Are Touchscreens in Cars Dangerous?
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The article discusses the dangers of touchscreens in cars, with many commenters agreeing that they are distracting and potentially hazardous while driving, and sharing their own experiences and suggestions for improvement.
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In my first car, I could operate the windows, climate control and sound system without taking my eyes off the road at all, although I had to glance briefly at the (fixed) display to see what radio station I was tuned to if it wasn’t obvious.
Old-school radios were a lot more user-friendly with preset station buttons and a tactile volume control that actually felt like it was connected to something.
Those controls are typically on some surface of the car your hand is braced on. They're also very simple physical controls with a good amount of tactile feedback. It's hard to fuck up a simple push button window control or AC dial. Even on a bumpy road you'd be hard pressed to have trouble with such controls.
With touchscreens, it's not just that you lose the tactile component, but all these interfaces are modal, with buttons that disappear or move around depending on the screen you're on.
Oh, you're on the radio screen? There's no way to adjust seat heating from here... or if there is one, it's in a different place than on the AC screen.
About 20 years ago, every teenager in the world who had a mobile phone was able to select a contact from their phonebook and type an entire message and send, in class with their phone in their pocket.
This is possible because of physical buttons and a deterministic user interface. The same applies to cars and other control interfaces.
I reject the idea of touch screens for car functions because it takes more than one level of navigation to reach the active button. If the UI designers would change the design so that when the car starts moving the touch screen would change and lock to a display where all driving-related buttons (heating/wipers/car stereo/gears) are close by, highly visible and activated with a single touch I could see myself using a touch screen in a car.
My main reservation is taking my eyes and attention of the road to focus on navigating a touch screen UI put together by 5 teams and 3 different committees.
Anything that takes attention away from driving increases danger.
Are they more dangerous than older interfaces? My feeling is overwhelmingly yes, but I would be willing to see a study or hear arguments that some touchscreens are an improvement. A touch interface is fine (not great) as long as it never changes. As soon as you have to search for a control or menu you are dividing your attention away from driving.
It doesn’t even pretend to control for other relevant variables, and makes precisely no assertions about touch screens vs. non touch screens.
All it “proves” is that riding a mile in a random Tesla is safer than riding a mile in a randomly chosen non-Tesla.
Why yes, any Tesla is likely safer than my 1998 Lexus ES300 in a variety of ways. No, that doesn’t mean that the touchscreen is what makes it safe.
Specifically, text. Reading is "hard". Even things as simple as the title of the song on the radio. Especially when the text changes.
I have a modern LCD on my motorcycle, a BMW, that uses a WonderWheel (rotate to scroll up/down, and push or pull for right/left click) as an interface. It's very reminiscent of The Onions MacBook Wheel[0]. It is absolutely dangerous to use while riding. It's a cognitive black hole.
Obviously, the LCD is not alone in this case, the interaction pushes it all up to eleven. But the old school car interface was numbers and small words, and, eventually icons. Consider changing the temperature in a car, for me, I'd shove the hot/cold slider around until the air coming the from the vent was comfortable vs clicking up and down and deciding "do I want 72 or 73?".
And, yea, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I alone am a hazard when interacting with these things. So, maybe it's not fair for me to project my experiences to the population at large.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
However, it is very person dependent. Personally, I am one of the fastest readers I know.
It's also day dependent. I've had days where my ability to focus switch is significantly impaired.
The big issue is that while there are people that touch screens are not going to impair their driving, you can't gear your system to them.
You have to aim it at the lowest common denominator.
Personally, I am a fan of my current vehicle which while being at 2015 because it's one of the police interceptors still has the basic ish radio. And has twist knobs for volume, tune, fan speed and temperature.
And while I probably wouldn't mind having the actual Ford sync stuff, I don't find myself missing it either.
- Have you benchmarked your speed on text vs non-text controls that are otherwise equivalent? (i.e. both are button presses, both are always in the exact same location, ...)? - Have you benchmarked how this changes as you loose the similarities? Does this benchmark measure "time to complete task" or "time spent looking at control" (turning a physical knob vs a screen slider) - have you benchmarked your speed for fixed-location controls vs controls which may be buried in a menu item on a touch-screen?
Do these benchmarks change if the control has delayed onset (pressing "play" takes 2 seconds to start the music, and you get no tactile response to tell you if you have successful pressed the button or not)
Have you benchmarked how these skill comparisons decay with impairment? Do they decay equally, or does the text-based skill decay faster?
Look, given this is HN I fully believe you are in the upper 99% on several aspects, making you with text controls faster than me with manual. But the question is would YOU be faster with text or manual? And how consistent is this?
parking takes attention away from driving, and as a result the danger drops.
Parking is a subset of “driving”. When you are parking you are also still driving by most legal and practical definitions.
Once you have completed parking you are no longer driving, you are parked, that is the point at which the danger drops.
Parking itself though, is still driving, and is also when a significant number of minor and major collisions occur. Parking is so dangerous that we design many parking areas specifically to be durable to minor impacts as well as protect from parking mishaps. Bollards, curbs, concrete barriers, planters and other features are all placed to help lessen the dangers of parking.
at which you rarely put your life at risk. "huh?" if you do.
