"As per Automobile magazine's design columnist wrote ever so long ago, a high ranking executive put a car into a ditch trying to put the wipers on in the 1960s, and as a consequence, word came down that they had to standardize the controls across all divisions. This was seen as terribly dull, and so it fell to the junior-most designer, him. I don't see how we can leverage this to make all the rest work the same way though. An example of the benefit would be the Audi sudden acceleration issue back around 1990 or so, Audi had the gas relativity far to the left, GM far to the right, a couple would have a GM and an Audi, and the GM driver would get in the Audi, and put it through the back of the garage, or worse. Same petal layout, but just slightly different placement. "