Hacker News Reader

Comment by mechinn | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if any research has been done about safety around touch controls? It's so much easier to reach over and hit a physical button or rotate a physical dial that you know is in the same spot every time without having to look at it compared to a touch interface that will by adjust depending on the app running. Like I appreciate the power that something like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto bring to the infotainment system but every time I can't control something from the physical buttons on the wheel I know I'm not going to be as focused on the road as I should be reaching over and hoping that I am correctly aiming at what I'm trying to touch and that's already after probably quickly looking away from the road to find where to aim in the first place

View on HN

I completely agree. Years ago when smart phones were just emerging, people made the same complaints about them too; saying you cannot walk and text at the same time like you could with the old feature phones with physical keyboards. I believe public opinion was so vocal about this draw back that were some research projects done using gel screens that could offer a tactile responses dynamically. But then all that seamed to fizzle out and everyone stopped moaning about tactile feedback on touchscreen phones.

Fast forward a few years and the Raspberry Pi was released. My first RPi project was to built a new in car entertainment system. I used Go v1.0 (at that time even methods weren’t supported) and built a media player with text to speech. The entertainment system had 6 buttons:

1. Previous artist 2. Previous album 3. Previous song / replay song 4. Skip song 5. Skip album 6. Skip artist

The media centre would then use text to speech to read the artist, album and song details out over the speakers before playing the tracks.

This system was designed so I never needed to take my eyes off the road and it worked amazingly.

Unfortunately I’m not an electrical engineer so the device was ugly and started to fall apart quite quickly. I think it only lasted < 1 year. But I learned a lot from that experiment: there is a lot of missed opportunities for innovation in the car entertainment domain.

> Years ago when smart phones were just emerging, people made the same complaints about them too; saying you cannot walk and text at the same time

I'm still annoyed by this when texting while driving and having to look at the screen.

Downvote all you like, your moral judgement is not gonna change what I do.

I loved the T9 keyboard in my right hand and steering wheel in the left. I'm good at steering with my left knee (unless we're talking slow speeds and bendy road) so taking my hands off is not an issue - the issue is taking my eyes off the road, constantly switching between road/phone/road/phone, which is annoying as fuck.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com