For reference, in the US, for just reported vehicle accidents per the National Safety Council:
- 20% of all accidents occur in parking lots
- 500 people per year are killed in parking lots
- 60k injuries per year in parking lots
Given the low speeds inherent to parking lots, and the extremely low share of miles and time spent there, it is a remarkably dangerous place. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out; parking areas are by definition where humans and heavy machinery operate in the exact same spaces.
They're just terrible UX for the inside of a vehicle you're driving.
In short: various studies show that touchscreens draw attention of the driver for longer, so they are more dangerous at speed.
European agencies noticed and started requiring physical dedicated switches for certain most important functions to get a full safety rating.
Car makers also gradually revert to physical switches, and also push voice control for certain functions.
The question isn't whether they're dangerous, anymore.
The question is, when is safety legislation going to be passed that prevents them from being used for any routine adjustments while driving. I.e. windshield wipers, AC, change volume, skip to next track, etc.
Like it's fine if you still use them to input a GPS destination, change long-term car settings, connect a Bluetooth device, etc.
But we need to separate out the actions routinely used during driving and legislate physical controls. Why is there not legislation for this already?
For someone who really wants that level of hardware control, they’re probably better served by an older car with less or no computers.
For example, I would prefer to press a fob-button to unlock or start a car, but there are systems out there where thieves simply boost/relay the signal of your keys in order to open and and drive it away.
Sure, there are countermeasures involving complicated speed-of-light timing tricks, but it could have all been avoided with a button.
But it looks like the USB port in that model year Subaru supports the iPod protocol meaning if you have an iPhone, why wouldn’t the passenger be able to control the music?
If you have an Android it looks like it supports just using your phone as a dumb mass storage device that contains music.
https://www.subaruxvforum.com/threads/playing-over-usb-with-...
In our 2025 Kona - one of the cheapest cars sold by Hyundai - you can have CarPlay connected with one device and have another phone paired with BT for audio.
CarPlay doesn’t use Bluetooth. It is either wired or using WiFi direct
Cars that dont kill their drivers are more likely to have repeat customers; i.e. other factors besides legislation will force car manufacterers to shift their designs back to this approach. My 2024 CRV has exactly what you describe.
100% rational and 100% informed consumers do not exist. There's both information asymmetry between manufacturers and consumers. I'm sure there's man fatal accidents that can be traced back to faulty components and improper design that gets covered up by manufacturers. The Volkswagen emissions scandal was just easily measurable.
Everyone likes it that way. Consumers are attracted to features, gimmicks and marketing because that's what works for marketing and sells. No one wants to buy a "900% less accidents than others" car. But everyone wants a bluetooth and wifi enabled car with seat subscriptions. Besides, what's a rational consumer gotta do? They gotta get up at 06:30 and make breakfast for little Timmy and take him to daycare. They need a new car by the end of the month so they better choose between big touch screen or little touch screen with a control knob.
If I can't get a dumb TV, I just don't buy a dumb TV or watch any TV at all. But you can't not travel by car.
https://newatlas.com/volvo-v40-pedestrian-airbags/21734/
furthermore there does not seem to be any great brand loyalty in the market
https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/automotive-consumers-more-di...
maybe because of being afraid of dying but probably not, but given how often people buy new cars (not that often) and the lack of loyalty, I think it would not make any sense from a business perspective to give a damn if the customers die (disregarding moral perspective which I'm sure is a primary concern for automotive manufacturers)
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/heres-how-often-americans-re...
which implies less than 5 years for 2/3s of Americans, although not sure what the average is.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that most people will own 10 cars in their lifetime but querying How many cars does the average person own in their lifetime gives me 8.
Assuming car buying age is from 18 to 72, that gives 54 years of car buying, and 8 gives us 6.75 years per car if the average owns 8 cars. 5.4 years if the average owns 10 cars.
That's not the same statistic though: If the only car in the world was manufactured 20 years ago and had 4 owners, then the average ownership-duration would be 5 years, a much smaller number.
____
Survey says [0] people tend to cycle vehicles in 8 years.
[0] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of...
I have a libertarian streak when it comes to drugs, porn/prostitution, free speech, patent law, etc. but in this case I’m perfectly fine with governments “getting involved” to ensure that I can shop for a vehicle without becoming a random sample in a statistical study of car safety. Especially if a possible outcome is my preventable death.
We already have this exact legislation in the UK.
Physical controls were a must when getting a new car, but I find myself using voice a lot, especially in traffic.
Quite a lot of the safety features rely on the Android tablet embedded in the dash. When you restart it (long press home button) quite a worrying number of warnings pop up on the display behind the steering wheel!
I've driven like 5 modern rental cars in the last year and none of them locked out the touch screen while driving, and most needed the touch screen to change the temperature controls
It's also software implemented. The screen works, just the apps on it grey out buttons while in motion. You can e.g. switch to radio, change volume, but not search or set destination.
But I admit I’m being selfish: I don’t drive but share the road with people who do.
This is only feasible because the physical controls are excellent, and you can basically accomplish anything except typing an address or a song name without the touchscreen as input.
