In-car touchscreens are dangerous
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335
* https://www.consumerreports.org/infotainment-systems/how-to-...
> Despite selling some vehicles with high ratings in other categories, Audi, Honda, Infiniti, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Subaru, and Toyota all joined Lexus at the bottom of our satisfaction ratings when it came to ease of use for in-car electronics.
* https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/mazda/3/2021/road-test/ (requires subscription):
> The infotainment screen mounted in the center of the dash isn’t a touch screen; users must adjust audio and infotainment features using steering wheel controls or the rotary controller and buttons mounted between the front seats. Unfortunately, some steering wheel controls are hard to see and difficult to use because they have silver text on a silver background. The rotary knob and buttons in the center console are also challenging to use since many of the buttons are difficult to see at a glance, and the lack of an easy-to-decipher menu structure forces drivers to spend too long looking at the controls instead of the road.
As can be seen from your first link, the main control method is a jog-wheel knob at your knee next to the gear shift lever, mounted facing up, so you turn it left and right to select things and push in to "click"/confirm. CR says that with this control system, and the menu hierarchies that Mazda's UI makes you go through, you end up more distracted than with the better touch-screen systems they review.
>Mazda is looking to add more simple, tactile controls into the cars. A quick tilt of the volume knob to the right or left goes forward or back single tracks
Ugh, if only there were some kind of dedicated control for some of these things that are being moved out of touchscreens. Something you can just tap on, sort of the way you do with touchscreens, but that never moves or changes, so you can tap it without looking.
Boy whoever invents that will be a billionaire!
Obviously, if you only test drive the car for an hour, you cannot get used to it, and you have to look down. Same as you had to look at your mouse the first time you used it.
Touchscreens in cars are really distracting. I had to yell to an acquaintance of mine once -- they were trying to change the music while going with 40-50km/h in a suburban area and she almost hit a dog. The reason? Cheap touchscreen that doesn't register half the touches. But it wouldn't matter for the poor creature that gets one ton of steel driven through them.
Maybe the car infotainment system's controls belong to the steering wheel? Or a bunch of extra levers? Who knows, but IMO the touchscreens aren't that good as well. The jury is still out on what's the best way of approaching this.
Before I could turn my fan speed knob by feel. It was "stepped" so I knew what level it was at when I moved it, if it was min/max. Same with heat and cool. Knob to adjust what vents. All could be done with eyes on the road.
Now? OK you can change climate control, go into touch screen, open up controls, tap to change 5 times to different vents, some crap slider to control fan speed, all requiring to look in order to see where to touch. The lack of tactile feedback just sucks.
On a phone yea sure it's great because I'm looking at it when I use it - it's function is to look at it. Not in a car.
Other Mazda's don't: https://youtu.be/z5k5Oqfyn2Y?t=510
*EDIT: Also all the VW models in the Golf and Passat Range come with a touchscreen, the low-end Fiats are the same, Mercedes is no different, even the low-end at Dacia comes with a touchscreen. If you can find a car manufacturer that does not think a touchscreen is the way to go, I'll be surprised.
\EDIT2: Since I looked at everything else in my neighborhood as well... Audi does a touchscreen center console for everything. You can get the Renault Twingo without any electronics but if you take the climate control you also get a touch screen. Honda and Hyundai will include a touch screen with everything as well. The only cars I got offered without a touchscreen center console is the Mitsubishi outlander and there it is only 1 model.
It is clearly designed away from "touchscreen", but if you are parked it functions fine with touch.
(Sorry if this sounds like an ad, I'm not affiliated with them but have been scouting for a car recently.)
Is that a good thing?
Your experience sounds like the overdrive was off. Or the transmission was dying/defective.
It still has a manual mode, even paddle shifters, but in regular drive, the lack of hard shift is really pleasant.
I sometimes drive an US-designed car with, I assume, an US-designed automatic transmission (traditional planetary sets + torque converter) and I was actually surprised it doesn't shift very smoothly, worse than a good driver on a manual and much worse than dual-clutch transmissions. With the latter it's pretty much impossible to tell when it is shifting if you cannot hear the motor rev.
(When you switch that car to 4L... oh dear, every shift feels like a learner driver learning to shift with the entire car jerking around. Everyone nods in approval!)
regular Automatic transmissions (not CVT) have been commoditized and are usually subcontracted out to dedicated vendors that make transmissions and sell them to auto manufacturers all around the world, so the nationality of the car vendor isn't going to tell much about transmission quality.
For example, the largest market share of car automatic transmissions belongs to (Japan based) Aisin, which sells transmissions to Ford, Toyota, BMW, Skoda, Chevrolet, Suzuki, Volvo, Hyundai, and many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions
A lot of the bus and truck transmissions are made by (US-based) Allison and they are sold all over the world and have the largest share in duty engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Transmission
There is large variability in perceived transmission quality, depending on everything from how the software controls it to form factor (real wheel or front wheel) to issues of reliability and build quality, but there are excellent US transmission vendors as well.
My newer car has a traditional automatic - the only reason I didn't go for a CVT is simply that the model I have doesn't come with that option (otherwise I would have opted for it).
My minivan has a 9-speed automatic transmission and the engine spends 99% of its time either off, idling, or around 1.9k rpm, so it seems like it's efficient enough.
(Or just buy electric and don't worry about fiddly transmissions)
The fact that you use energy stored as electricity does not get around the laws of inertia or air resistance -- accelerating a mass quickly will always require more energy than accelerating it slowly. And in the PEV world, since re-charging can take an hour instead of a minute, the consequences of draining the battery more quickly are going to be more of an annoyance.
Transmissions come up in that this is how some automakers meet efficiency requirements -- by taking away some control over acceleration from the driver by using a transmission that is programmed to shift gears in the higher rev ranges, with no manual override. But this makes the car less responsive.
Here, Tesla's brilliance shines, not because it doesn't have a transmission -- they can and do put in software that limits acceleration, so they could have done the same thing to improve range, but onlike others that improve efficiency by making the car less responsive to the driver, they improve efficiency by having a more efficent engine or a lighter car, while keepig the car very responsive to the driver. The real brilliance of Tesla is in building cars that are fun to drive (read, responsive), and indeed most of the innovation of electric cars that has been successful in the market was based around improving acceleration and adding more torque, making the car more fun to drive. That's why models like the Tesla or the old Ferrarris with electric assist are much loved by drivers, even though models like the Leaf and Bolt are not. Drivers care about good handling.
