I'm a it professional (working in enterprise DCs) and have been running ts2 and murmur myself. It was misleading from the beginning and while I do understand your point I can not see a company doing this in good faith, I am too old for that.
I can only assume it's on purpose so average users really understand it wrong to avoid the associated negative view. Clever, really. But absolutely evil.
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.
I'm a it professional (working in enterprise DCs) and have been running ts2 and murmur myself. It was misleading from the beginning and while I do understand your point I can not see a company doing this in good faith, I am too old for that.