Supposedly most buyers in fact, did not like the knob.
This seems to follow other manufacturers that formerly had knob based controls but similarly abandoned them.
Sad to hear that I'm in a minority for loving that input.
On my car, the touchscreen only works when Android Auto or Apple CarPlay are enabled. I'm assuming all newer models are the same. There are lots of audio control built in the steering wheel too. I don't find any of it distracting.
It is probably a setting on your phone (driving mode, perhaps) or a setting when you pair it with your car.
Not that you're wrong about the privacy angle either.
We have a 20 old navi with voice control. You can't just say free form things, but it's very deterministic. Most commands you want to say aren't free form, so this doesn't really matter. It also confirms everything, so it will never do something without you knowing. It also has the best voice I got to know. Natural, precise, short AND friendly; no clue why all these modern voices with way more compute all sound like garbage.
Yes, you can do most of the driving, but "at the edges", when quicker reaction time is needed, it becomes noticeable. Similar to, ahem, drunk driving, though obviously, not as bad, and you can stop a conversation whenever needed.
Obviously, talking to a computer in your car would be less taxing than to a person, but when it misrecognizes the input, it might be the opposite.
Does it move a mouse pointer on the screen?
https://youtu.be/AF7YZHmMSzg?list=PLVornlshk2uo7s9MkRROCpNVg...
A good sign you’re missing something is when you see zero reason for another’s effort.
Touch screens are a cheap, adaptable UI. They simplify supply chains and allow for a richer variety of context-dependent controls. The map on a properly designed touch screen absolutely renders less useful a phone for navigation, which in turn removes a host of potential distractions from the game.
Touch screens should be an option for car designers and buyers. But they should be done safely.
Actions can be accomplished using a 'big knob' button that can be turned or pressed. The driver can still distract themselves, but I believe it's to a lesser extent that the touch screen.
Supposedly the story is that outside of a small but vocal contingent on the Internet, most buyers did not like the knob.
I drive a car with a touchscreen. Obviously, I'm not touching it in motion otherwise my position would be dumb… sometimes it does dumb things and I'll just have to ignore it for the drive or find a parking space to stop and deal with it.
I would support legislation that forced a recall of all defective cars (ones that required touchscreens to do basic car things).
There could be a narrow carve out for the manual, and stuff like software updates that make the console reboot.
If you attempt to adjust the bass and treble on our kia when it is in gear, the fucking sliders are not only broken, but they randomly move around on the screen like a “I bet you can’t dismiss this dialogue” prank app.
On old bmws, you can set gps destinations using the jog wheel while the car is in motion.
On the new ones, that’s disabled, the voice control reads off legal disclaimers and aggressively times out, making you restart the flow if you dare pay attention to the road while driving.
On top of that the (enshittified) jog wheel is erratic if the car is in motion. How does this stuff pass safety tests?
in that case, maybe I actually am a good drunk driver, if I ever did that
I can also use Google Maps or Apple Maps.
Push the wiper button (left stalk) once, adjust with left scrollwheel (either up/down if on a recent firmware or left/right if it’s older than a year or so).
Facelift has a dedicated button on the steering wheel I think and then scroll wheel as well…
I think they key though is that you're not constantly messing with the controls. It's up to you to pick the right moment and to limit your "disengagement". This is very different than e.g. texting someone while driving.
There are many things you can do in vehicles without touch screens to get distracted. You can even get distracted purely in your head while thinking about other things. Maintaining focus on what's going on while driving is on you.
I bet the overall reduced attention span due to social media and other effects has a big impact on drivers being able to maintain focus while driving.
However, once I took it for a test drive, I was relieved to find that almost every button I want to press while driving can be found on the steering wheel without looking. Only the air con controls are left out.
Fortunately my Honda makes it very easy to just reflexively turn off when I start my car.
So it's still a glowing thing in your field of vision. Of course, you're already going to be flash-blinded by retards leaving their LED high-beams on as they pass you, so maybe none of this matters.
No matter what you think about Apple’s “wall garden” for safety reasons Apple use to be very strict about the interface for CarPlay apps and responsible app developers were thoughtful about their CarPlay interface.
Now developers widgets will end up on CarPlay even when they didn’t intend it.
When driving I may need to fine-tune a setting in a range, OR seek a specific touch- or switch-point amongst a field of identically sized levers or buttons.
My solution is to seek an anchor point with my hand while other fingers do the work. I like hanging my hand on physical knob controls, e.g. for volume, in a non-input direction and without motivating force to change the underlying value.
The problem with anchoring is that my arms jiggle like bouncy bridges, when driving over any kind of bump. This external force disrupts my solution. It can be somewhat solved by tighter grip on the knob or non-input region of the control.
Additional problems come from having touch-screens - they create an extra physical problem of reducing the anchor-safe areas on the dashboard.
And, I workaround touch-screen's problem of "need to anchor" vs "can't touch without committing to change" by tenting my hand on dead-zones of the screen, or around the bezel or surrounding non-input surface.
So touchscreens, for me, add complexity to using the vehicle as a tool to accomplish the deed. Like "secret handshakes" are to greeting.
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