CVTs are not efficient because they control the rate of acceleration. You can over-rev a CVT and get as much acceleration as your engine (and it's transmissions losses) will allow. CVTs are efficient because they allow the engine of the car to operate in its most efficient power range more of the time.
EVs run into this same issue, but the way Tesla anyhow solved for it is pretty wild. Dual motor Teslas have 2 different motor/ drivetrain gear ratios. The rear wheels are most efficient at lower speeds and when you are driving slower, they get most of the power. The front wheels are most efficient at higher speeds and when you are driving faster, they get the most power. This way the most efficient motor is always doing the most work at any time. This is likely why the AWD Teslas have so much more range than the single engine/ RWD models.
There is a good article talking about EV transmissions here, the bit about Tesla's 2 gear ratio setup is about 12 paragraphs in.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/22/ev-transmissions-are-co...
I’m getting a bunch of turbo components tomorrow so that may change things.
The only things I’ve HAD to repair are... the top. $250 and 4hs later I have a new one on that’s been great. Everything else has been track oriented upgrades and tinkering out of boredom. It’s even running on an old Megasquirt ECU I put together as a teen, so it’s not even Japan reliable, and it’s still more reliable than many of my friend’s cars.
Except electric cars. They have been avoiding doing anything electric for years, pushing ICE instead.
"no, I hate the things, I mean in a fast car, actually they shouldn't be allowed in a fast car, they really shouldn't"
legendary f1/car designer Gordon Murray, approximately 30:05, but the complete video is gold :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4EIYQ6fkG4
anyone interested in cars, engineering or design (or a combination) should watch it.
there's also a great podcast episode featuring him https://collectingcars.com/podcasts/ (episode 21).
sorry since I don't have much to say about the article itself, wanted to share this though.
I dislike almost everything about modern cars (touch is the least of my problems) ; usability, 'repairability', electronic assistance, cameras, trend towards SUVs (even if only for driving children to school), weight and size increase, technical gizmos, et cetera ... don't want to write that rant in full right now.
That's a good thing, no? Plus safety improvements of course.
- it might actually not allow you to make unusual maneuvers (handbrake turns, etc) ; this actually can trigger the automatic emergency hotline call (been a witness)
- it beeps at you for not wearing your seat belt (even while driving across an empty parking lot going 10 mph, or being on private property)
- it has distance sensors (car beeps at you when driving out of a narrow parking garage constantly)
- it warns you when it's cold, wet, you drive too fast ...
- you can't set height of headlamps manually anymore (good for xeon which burn out everyone else's eyes even with default height settings...)
- it might check whether you are in lane and warn when you go outside of it
you might not agree, but all of that frustrates me (and does, whenever I have a rental), and makes me feel less in control and being treated like a child.
-> add to all that : many electronic pieces are hard to replace, repair, debug if something isn't working ; not even talking about the full blown modern electronic gizmos where you now have to theoretically worry about your car getting (or not getting) software updates.
Being in total control for me includes the ability to shoot yourself in the foot. I realize this isn't what your average 'a car is just a utility for me' driver wants, but what an enthusiast wants.
to maybe come up with an imperfect analogy : average users use windows, power users use linux ; as long as I have linux as an option, I am happy. But the current development goes to a windows only world (in this metaphor), and it's rare to find cars that are exciting anymore.
Backing a boat down a boat ramp.
4 wheeling where you have to hang out the window to see where your tire is.
Basically there a lot of off road type situations where you want/need freedom of movement. I would guess from your comment that you don't these things, but many of us do.
The one that kills me is it dings when the 'passenger' doesn't have their belt fashioned. Where the passenger is a box, or groceries, or whatever. I end up leaving the belt permanently put in, which is slightly annoying when I do have a passenger get in.
You can always drive older fast cars that are more manual. Not as safe maybe, but fun.
Modern ones are mostly too powerful to do well without it.
Being on private property does not imply you can break the law. And also being on private property does not imply lower chances or killing you self.
If that were the case, construction workers would be in a really bad place since all of them work on “private property” - does that imply that they should not pay attention to health and safety?
> you can't set height of headlamps manually anymore (good for xeon which burn out everyone else's eyes even with default height settings...)
Why would you need to change the height of the headlights? Would you prefer for police to be given devices to detect if your lights were misconfigured when they stop you so that they could enforce that?
Any safety methodology would tell you it’s easier to make sure people are unable to make mistakes rather than trying to make people conscious enough not to make them. Aviation industry is highly praised for that.
> Being in total control for me includes an ability to shoot yourself in the foot.
That’s the case where shooting yourself in the foot also implies shooting the brains out of a person who was stupid enough to stand a floor below you when you were shooting yourself in the foot.
> power users use Linux
But for example hardware running on Linux with high externalities if misconfigured is generally locked up (for example 4G modems and WiFi radio equipment). It will be really expensive for you to get your hands on “hacker” equipment to play with this.
If the law says "it's forbidden to do X on public roads", you're not breaking the law if you do that thing on a private track. Details vary between locations, but seatbelts, roadworthiness, insurance, speed limits, etc generally are things that you are allowed to ignore outside of public traffic.
In your example of construction workers, other regulations (e.g. OSHA) would cover your concerns; but, for example, a truck driving up the ramp in a strip-mine would generally not be bound by traffic laws; construction sometimes uses various vehicles that simply can't ever legally participate in road traffic, they just get delivered as "cargo" or assembled/disassembled on-site.
Can you please explain to me how it is safer not to wear a seatbelt on a private property? i.e. from one side of things it's obviously legal not to wear one, but from the reality side of things it's obviously stupid.
That being said are you sure this is not only the case in the US in the first place?
I'm also reminded of the manufacturer system that got a border patrol agent killed in a firefight in Mexico a few years ago. The security company that installed the bulletproofing and other upgrades didn't notice a trivial feature. The agent was ok until he stopped the car, then the doors automatically unlocked - dead.
Convenience can kill
Cars kill one and a half million people a year. Let that sink in. That's a loaded jumbo jet going down every few hours. Cars are not supposed to be exciting, they are (or should be) supposed to be safe.
