The irony is that yet a serious study has to state that those working hours even make sense productivity wise. Usually people get tired, burned out and make more mistakes...
As others have said it's surprisingly difficult to measure volume of level in gas tanks for a lot of reasons. So no it's (usually) not a design choice, worse in some, better in others.
My first car had no gauge at all and you had to estimate by distance. Wasn't much of an issue either.
The irony is that yet a serious study has to state that those working hours even make sense productivity wise. Usually people get tired, burned out and make more mistakes...