[_9omd]

It really depends on your height and preferred wheel height setting. I'm tall and in some cars the wheel obscures a good portion of the insturments.

[Hellion]

There are significant and effective federal regulations around this. If you are telling the truth, your steering wheel is way too high, and you need to lower it

[aidenn0]

Not who you are responding to, but I have a tall sitting height and I suspect that the steering wheel is too low. Consider this diagram of a properly adjusted steering wheel (instrumentation is where the "II" is):

     /----\
    /  II  \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

If you are tall what can happen is:

     /-II-\
    /      \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

A telescoping steering wheel helps quite a bit because you can adjust your seat back/forth more to get a good angle, but in cars without telescoping steering wheels, I have the second sight-picture at any position in which it is comfortable to hold the steering wheel.

If you are suggesting:

       II
     /----\
    /      \
    |------|
    \      /
     \----/

then this will render the airbags ineffective.

[kj34kj]

Exactly. This happens to me because I'm tall. If I adjust the wheel to not obscure the cluster, then it's no longer comfortable for my back/shoulders.

My single favorite feature of the 3/Y is that there is no instrument cluster.

[asdff]

Some cars like a prius just center the cluster

[frosted-flakes]

There are better solutions than chopping off half the wheel though. For example, Volkswagen ditched the binnacle and put the gauge cluster screen on the steering column instead of on the dashboard. This is so that it can move up and down with the steering wheel to whatever height it's set at. Unfortunately VW also used capacitive buttons, but apparently they will go back to real buttons in the future.