If you want exciting cars, buy a dedicated one and play with it exclusively on the track. There's already enough morons doing "exciting driving" in public roads.
> Being in total control for me includes the ability to shoot yourself in the foot.
Yeah, if it would only be yourself you'd endanger, I'd say knock yourself out. But you can harm others, so you shouldn't have that freedom.
ESC, seatbelt warnings, road condition warnings, even a simple alert when you've been driving for a long time without breaks, all those things measurable save lives. I'm sorry you feel annoyed, but I find that a very self-centered thing to say.
When I use a mapping app for driving I use one I can place on the dashboard and quickly glance at it but I don't fiddle with it.
Watching videos of those pile ups in Texas this month was just stunning. Everyone who rear ended the car in front of them was an idiot. There is no excuse for driving faster than you can react to the car in front of you coming to a full stop. None at all.
I grew up around and working with body men who repaired crashed car and the people who crashed them, custom and race car builders, and race car drivers, and some of those drivers broke world speed records, and some died racing. I also designed and built "zero effort" driving systems for C4-C5 quadriplegics so they could drive while sitting in their wheelchairs. Most of them couldn't pick up a sandwich but they could safely drive the vehicles we built for them.
Of all the crazy things people have asked me to do to their car, none of it would be more dangerous than a touchscreen for driver controls, and especially one with entertainment features. That's the ultimate stupid feature. And I have been asked to do a shit ton of crazy things to cars people drive. Evel Kenival wanted me to build a show car that "exploded the body off", and I did. And as far as know, no one was ever injured by it. If he'd asked me to build him a car that he could change the radio station with a touchscreen TV in the center console while driving down the highway I'd have told him "No. I won't do that".
What scares me is people buy and use this stuff now while barreling down the hwy at 70+mph.
Not offering this up as an excuse but rather sort of a pattern of behavior.
When I leave lots of room between me and the car in front of me, it invites crazy behavior for people cutting into that big open space. Especially with people that don't know how to merge onto a freeway.
It's sometimes hard to tell if following technically too close is actually safer for that reason.
Note that I've never rear-ended anybody, but I've certainly had some exciting panic stops.
Unless you’re stuck in traffic, easing off of gas to allow for 2-3 cars of space ahead of you isn’t even going to be noticeable in your commute time.
This is not the logical conclusion of not following too closely behind the car (any car) that happens to be in front of you.
Letting people in isn't going to increase your drive time by more than 5%. Probably closer to 2% on average.
I'll sacrifice a little extra time commuting to see my family again another day.
It's not that. It's that following a bit closer is arguably less mental work then dealing with the unpredictable encroachments, merging cars pacing you exactly versus speeding up or slowing down to merge, etc.
The problem with putting out the engraved invitation is it means never passing the big trucks. I don't like following directly behind big trucks because of visibility and fumes. But it you leave a big space, people will keep passing you on the right to get into that space, and then you may as well sit in the right lane behind the truck, because you're not going to pass it.
That is just known as tailgating, it is 100% more dangerous, and the mentality that leads to it is a minor form of road rage -- getting annoyed at other drivers and rationalizing dangerous behavior because of it. And all you're doing is, very definitively, rationalization -- tailgating is never safer. That is a form of "I am very clever and counterintuitive" rationalization or how otherwise fairly smart people wind up making dumb decisions.
If you allow enough space -- which should really be well over a semi-trailer of space -- then you allow people to "cut you off" but everyone is ultimately safer.
You get where you're going at basically exactly the same time as well. Even if you get caught at a light, you'll probably make it up at some other light where you'd never make it anyway because the backup is 2+ lights long anyway (or else you're driving somewhere at some without any traffic and it doesn't matter anyway).
It also greatly helps to just get the fuck out of the left lane entirely and get out of the mentality where you give any fucks over it. That goes equally as to if you are one of the left-lane speed police OR if you're one of the left-lane-is-for-passing police. Both of those people are actually road ragers. Stick with one of the other lanes and open up a nice wide gap in front of you and watch people zip over to the left lane and get into each other's headspaces.
And you'll get to wherever you're going within a minute or two of whatever your maps app predicts.
And often the left lane isn't any faster because half the people think they drive faster than everyone else and zip over there and crowd it up.
> Note that I've never rear-ended anybody, but I've certainly had some exciting panic stops.
I can't remember the last time I ever had an "exciting panic stop". I'm pretty certain I can guess which of us is a generally safer driver. So that should be your answer.
Speaking of a "stupid, hazardous fad," this self-congratulatory twist-of-thought is rampant and dangerous right now.
"The theory that things that improve our safety might provide a false sense of security and lead to reckless behavior is attractive—it’s contrarian and clever, and fits the “here’s something surprising we smart folks thought about” mold that appeals to, well, people who think of themselves as smart." -- Zeynep Tufekci
I've observed much the same thing. After a certain distance, you will find people taking extra risks just to find a way into that space. Then once they have managed to weave their way into a position where they can move into that space, they will frequently do so mere feet in front of you. They will not take advantage of the giant space available and simply get in front of you at all costs as fast as possible.
It's really not about somebody getting in front of you, as it is discouraging them from risking their life, yours, and multiple other people's around you, to get into the somewhat larger space available.
If you're commonly seeing that, you're likely doing something to antagonize other drivers.
Tailgating in order to prevent that is rationalizing unsafe behavior.
And I'm not going to carefully research something that should be very obvious if you have any experience driving at all. You can go out and talk to a thousand driving instructors and police who will tell you the same thing.
Anecdotes can also be right. You can't prove something wrong by screaming N=1 you can only argue its not proof. So prove my experience wrong with statistics and data (I will bet you that you cannot).
The other reply aludes to this, but it's very simple
The easiest way to cause an accident is to behave in an unexpected way
Leave a gap when no one else is? People will cut into the gap and put you and others at risk.
Brake early to increase the space you have? People not paying attention will rear end you expecting you to have braked later.
Drive slower than most traffic to give yourself more reaction time? People will pass you unsafely, and you again run the risk of being rear ended since going slower than people expect is a similar outcome to them coming across an unexpected obstacle.
