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Comment by taco_emoji | Hacker News Reader

Touch screens in cars should be banned. The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls, and tactile feedback is obviously non-existent. Not to mention that as the author mentions, many UI targets are too small to touch accurately without diverting a significant amount of your attention from driving.

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I disagree. Touch screens without accompanying physical controls, maybe, but I don’t think touch screens should be banned. I’m a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van. I accept that I belong to an extremely small demographic but without a touch screen I wouldn’t be able to control any secondary functions. I think the way my Chrysler Pacifica does it is nice- there’s an 8” touch screen but also physical controls for the HVAC and media.

How does driving as a quadriplegic work? What are tools and modifications that make it possible?

I am assuming you mean paraplegic? Don't know of many quadriplegic people who can (or would be allowed) to drive, but I know a couple of paraplegic people who do.

I was surprised at how little (and quick) the modifications were to a standard car to make them accessible. Really only the mounting of a grip knob on the wheel, and a side handle for the throttle/brake. There were other mods such as pull down strap handles for the boot lid etc., but by and large the biggest mods were those two in the cockpit.

> I’m a quadriplegic and drive a heavily modified van

> I am assuming you mean paraplegic?

This is the most contrary Hacker News I've seen yet.

Do you honestly think it's likely that someone is mistaken about whether they're paraplegic or quadriplegic?

A more charitable interpretation would be that parent is replying to grandparent alone, having found the comment on 'new', and is unaware of the great-grandparent comment that prompted it.

The "comments" page (not "new"; that's articles) has no reply buttons, presumably because replying without context is anti-conversation. I don't think it's charitable to assume other commenters would do that.

So there isn't! I occasionally look at that page, but have never gone so far as to actually try to respond to anybody that way, so I never noticed the lack of Reply button.

This is a thread about people being dumb, I suppose, so I am proud to have played my part.

Nope. Quadriplegic.

No, they mean quadriplegic.

Please read the comment they are replying to. OP states they are quadripelegic. The comment you seem offended by is a direct response to that.

Many quadraplegic people have limited use of their arms. Pretty much everything I know about quadraplegics I learned from the most excellent documentary, Murderball, which is about quadraplegic rugby, a full-contact sport played in wheelchairs. Athletes are assigned a number based on their degree of movement ability and your team can field a certain total, so strategically you can opt for a larger number of less-mobile players.

If you watch Murderball, which I'd recommend, make sure to watch the DVD extras, which includes an episode of Jackass starring some of the film's athletes.

It is confusing for those outside the community. A person who had full use of her legs but severely limited use of her arms and hands would not be considered "paraplegic". However, if she had no use of her legs, the same condition of her arms would classify her as "quad" rather than "para".

Yes, it would be nice if we were all inherently sensitive to this nuance. That isn't the case, so I appreciate that your comment actually attempted to inform rather than simply castigating like sibling comments.

Lowered floor with ramp conversion (lots of specialty manufacturers do this, mine is VMI), custom reduced effort (2:1 ratio) horizontal steering (like a bus, but 8 inch diameter), reduced effort gas/brake hand control (hand control is Menox, I think the reduced effort part is custom), Paravan Touch system for ignition/shifting/secondaries, tri-pin on all hand interfaces to hold my hands in place with special splints.

You can buy a van from the conversion companies pretty easy, my steering column was built by a specialty company in San Diego. All together it works very well for me.

edit: here's a picture of the setup, the steering wheel is elevated here but it normally sits right above my lap: https://imgur.com/a/qOSP5Dg

Could you get one at another angle? I can’t quite figure out how the 3 handles work.

Also, that plate looks like it’ll drive straight into your chest during some hard braking.

Edit: NVM, I get it now. I see that it’s mounted on the centre column and you basically shove your left hand into it.

I have a late model VW Tiguan and it has a great design with physical controls + large capacitive touch screen.

No critical driving functions are controlled by the touch screen.

I think this is a very usable approach.

I'd agree with you about the uConnect system, its the best, hands down out of all of the infotainment systems I've used.

