixMyWindshield.com
15 Year Auto Glass Veteran