That's why we see fully autonomous vehicles getting in so many not-at-fault accidents. The most experienced drivers realize there are a lot of unspoken conventions that, for better or worse, people rely on to get from place to place.
Sometimes those backfire like in that pile up, but this isn't really something you fix by being the only person doing otherwise.
You'll quickly find that you're putting yourself at the mercy of other drivers (and yes you won't be at fault, but not being at fault never saved someone in an ICU)
I consider myself an extremely safe driver, and I’ve definitely been in way more close calls when someone else was driving than when I was.
I don’t think that logic you’ve proposed really holds in the parts of the US that I’ve lived in (East coast, Midwest).
Right now I live in NYC and I can tell you leaving tons of space (outside of zipper merges) is just going to leave you slamming your brakes for overaggressive drivers all day, and if you're unlucky someone will hit you or swipe you.
That's not saying you need to tailgate people until you can smell their breath, but the ideal following distance at highway speeds is 6 car lengths at 60 mph for example.
6 car lengths between the car in front of you here would leave people treating you like you have a disabled car, rushing to fill that gap immediately in a mad rush.
It sucks, but at the same time that's how people drive sometimes. To me the safest way to drive is to not to have hard and fast rules you follow regardless of situation, but to adapt to situations quickly.
For example, if trucks start passing me on the left, I'd rather be in a "left-er" lane than the one I'm in, even if it means giving up some of my ability to make space. The action of the truck switching lanes twice in close proximity is creating more risk for me than driving at the same distance the rest of traffic is
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Also in most pile ups like the one mentioned following distance isn't even the main issue, it's things like target fixation, where you come around the bend see a giant crash and "lock up"
Space will buy you more time to get over the fixation, but I'm willing to bet most people wouldn't be able to handle that in 6 car lengths at 60 mph.
Early in my instruction on performance driving, the thing that created the hairiest situations, even on an closed course with not a single car for another few turns, was always target fixation.
It's not easy to get over, and I feel like a great antidote is to not think in terms of "I have to make space, this space is a safe zone" but "what if this is not a safe zone, what are my options" and continuously think of that
* one accident happened when I was not in the car, parked car got smashed by a driver confusing their pedals
Edit: removed part that was saying ABS is useless on ice.
Ice is precisely the type of situation ABS is built for.
It applies equally to snow, wet or dry conditions.
After front wheel drive, ABS is one of the major ways to improve winter driving. Not only in snow, but in black ice and similar conditions. The big issue is driving too fast and losing control and going into the ditch or a spin.
ABS makes it easier for you to know you have a problem and to avoid it. It may or may not bring you to a full stop in a shorter timeframe, but it will shed speed so you regain control.
After ABS, all season tires and AWD are the most important enhancements.
Agreed. But I would say the proper tires for the conditions is ideal, meaning snow tires in winter.
- ABS for steering control.
- Snow tires in winter ("snow boots for your car").
- AWD (or something adaptive) for traction control.
- Last but not least - driving smart (not speeding, adjusting for conditions, etc.)
Also, I find the electronic stability control system extremely useful for detecting black ice. A slight acceleration attempt provides instant feedback if the road is slippery, but not immediately obvious.
And slowing down. A 10% reduction in speed results in ~19% less energy for the brakes to dispel - aka a disproportionately shorter stopping distance.
So what you're saying is they should have been going slower due to inclement weather?
To make matters worse, they're quickly becoming a full replacement for driver controls rather than an addition in many cars.
I drive an older car with an old fashioned CD player rather than an infotainment system so what do I do? That's right. I put my phone in a cradle next to the steering wheel and use Spotify.
Apart from the serious issues caused by the lack of tactile feedback and the fact you have to look at the interface to use it, it's like the Spotify product development teams have gone out of their way to make the app clumsy and dangerous to use whilst driving. It is crappy and unresponsive, with way too much clutter.
I swear, Spotify have a giant engineering team and I have literally no idea what they spend their time doing: it's certainly nothing that I find useful or that improves my experience.
So in order to avoid dying or killing anybody else I plug the phone in to the aux socket on the car stereo (no Bluetooth in my car), select a playlist before I set off, and then let it do its thing. I'd switch back to CDs but they're a pain in the ass to carry in bulk. Or I listen to an audiobook.
I hate touch interfaces in cars.
I hate driving and fill the navigator/DJ role in the car. Assuming I’m driving in a 7 passenger car is dumb.
This goes for navigation too. You should review your route before you leave, and at the very least have it plugged into your nav unit before you drive off.
There's no excuse for fucking with all this stuff while you drive. If you really need to change something, just pull off for for a minute.
> This simplified Spotify dashboard appears automatically when your phone is connected using Bluetooth.
Oh. Nice. Looks better than the "main" UI. I guess I'll have to dig up a BLE module and try to make it pretend it's a car.
The other trend I've seen a bit is digital and streaming releases, with a vinyl physical release, but no CD version. I mean, fine, whatever, if that's what the market wants I suppose.
I don't tend to mind too much if FLAC is an option (usually the case if available on Bandcamp), but it's pretty annoying when the only options are MP3s or streaming, which tends to be the case with albums only available through more mainstream distribution channels such as Amazon (I'm looking at you Dark Country album series).
I did the whole binders of cds and the giant cd towers to hold my music, that was a giant pain. I jumped on mp3s as soon as I could, and then once Spotify launched in the US I joined and never looked back.
Fast forward to January, my wife learned there are some good nursery rhymes on Spotify, and she installed the app on a spare phone. Few days ago, she was busy and asked me to play the Spotify playlist she usually plays to our kid. I couldn't do it. The current UI is completely inscrutable to me. All I could do is find a few album covers that, upon tapping, led to something that perhaps was a playlist, perhaps a "radio", perhaps something else. In 5 minutes of focused attempt, I couldn't find a way to list what songs are a part of the playlist I selected.
So I ultimately played something that looked like the right playlist, it played a song I recognized, then it played an ad, then it turned out to be a "radio".
It's rare that bad UX triggers a strong emotional reaction in me these days, but that did it. What the fuck, Spotify?
I do think that it's ridiculous that Spotify hasn't improved their app in the 5 years I've been using it and is still missing really basic playback features, but when the competition is Apple Music, they're still by far the best music service that exists.
