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Comment by rco8786 | Hacker News Reader

As a counter point - we’re already seeing the role of the driver fading away from car travel. lane holding tech is readily available in your average car now. Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. As we’ve seen play out with phones, people vastly prefer touch screens and vastly prefer familiarity. Standardizing cars across a couple of different interfaces vs each car having a brand new layout of analog switches, knobs, and doo-hickeys is a much better rider experience.

Much like how a “phone” went from “a device to call someone on” to what an iPhone does today, a “car” is going from “something you drive” to just another device you interact with in various ways and it also happens to be able to get you from point A to point B.

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people vastly prefer touch screens

Do they?

A car's dashboard doesn't have to be small enough to fit in your pocket; it doesn't have a screen you want to look at constantly where there's a direct trade-off between screen space and physical keyboard space; a car's dashboard doesn't have limits of where buttons can be because you have to hold it around the edges without pressing the buttons accidentally.

I still hate typing with on-screen keyboards, I just grudgingly accept that for a given small phone size, I'd prefer more of it to be screen than keyboard. That doesn't at all mean I want my car to turn into an Android tablet because I prefer a touchscreen in the constraints of a pocket size device.

If people really do vastly prefer touch screens, I would expect to see different control mechanisms moving in this direction (steering, shifting, etc.)

The fact that they aren't going this way in the systems that __really__ matter seems to indicate that people don't really prefer touch screens.

Come on. My iPhone still has some tactile mechanisms also. But 99% of my interactions with it are via touch screen. That's what you're describing.

Sure, but that's the exception that proves the rule.

The actual point was that when it comes to safety/critical functions, we still prefer those mechanical mechanisms. Unless you're flying or driving with your iPhone, I think the point still stands.

I think the fact that safety critical fly-by-wire systems could operate without the mechanical interface yet designers choose to do so anyway underscores this point.

Sure, safety and precision critical mechanisms are still served better by controls with tactile feedback. I happily recognize that.

Yeah, and that sucks, but we live with it because that's the only way for it to fit in our pocket.

Why would we port one of the compromises of the smartphone interface over to our car interface?

And yes, I know, dynamic is a trump card. It still sucks. Have you ever read Bret Victor's rant on it? http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...

I was thinking the other day that there isn't really a good reason why I couldn't control my car with a PS4 controller. I wouldn't advocate for that as an industry wide change, but I'm willing to move beyond huge steering wheels and gear shifts

I think we take for granted that the modern car layout has always been the same way, but it's interesting to learn how it evolved. Some of the original designs were using tillers instead of steering wheels, for example.

I truly wish for a current phone designed even half as well as the Palm Pre and Treo were a decade ago. (Slide-out keyboard, "Just Type", non-sucking contacts and calendar, etc.) Really, I just want an updated Pre with a state-of-the-art browser and radios...

"Tesla’s can drive themselves a large portion of the time. Etc. Concerns about tactile feedback and such don’t really matter if you don’t have to pay attention to the road anymore. "

And Teslas ALMOST never kill their driver or innocent bystanders when the driver is negligently ignoring -- or bored and not paying attention to -- the road. There have been low speed accidents where the operator is tasked with taking over for the vehicle and they couldn't respond in time. Real life is neither a video game nor a perfect simulation. Limitations of the technology and the human operator as well as conditions of the road, lighting, and weather will always be a problem.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/01/business/insi...

2. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/behind-the-ub...

I wasn't commenting on the current state of self-driving car's safety...we can debate that endlessly so I won't. But the direction we're currently heading in is pretty darn clear.

Alright, but that's not how I read your comment. Regardless, until we as a society are so confident in autonomous vehicles that we eliminate manual control systems as outmoded and unnecessary, those systems should be designed to minimize cognitive load on the operator of the vehicle.

I don't necessarily disagree...that's just not what's happening in the real world. Car manufacturers are moving forward, quickly, with self-driving tech.

> just another device you interact with in various ways and it also happens to be able to get you from point A to point B.

just another device which can kill you and others in a split second if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

yes. what's your point

The point was you comparing a car to a phone does not make any sense right now. That elusive future where a car just becomes a device is not going to be here in the next few years, we can talk about it when it comes but right now cars kill people if you dont pay attention.

I think you're vastly underestimating how quickly car manufacturers are moving..or at least trying to move.

Tesla is already pre-selling, for money, full self-driving capability in their existing cars. And they are, of course, designing their current fleet of cars for that future. There's already a Games section in the dashboard.

We can talk about the safety aspects all day until we're blue in the face. But this is the reality.

I think you're vastly overestimating how quickly car manufacturers are moving

> Tesla is already pre-selling, for money, full self-driving capability in their existing cars.

Has Tesla enabled FSD with no driver supervision?

That is the actual reality.

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