On the other hand that rotary shifter on dodge/chryslers is an abomination, and to make it even more delightful to use is placed very close to the radio and A/C controls.

oh god, don't even get me started about that, they even have the same texture as the other controls

Voice controls are superior to touch controls in those circumstances.

My beef with touchscreen controls is the lack of physical feedback, such that I need to glance at the screen to know if the intended thing happened.

I much prefer physical controls on the steering wheel for anything I want to do while driving - media related stuff, cruise control, speed limit, flappy-paddle gears, that kind of thing. In an ideal world, this is paired with a HUD, but I'll settle for a small display in the console in front of the steering wheel.

When using satnav though, a touchscreen is so much easier to input, and use to pan and zoom around a map than physical controls - but I only ever do this while stationary.

A halfway house might be prohibiting use of the touchscreen while driving, but how do you differentiate between passenger and driver?

At the least, I'd like haptic or/and audio feedback when making a touch though.

I don't mind touch screen for secondary functions, like GPS or media controls, which should not be operated (too much) while driving anyway. But making everything touch based is completely boneheaded and I don't plan on buying any car that increases my risk of death and injury this way.

Exactly. For entering target locations to a GPS while parked it's perfect. Just leave AC and car controls alone and give me a volume knob.

Physical controls serve double purpose. When you are reaching for the button, you first touch it with your fingers without pressing. This allows you to target the right button without pressing it, and without focusing your eyes on it. Touch controls will trigger every time you touch it, so you can not find it by touch and then press it, thing just doesn't work like that. That steals your attention away from the road and into the screen.

> The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls

I find scrolling a map is far more natural on a touch screen compared to physical controls.

Do you often need to scroll a map on your car's screen?

Yes. To see where I'm going to be going or find something. Do you not?

No? I just enter my destination and let it actually navigate

I often look around on the route to see if it's suitable, what I'm going to past, where I might stop, things like that. Just entering the destination and going without looking first is a recipe for being one of those idiots trying to drive down an unsuitable country lane, in my experience.

In years of using Waze for thousands of trips I've had that happen exactly zero times.

It also has functionality built in to find things like restaurants and gas stations near your active route.

How do you handle being rerouted? Also, how do you handle routes for 12 hour drives?

Wow, the world has all kinds of people. This attitude is bizarre to me. It seems similar to something I've heard before, "Why would I look in the rearview mirror? All that stuff is behind me so I don't care about it!"

No, it's really not at all the same. I'm using a tool for the job it was designed to do (and does very well). That doesn't mean I don't pay attention.

I'm just not arrogant enough to think I'm better.

a) "The tool" does afford the ability to scroll around and change zoom levels; that probably required some "design" to do that.

b) Is it "arrogant" to think that I understand my own goals and preferences better than a mapping app? Yikes.

I don't drive a car. Whenever I watch someone using navigation while driving, the map follows the route,so there is no need for that.

> the map follows the route,so there is no need for that

This is how you end up driving on an unsuitable route, by not looking ahead about where it’s going.

And sometimes you want to see what else is around you and not just program a destination.

The physical dial knob on BMW's is pretty awesome for this.

Sliding your fingers on glass/plastic has roughly just one primitive analog in the real-world: dragging paper on a flat surface. Scrolling a virtual map or zoomed-in digital photo is a rare application of that. Everything else that touch screens can do are very poor analogies of real-world things we can do with our hands and fingers, like press buttons and turn knobs.

I wonder if I've ever in my life, pressed my pointer finger onto any piece of paper (map or otherwise) which was sitting on a table in order to drag the paper around. Certainly to point, but never to drag.

And yet I very rarely need to do that while driving. If I really needed to I would just use my phone.

The best implementation I've tried of a touchscreen-like interface was the Lexus Remote Touch, where you control a cursor on the screen with a physically-moving sliding x/y controller, with force feedback so that it physically "snaps" to buttons.

I fully agree. See http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... for why touch screens are the worst possible interface device, and when used while driving, they are the most dangerous possible interface device.

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