But I don't see the complaint that it's not got to be used while driving. Phones aren't supposed to be used while driving altogether.
Not everywhere... only in some jurisdictions.
Instead, it wants you to do as much as possible by voice. It almost works, but is frustrating enough I learned to just get the songs and albums i want lined up in advance and can get to in 2-3 touches. Not quite the same as tactile controls, but pretty close.
Wrong.
In the UK it is legal to use a phone in your car handsfree as long as the phone is in a cradle/bracket. Since, I think, last year the gov closed a loophole so you can't have the phone in your hand for any reason whilst driving.
Might vary in other countries/jurisdictions of course.
Way back when, I had a Zen Stone to play music in the car. It was everything I wanted; it stored music and was operated purely by touch, not even having a display. It was tiny and easy to carry (though mostly I just left it in the car).
Since that worked so well, I now have a SanDisk Clip Sport which appears to channel the same ideas. Sadly, I've never really had occasion to use it -- I don't do much driving anymore, and I've never had a car with an audio in port. (I plugged the Zen Stone into a cassette tape adapter...)
But if you really think CDs would be better than your phone except for the bulkiness (and I would agree), that's probably the way to go.
This comment is against the HN guidelines.
They were not poor drivers. Conditions rapidly and invisibly changed in above-freezing temperatures causing a sudden loss of traction. Several professional truck drivers (who likely had prior experience in winter weather) were involved. Anyone would have been helpless in that situation, which is why more than 100 vehicles were.
HAVE SOME FUCKING EMPATHY.
Several professional truck drivers (who likely had prior experience in winter weather) were involved.
Every time I see something truly stupid on the interstate, a semi truck is involved. Around the same time as Texans were having problems, I passed by a semi truck in a ditch. The two drivers who (or, presumably, one of whom) had missed the entrance to the filling station that dumps sewage into my creek, were wearing long-sleeved T-shirts while they shuffled about watching the warmly-dressed wrecker driver hook up cables and the temperature was in the low twenties. Clearly these guys weren't ready for driving in February.
Empathy is a fine, human thing. In other nations, empathy has led to helpful emergency payments for workers and small businesses who have suffered during the pandemic. In USA we don't have enough empathy for all that. (Maybe $1400, but certainly not $2000.) Still, weather has even less empathy than Congress. E"R"COT are some other Texans who should have known that already.
How is a much bigger screen, that is farther away and brighter and requires you to reach out for it not an even bigger distraction.
I find this comment baseless and insensitive to those that were killed. The Texas accident was attributed to a failure of road ice management. Bystander video clearly shows vehicles attempting to stop sliding for hundreds of yards on ice.
There's your baseline.
I keep my smartphone with shazam on when I listen to the radio. While moving I'll hear a song and just press the big round button in the middle. The simplest gesture possible on a phone. I noticed that when I do so, even if I make a conscious effort to:
- keep eyes on the road 100%
- not even tilt my head to look at the phone
- don't insist if I miss
It seems very unnatural (unless trainable .. can't say) to do those two things at once without turning into a high risk.
Are you serious? Winter driving is no joke. I sympathise with people in Texas who did not have a daily encouter with snow and ice. When I was in the midwest, I was pretty good at driving on ice, guessing where black ice was etc. I will never forget Jan 25, 2010 in Iowa when I successfully made home - it was literally like driving blindfolded on a glass sheet [1]. Driving north on I-35 at 15 mph. It was one of the proudest achievements of my life.
Hint: if you see an overpass, brake gently before you reach there. You are betting that there won't be black ice below it, and that's not a very safe bet. The steering wheel might buck once on the black ice, but you can recover if you are slow, and you go into the skid rather than against it.
[1] https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/iowa/ph...
The worst pileup in Texas occurred on one side of an arched overpass. Drivers coming from one direction couldn't see the pileup forming at the bottom until they were already coming down. At such a velocity and slope, there was no recourse. This is in spite of the long distance that remained to the start of the pileup.
For context, ice accumulates on bridges before the rest of the highway.
In Germany, a driver got in trouble for adjusting his wiper speed on the touch screen, then drove off the road from the distraction,[1] but I'm not aware of other rulings.
> "The touch screen built into the Tesla brand vehicle is an electronic device [...] which the driver of the vehicle is only permitted to operate under the conditions of this regulation without it being a matter of what purpose the driver is pursuing with the operation.
> The setting of the functions necessary for the operation of the motor vehicle via touchscreen (here: setting the wiping interval of the windshield wiper) is therefore only permitted if this is done with only a brief glance at the screen that is adapted to the road, traffic, visibility and weather conditions at the same time corresponding averted view of the traffic is connected ".
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h...
I was told decades ago that insurance companies analyze vehicle make, models, and colors for accidents, and adjust the premiums (heard red cars were often at fault and white cars were often hit because they were missed by other drivers while merging lanes, not sure if that data is still true in 2021). Surely they also include these features into their analysis
Is it possible to buy a car without one anymore?
Yes?
> Vehicles simply didn't have have navigation prior to separate GPSs like Garmin.
But we're not talking pre-Garmin here - the person I was replying to said recent Lexus didn't have them. They must have had navigation in a recent Lexus surely? So how did you input an address?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/47/14/b2/4714b2032ba746a2fce7...
https://images.cars.com/cldstatic/wp-content/uploads/img-142...
also lol at people downvoting me who don't drive a Lexus and think I'm wrong about my claim that they don't use touch screens. Maybe they had one model that kept a touch screen but the RX series didn't get one until I believe 2020. It had 4 years of not having one at least. That's by far their most popular car. I don't remember the ES or GX that I test drove having them either until recently...
Of course, I could also stare at the screen and use the knob to rotate through a keyboard, or use my voice. It's all about the options!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw6EQXiLPkY
People forget what older car and handheld units used to look like and how to input them, but then again, this was over 2 decades ago.
The thing which does bother me is it can be a rabbit-hole getting at some of the other features. If you want to enable seat heating on the back seats? It’s about 3 clicks in which is bad.
Since the car has pretty damned good drivers assist technology it’s very easy to let the computer do the driving while you poke at the screen. Which... is not good.
I love the autopilot. But it is very easy to lean on when you shouldn’t.
