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Comment by bhpm | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn’t it be safer to require all cars to have voice controls? Then the driver doesn’t have to move their hand off the wheel at all.

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I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls.

He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.

I’ve yet to find any car where the voice control works speedily and reliably, unless using Siri via CarPlay.

(Siri is actually pretty great at accurately recognising words, it’s just not always so good at doing something useful with them…)

Even Tesla’s is really bad: “Turn off the wipers” frequently gets interpreted as “turn off the wife please” or other similar nonsense.

To be fair, many phrases that I utter (in the car or otherwise) are all also interpreted that same way.

Tell a Tesla to "go home" sometime, and it will respond what's obviously the best interpretation of your wish, namely playing Boney M's minor 1979 hit "Gotta Go Home" on Spotify. Fortunately, "stop wipers", "stop navigation" or in fact any kind of stop at all will instantly pause the disco assault.

Haven't used it extensively but BMW and Mercedes works reasonably well in German.

And that's presumably in english, which is likely the language which had the most money poured into having good voice to text and vice versa

Not all drivers can speak. Not all drivers speak in a way a voice control can reliably understand them. Not all drivers are in environments where voice commands can be easily understood, like loud music. If you are driving a car you likely have the ability to push a button.

Not all drivers can use their legs, they have cars specially fitted for them.

Yes, and so far as I know there is no physical control system to fit into these touchscreen cars.

Market opportunity?

And even when the driver can speak, use the language, be understood and the voice controls are reliable, sometimes they don't actually want to disturb the passengers sleeping in the car just to crack the sodding window open a bit!

I'm not entirely sure you've ever used voice controls.

I've never had experience with any car voice controls which didn't make me want to drive my car into a divider just to end the pain. Voice controls are so frustrating to use that I'm sure they are more distracting to use than even a touchscreen. I might be able to keep my eyes on the road easier with voice controls, but, my brain is going to be quickly annoyed and focused on trying to suss out why the voice control system is not understanding me, or am I using the wrong phrase, or do I need to put the windows up (impossible for me 6+ months of the year) so the car can hear me better?

It's like trying to pair bluetooth with a non-carplay (or non-android auto -- which I haven't used but heard good things about) with virtually all OEM and many aftermarket receivers. A uniquely frustrating experience which makes me wonder if QA departments at automakers actually exist.

“Hey car, honk the horn”

“Hey car, signal left”

“Hey car, reverse”

You’re kidding, right? Even if this worked far better than Siri, it’s too slow.

HEYCARSTOP STOP STOPHEY CAR STOP STOP HEYCAR STOP

*bong* i don't have that answer

None of those controls are commonly located on a touch screen, which is the topic of the article.

> But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features like the European Union's eCall feature.

Those are exactly what is at issue.

This also needs to deal with multiple languages and regional accents for Europe.

If I, an American, rent a car in Germany, do I need to speak German in order to engage the windshield wipers? For that matter, navigating the on screen controls may also be problematic.

Here's a picture of a German car - https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dashboard-luxury-ge...

Do you know which button to push to get the hazard lights on?

It's remarkably similar to my Honda. https://www.sheehyhonda.com/honda-dashboard-light-meanings/ and my parents' Chrysler https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/chrysler/300/2019/photos...

I’m not sure Tesla ever launched this abomination, but:

https://www.theverge.com/22348668/tesla-prnd-drive-mode-park...

Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space.

I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.

Wasting what space? Sure, the gear selectors on a lot of cars are in the center console, and maybe I’d rather store something there. But I have never, in my entire history of driving cars, wanted to put anything right behind the steering wheel — first, it’s really awkward to get anything else there and second, any dangly thing there could tangle with the wheel, thus killing me.

So no, please keep the critical driving controls in fixed locations that are easy to access without looking away from the road or looking away. IMO that includes the horn, the turn signals, the wiper control, cruise control settings, and turn signals. And things I might want to adjust in a moderate hurry while driving should have fixed, tactile locations; climate control and sound volume are in this category.

My first car nailed all of this. Recent cars, not so much.

IMO, voice controls are good additional control modality, but not a good primary one, since the discoverability is zero. (And also they're usually just...not very good.)

Causing drivers to get road rage because they can't figure out the correct phrasing for voice controls probably also isn't a good idea.

Google Assistant still regularly misinterprets what I say <.<

Not to mention most voice assistants are fucking awful slow in language. It's like they pick a rural dweller as their speech model instead of a city slicker.

Just give me a button instead, it'll be quicker and less distracting.

Being able to honk the horn or turn the windshield wipers on from the back seat would certainly be an interesting feature, especially for people with kids.

"Alexa, honk at this asshole"

"Ok, calling Hank Armstrong"

On all cars I've driven voice control is not always on, you need to trigger it by pressing a button first.

Pretty impossible to have a conversation with a passenger then.

"Break"

"BREAK!"

"BREAAK!!!!"

"OH GOD PLEASE BRAKE!"

crunch

Problems can occur if it the voice system brakes (pun intended). ;)

Instructions followed, car is now broken.

I've heard some of the newer cars have pretty good voice controls, especially on the more expensive models. However, the companies tend to put these behind a subscription wall, which I hate. I don't want my car to be always connected to the cloud. I'll do my navigation via my phone, and nothing else requires connectivity (except perhaps if I had an EV and wanted to schedule charging stops).

I hope you don't have any speech impediments, accents, and english is your first language.

Your reflexes are faster than you can speak. At least I hope they are.

Some reactions are instinctive and don’t require thought.

Imagine mid-sipping a drink and something falls out of a truck… garble garble garble —-crash.

Voice controls in an emergency wouldn’t work unless you require like 500 feet (maybe more) car to car separation. And then you have people with temporary voice conditions (losing voice) and permanent voice conditions (mute/dumb)

Like voice control is a reliable method of communication lol. Have an accent? Sorry can’t use your car. Mute? Cough? Lost your voice at a concert? Have the windows down? Come on…

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