Hacker News Reader

Comment by itronitron | Hacker News Reader

I rented a car recently with a touch screen that would display that safety dialog and also not allow a destination to be entered into the sat nav without first placing the vehicle in park. Considering that this model of vehicle is often marketed to families it seems odd that they wouldn't consider the possibility that a passenger could enter the destination without distracting the driver. If touchscreens are that big of a liability (and I believe that they are since the touchscreen doesn't provide any tactile affordance for the driver to distinguish controls) then they shouldn't be in the car in the first place.

View on HN

I think, car manufacturers are installing them to reduce manufacturing costs in the long run, because instead of building plastic parts, you install a module and get infinitely more ways to exploit the customers in various ways you see fit.

Also, it looks good on paper, and allows some useful controls while is backwards in many ways.

I'd rather have physical buttons which I can operate blindly rather than a touchscreen though. They're really dangerous when it replaces the physical buttons.

"... not allow a destination to be entered into the sat nav without first placing the vehicle in park ..."

I am under the impression that this limitation is tied to the occupancy sensor in the passenger seat (which you undoubtedly have, or the seat-belt chime would sound incessantly ...).

I believe if you had a passenger those controls would be allowed while driving - did you have a chance to test that ?

"Passenger" could just be a backpack full of stuff. Or a water bottle. One of those large water boxes with the tap on the front should do it as well.

Yes, when my wife or I were in the front passenger seat we would still need to stop the car in order to set a destination. It's also possible that the occupancy sensor was disabled as the rental car wasn't exactly in pristine condition.

Yeah, the touchscreen is great for the navigator. It needs to be placed where the driver cannot even see it: the driver shouldn't even be able to help the navigator as just looking at the screen takes the drivers off the road for too long..

If you are driving solo I'm fine with a while in park mode that you can see a touch screen, but I can't think of a good way to implement it.

Head-Up Displays solve this by projecting the essential information on the windshield. So you don't have to move your eyes away from the road at all - and even when you're looking at the HUD data, you still have a view of the road, unlike those displays on the central column where the best you have is some peripheral vision.

Paired with a voice assistant, it could work nicely for the navigation. You say "navigate to $address", and HUD would show you the essential information for your next turn (rough distance, street or exit name, turn lanes).

The problem isn't where the eyes are looking though, it is where the brain is focusing. HUD still distracts the brains focus.

HUD is useful for essential information. I agree if it is only about turn left in X. However my radio (infotainment) has a lot of things a driver shouldn't have access to. Ever try to find the right genre of music for the trip?

I'm a driver and I want to be able to pick genres.

All else being equal, if the driver of car X can pick genres and the driver of car Y can't, I'm buying car X.

I've got my phone in the cradle and I can look at it whenever I want, even when navigating, and it has no stupid popups or park brake sensor.

I don't need stupid nanny-screens that I have to touch to tell me what to do, and I don't need the screens that I've paid for in my car put in a place where I can't see or use them if I want because I can't be trusted.

I'm an adult and I'm very aware that when I'm driving I should be paying attention to driving and not the screen.

I'm quite capable of deciding when I will look and when I won't look, and I won't have that decision taken away from me by some focus group full of brain-dead idiots or marketing people who derive some kind of sick pleasure from fumbling with touch screens with no tactile feedback.

Feel free to go ahead and design that crap because it will make my next car buying decision really simple.

If you put that kind of crap in a car and I can't turn it off, then I'm not buying that car.

To make it clear:

Any kind of touch screen that I have to press every time I drive to use the screen I paid for = no buy.

If the AC is controlled by a touch screen = no buy.

If volume can be controlled by a touch screen only = no buy.

While I'm at it, let's add this: any kind of tracking that I can't disable = no buy. I don't care about your app.

If I'm spending my multiple tens of thousands of dollars on your car, I'm the owner. Not your moron silicon valley focus group of Elon Musk idolizers and touch screen fetishists.

If nobody wants my money, I'll be very happy driving whatever older car I can buy that has none of this crap forever - and I probably can do that forever because it is likely much more repairable than your garbage touch screens built by the lowest bidder.

Your move, manufacturers.

Pushing the puck/ok button didn’t dismiss it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com