IIRC, you can use voice commands for that particular case. "Turn on the right rear seat heater." There's definitely other use cases that still aren't covered by voice commands, at least the last time I tried. I can't exactly recall what those cases are, though. I should check the latest user manual, in case there's an exhaustive list of all supported voice commands...
Window controls do remain physical switches, in the standard configuration (e.g., the driver can control all four windows, and each passenger window has a nearby switch as well.)
- Half-press the button on the left stalk to trigger the wipers once. Fully press it to do wipers with fluid.
- Press the voice command button (right scroll button on the steering wheel) and say "turn on wipers" or "increase/decrease wiper speed".
It's not as nice as physical controls, but it's much safer than futzing with a touch screen while driving.
Star Trek was an outstanding achievement on so many levels and for so many decades. However it did burden us with the idea that voice controlled computers would be a good idea. They're not and for many non-obvious and non-trivial reasons. But the idea is pernicious and doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.
In fact I bet there's a very similar essay like this one about voice control. Several, posted every few months for the last two decades.
/rant
Outside specific realms, they are far less useful.
Seen this skit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqAu-DDlINs
So, maybe voice control is great for local work, but as soon as we consider the rest of the world, IMHO, its profitability and usefulness nosedives.
Visual interfaces are great for people who have excellent vision and precision control. A friend of mine had a weird stroke which affected his cognitive functions and he lost the ability to read. He could see fine, speak reasonably well, had cognitive abilities... he just couldn't read. He ended up using voice controls and speech for everything on his computer.
If we let the things which affect individuals limit what interfaces we use, we'd quickly end up with nothing.
Ideally, we have 2 or more ways of doing anything to try and deal with the limits of individuals and the software/ hardware we interface with. Having both audible controls and visual controls as they do on the Tesla is ideal.
Sounds like how happy people are with the auto setting varies greatly.
I’ve owned the car for 2 weeks and it’s rained nearly every day. Turning the wipers on has been a non-issue. If they don’t automatically turn on, tap the stalk (not unlike on any other car) and they are on for 4-5 seconds and the control is up on your screen. Tap the speed you want. But auto works so well its something that has never bothered me.
Why this guy hit a tree or whatever is beyond me, I’m not a Tesla expert by any means, but it seems to me like tapping the stalk or saying “Wiper on” doesn’t require looking away from the window..
https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/tesla-model-s-redesign-look-p...
Of course, there’s always a learning period. After that, with knobs and buttons, you don’t need to look (and sometimes very little).
We have one vehicle with Apple Car Play. Once you understand the cognitive load required to operate certain functions it quickly becomes a scary thing to consider.
A second simplistic perspective: If I can’t operate it without looking, while doing 120 at Willow Springs, it’s dangerous.
Third perspective: I would not want touch screens on our Haas and Bridgeport CNC machines. It would be very dangerous. Why would I want one in a car.
Touch screen UI’s are fragile and potentially dangerous because you don’t know what you are touching, the controls don’t maintain tactile state and it is too easy to click the wrong thing.
I do understand the value for manufacturers. I have designed and worked on a range of knob-and-button and hybrid control panels, including one that went to space.
Physical control panels are difficult and expensive to design and manufacture. They also require tons of testing because it’s a hard commitment. In sharp contrast to this, you can just throw a touch screen at something and worry about the UI later. Easily a 1000:1 development cost advantage for any non-trivial project.
I hope the author of this article gets more traction by being outraged about the accessibility concerns. That might work. Good idea!
On the one side, you have improved ergonomics and increased safety for the driver. But that needs to be weighed against:
- Lower and more streamlined production costs, because if you stuff the UI into a touchscreen, all the car designers need to worry about is where to place a rectangular slab of glass; all UI design and adjustments can be made in parallel, likely by a contractor, and it has zero impact on manufacturing the car itself.
- Better marketability, as you can present touchscreens as high tech (despite buying the cheapest possible ones that can render an image and occasionally register touch events).
That other side benefits the vendor much more than user satisfaction.
I don't see how screens reduce cost since software has become an added cost, and tactile buttons have worked at low cost for decades.
Half of the software is already done (those touchscreens don't get programmed from scratch, there's usually Windows or Android in them). You can outsource making it.
But most importantly, this decouples car's UI from the rest of the design work. With physical knobs, you have to design, place and route wiring for panels, which interferes with designing and placing and routing of everything else. You have to mind the BOM and manufacturing - maybe getting the kind of button your designer wants, in a kind of panel they want, is prohibitively expensive? Making any change in controls arrangement involves altering physical elements of the car, which may need coordination with other teams designing other parts of the interior.
Touchscreen gives you a nice separation from all of this. From the POV of designing the rest of the car, all you need is to fit a glass slab somewhere, and route wiring to that single place. Then, the UI people can do whatever they want. Change shape, arrangement and color of buttons 20 times a day. They can work on it while the physical desing of the car is already finalized. Hell, they can redesign the UI even after cars have already started to roll off the line. This kind of flexibility and decoupling saves money.
I don't regard this as cost saving either. If a bug causes a crash you'll spend double time fixing it.
> With physical knobs, you have to design
Several suitable such designs already exist. We don't need to reinvent the wheel or change for the sake of change.
But changing the car setup, choosing a navigation destination or changing playlists? Excellent on touchscreens. Almost impossible to even make well any other way. So don’t do that while driving! That touchscreen has 3 uses 1) as a read only screen for the driver when driving 2) as an interactive screen for the driver when parked 3) as an interactive screen for the passenger.
What’s important is to not conflate entertainment and setup on one hand and driving on the other. Those are completely different use cases and need completely different interfaces.
If a car brand puts lights or wiper controls on the touchscreen please don’t call it “infotainment”. It’s like putting the steering wheel on the touch screen. It’s driving controls. They don’t belong there.
It should be but isn't unfortunately. Also the radio is important, in the US at least driving for hours at a time is pretty normal and you need any tool you can get to keep yourself awake, that includes things like the radio.
>Excellent on touchscreens.
IMO the only thing "Excellent" on touchscreens is scrolling and that's only multi-touch screens which many cars don't have (and you absolutely shouldn't be scrolling and driving, heck have some beer instead of doing that.)
[0]: https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/tech-zukunft/tesla-unfal...
This isn't good blanket advice - listening to the radio for example is a good way to stay awake and alert on long drives, good mapping can mean you can plan things like exits more early and safely than if you have to wait for signs, and reversing cameras can show you blind spots where dangers can lie.
The Bugatti Divo has this already.
I ended up buying a second hand lease return model from 2018 instead. I understand why they don't provide that as an optional upgrade (increased manufacturing and maintenance costs for two different systems), but I really wish they did.
But it seems suspect to me that an author (such as this one) is arguing this based on hypothesizing, rather than on actual evidence, when cars with touchscreens have been around for years now.
Surely there must be statistics showing or not showing correlations between touchscreens and accidents or deaths?
Hell, for all I know they could counterintuitively keep us more alert with constant quick context-switching.
So is there evidence they're dangerous? Are government agencies measuring it? Or are they not measuring it, which is a scandal? Are insurance companies measuring it? Are states not banning touchscreens because they're actually fine? Or are they not banning touchscreens out of incompetence or corruption?
It's easy to hypothesize. But what's the evidence say?
I think the vast majority of drivers are taking their eyes off the road to adjust media / climate controls even in cars with traditional tactile controls. It's a glance to see what the current setting is, or to make sure you hit the button you think you will, switching stations until you find the one you want, or more.
That's not to say there are no drivers that exist that actually do operate these things without glancing off the road. I just think they're not nearly as common as these HN threads make them seem. And even cars with touchscreens often have voice controls, which allow for keeping your hands on the wheel in addition to your eyes on the road. Beats tactile controls even, for safety.
We know the data's out there and we know there's a very vocal group that would pounce on any supportable conclusions. At some point, a lack of data is data. The Tesla Model 3 has been out since 2017, and despite thread after thread decrying the touchscreen, we've got no evidence of any measurable impact. Maybe it's worth burying this dead horse and moving on.
If anything, the touchscreen is usually higher than where half the physical controls in the center console usually were anyways, and therefore keeping more of the road in your peripheral vision anyways.
There's a huge difference between traditional physical controls used constantly during driving that we find and use purely by touch (e.g. blinkers) and the massive grid of badly labeled radio and climate controls in the center console that always required you to look anyways.
When I glance at my display after an audio cue and there's a one-button option to change to a faster route thanks to real time traffic data, there's an enormous difference between quickly tapping that button and having it work as expected, vs me forcefully jabbing the screen repeatedly (while staring at it) because the processor is so overwhelmed running the maps app that the display polling isn't registering my finger. You can argue that the touchscreen is a danger either way, but one of these two scenarios is much worse than the other.
(1) have ONE pushable and turnable knob, somewhere - steering wheel, dash, doesn't matter (2) 25-30 one-word voice commands: "volume"/"louder"/"hotter"/"A-C"/"radio"/"front"
Want to turn on the radio? Say "radio", push button. Louder? "louder", turn knob. Cooler? Say "A-C", push button, turn knob. "Fan", turn. Maybe some white noise feedback while turning it, to indicate whether you're in the low range or high range. Done!
Also, I have a turnable+pushable knob in my car and it's frankly terrible because it's very easy to accidentally push when you're trying to turn.
What is far easier to do is to make it so that turning a knob says via audio what action is selected. Then you press a different button to confirm.
I have 3 years of experience with a CarPlay-enabled car, and Siri mostly just works as a voice interface. (But to your point, car makers' home-grown solutions are almost comically bad.)
Exactly. Judging by how they are managing to make the worst possible decisions wrt touchscreen offerings, I'm not holding my breath for siri-like voice activation from car makers
My 1980s Toyota heating controls had separate, independent switches for defrost vents, face vents, floor vents. My friend's US car had weird features like "bi-vent" with a slider switch. You had to look at it. I recently rented a Toyota and sometime since then they'd gone away from the simple controls that feel different and have some spacial analog. You can no longer manipulate any state beyond wipers, turn signal, and radio volume without looking away from the road.
I think the author is right that using touch-screens while driving is extremely distracting, but I think the point of (many) of them is to be used when you're not driving.
Going onto the whole idea of "assault of information", I find as a driver that I would ideally never take my eyes off the road except to look at mirrors. This is why I cannot believe that some cars have absurdly complicated dashboards and dashboard/infotainment combinations (e.g. Audi). I tell people that my cars HUD is one of the best safety features ever made for this reason - because I keep my eyes on the road while getting info about my speed, gas usage, driving instructions. I don't ever look at the infotainment or dashboard when driving because of this HUD.
I'm extremely excited to see the new AR HUDs coming from the Germans and I'm increasingly frustrated that Tesla won't make HUDs and that aftermarket options for them suck. It seems that few have similar driving experiences to myself which honestly shocks me.
Interesting, I have the opposite take. I feel like the HUD in my car offers me a constant flow of information, but it's always in my field of view and is a distraction as a result of it. With information restricted to my instrument cluster, it's not in the way and easy to ignore.
Maybe it's because I live in a more urban area, but I don't need to constantly be aware of my speed because it's mostly limited by traffic and road geometry.
The only thing it is missing is a dedicated air conditioning button! I guess the car thinks it is smart enough to turn ac on if the temperature setting is low.
Went into look at the same model of car in 2020. Now two touch screens and just a few buttons, also no more voice commands. Tested a couple similar models that did have voice, but it feels like it has barely progressed, especially when compared to say Siri.
We did't need all these dual touchscreens and such. We just needed the voice commands to get better.
One insight I did gather was that my 2012's buttons were apparently costly to the manufacturer since they had to worry about the feel of the buttons, their layout had to be worked out, you have to make sure they hold up, it's moving pieces you need to quality control in your build, and of course if you ever want to redesign this cabin you have to do it all again for those faceplates. So touchscreens are cheaper. Which is probably why even though a lot of manufacturers probably know they could offer a better overall experience if they put more effort into the buttons, they go with the touch screen.
BMW does it right. Their orange red is perfect for the dark.
It would be nice if the systems detected ambient light automatically and went into a redshift mode when it is dark.
The entire purpose of designing pilot/driver interface is to reduce pilot/driver workload and improve focus
Touchscreens do the exact opposite in the UI of any vehicle, and are inherently dangerous
1) They provide zero haptic feedback. There is no way for the driver to know without focusing their eyes on the screen if they have even touched the intended control. Then there is no way for them to tell if they have activated it.
Contrast with almost any kind of mechanical switch or knob - after using it just a few times, you can reach for it, find it and activate it, without even glancing and barely thinking, and know that you succeeded.
2) any activity REQUIRES that you take your eyes off the road and mirrors for an extended period of time, and focus on a text and menu system.
Contrast this with a properly setup analog gauge cluster where a quick glance will show all is good or highlight any off condition. The dials are set so the normal condition puts the needle straight-up, so anything off (e.g., over/under temp, voltage, etc.) immediately shows up. A good digital cluster has either good mimicry of analog gauges or large clear numbers clearly indicating the correct status at a glance.
I could plausibly see an interface with hardware switches and controls that activated controls on a map, as at least that can be learned to use by feel. The knobs used by BMW and Mazda to control their screens are better than touch screens, but not yet there.
And infotainment on top of that? Absolutely insane
I literally have zero insight into what these "designers" are thinking, if they are. Based on some replacement prices I've seen, it does not seem that touchscreens are cheaper than switches and knobs. Customers think it is pretty or cool? IDK
Just because you can, does not mean you should. Yet they do.
I checked recently and that option's gone, which made me a little sad as I wrestled with having to restart CarPlay in our other vehicle to get it to talk to my iPhone.
The touch firmware or higher level app software or maybe a touch library would have work a little differently to allow you to be touching the screen continuously as you feel around, and somehow register an intentional press some other way like pressure sensitivity, instead of just reacting instantly when you first touch anywhere, but this should be a solvable problem. It could provide haptic click feedback to presses too.
There must be all kinds of ways to make the screen tactile like the old knobs and switches.
And the point of bothering to make a touch screen you don't have to look at would be you still get software-defined-controls just like a regular visual app.
You could make a set of hardware controls that phone apps could use as inputs, but you'd never think of everything that random apps might want. Maybe the right idea is both, a screen and some common hardware controls that the apps can use as well as the screen. Not just a set of undifferentiated border buttons that all feel the same and you have to read the screen to identify the buttons, but push-clickable rotating knobs, maybe with detents and end-stops. Play pause ff rw pickup/hangup controls. Mode selector: physical answer to a home screen, select between entertainment, nav, hvac... though I think main media volume and power, and hvac should have dedicated controls that don't change. You should always be able to shut the thing up in one step without navigating a menu, even a hardware mode selector.
But now I've wandered into the weeds of details.
The main point is, probably there is no getting rid of screens even if it would be better. And probably there is a way to make the screens ok instead of just wishing everyone would agree not to like them, by just making them tactile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-function_display
I can't find any nicely linkable images, but you can search up "fighter jet mfd" for some examples.
The only exception is Tesla. Everyone I know who has actually tried driving one immediately changes their opinion about the touchscreen, because in the Tesla is actually works and doesn't feel like it was designed in 1995.
Other car makers need to get their shit together on software; stop outsourcing, and try actually giving a damn about your product for a change.
Tactile buttons are important and give you the ability to operate them blind. This is not yet possible with touch screens.
Interface as a secondary concern to any other business function is historically a budget race-to-the-bottom.
Just let Apple and Google design and implement everything with CarPlay/Android Automotive.
I will give it a pass.
Trying to do anything touch related is a nightmare while driving, so it's still tactile, and CarPlay itself is pretty well optimized for viewing things at a glance and not overwhelming you with things to decipher.
I legitimately do not think that that touch screens and infotainment like this should be in cars, but I think the closer we get to self-driving cars, the more you're going to see this stuff pushed as it fits that model.
https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...
Plus, there's some argument to be made about regulations hurting innovation. I'm not usually the type of person to make those arguments, but this seems like one of those cases where the ability to actually make a good, dynamic interface might never happen.
The first cars didn't all agree on even the most basic controls like steering, braking, accellerating. Ony after some time did the currently universal framework establish.
The same thing could happen to car computer interfaces. Some sort of paradigm evolves for some common elements that all car consoles have, and that framework of recognizable bits is good enough.
The cars would all still be different as they all are now. I can easily switch from my manual transmission 4wd 4runner to my gf's prius, and I only joke about being baffled by the pushbutton ignition, missing clutch pedal, and the ridiculous shift lever on the dash for comic effect.
The important paradigms of operating different vehicles are either the same or are recognizable by some same cues, even though I have two shifting levers and 3 pedals and they all do direct physical things, and she only has 2 pedals and 1 lever and they're all just fancy light switches, and some cars have cruise control and backup cameras and rear wipers and other cars don't even have those things in any form let along a different form.
On the other hand, she can't drive my 4runner at all. So, maybe that's a point against my own argument. That there are already differences even in the basic controls that make it difficult or impossible for someone used to one vehicle to operate some others, long before any car computers came along, and so, who cares if the car computers are standardized or not?
I hate it.
Consider also being done with not avoiding double negatives. If you don't fail to see what I mean.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...
What does this have to do with the bits in the car?
The infotainment console wasn't used for that and couldn't be unless it was modified. That stuff only works in park.
Also I can control them from the wheel. IMO they should be able to be controlled by the wheel in all vehicles, though I know that is not currently the case.
I think serious flaw in these studies is that B case is users without distracting displays in the cars. But B case is people using their phone to pick the next podcast or change the album. To me google car is less dangerous because i am not using my phone to look for traffic patterns, change music ect.
Besides this isn't an either/or problem, we should aim to remove all forms of distraction, not go for the least bad choice. Driving safely takes precedence over avoiding traffic or enjoying music.
https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...
I’m not saying it’s perfect or even desirable, but it is at least there.
Also, I think a contributing factor to touch screen problems are the absolutely terrible GUIs the auto manufacturers come up with, and their insistence on using the cheapest (slowest) CPU they can find just to save $2 on the build. If these screens were much faster to respond, you wouldn’t have to be distracted for multiple seconds just waiting for the command to have an effect.
Edit: Example of research..
https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...
I don't want your down votes believe me I don't like them either, but the truth is touchscreens are cheaper than having a million buttons that break all the time, you can push a software update to fix bugs or heck even upgrade the entire UI if you wanted to. If you're a car manufacture why would you ever look back?