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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence.

[0] This is the complaint I have with my wife's Honda Civic. If I want to do something as simple as turn on the fan but turn off the AC, it means navigating into a sub menu and correctly hitting one of several choices on a touch screen.

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that's the issue with industries like this.. no one asked for touchscreen controls, but they're cheaper and make the manufacturers more money. no one asked for their private conversations to be recorded and sold, but that juicy data is profitable.

it's not like people can stop buying cars until the situation improves. joe q public can't be expected to start a grassroots movement and go lobby, he needs to get to work to feed his four kids, which means he's buying whichever car is available. it's also impossible to vote with your wallet when every [0] auto company places profit above safety/functionality.

[0] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article...

If business is unable to self-regulate, it is the job of government to step in and force them to correct.

Unfortunately for us, government has largely failed in its official capacities and responsibilities, nearly all of them, and so things will continue breaking until loss of life and limb becomes common, where no one can sit on the sidelines any more if they want to survive.

This is what happens when corrupt people are allowed to warp existing systems for personal gain, and cannot be removed except in egregious violations of law.

If people did not buy cars with touch screens when they started to get introduced, they would be gone by now. But they seem to be accepted by new car buyers which is the market that matters to manufacturers.

> no one asked for touchscreen controls

When they first came out in cars, most people wanted one. Even I did. Then I got one and learned how terrible it is.

I remember test driving a Buick Reatta in the late 80's. At the time, I thought it was the first car to get a touch screen interface, but it turns out that the Buick Riviera had one a year earlier. It was an interesting gimmick, but not practical. I did not buy the car.

I had learned about the GM touch screen interface because I worked for Hughes at the time, and after GM's purchase of Hughes in 1985, they recruited a bunch of engineers from Hughes to automate and improve the vehicle designs and production lines. I had been offered a TDY position in Flint, MI, but who would want to leave Southern California for a job in that place? Just one of many offers that I never regretted turning down.

No one asked replacing horses, but…

Might be fine for non-critical entertainment systems which nowadays also take voice control, but never critical vehicle functions. Things like hazard lights and HVAC should be illegal to be on touch screens.

> Might be fine for non-critical entertainment systems which nowadays also take voice control

As someone who uses a lot of greasy sunscreen lotion during long sunny-day drives: no, they still aren't. I don't want to talk to my car in the first place, and it probably couldn't hear me anyway with the music loud and the windows down.

Owner of a 2017 Peugeot 208 with Apple CarPlay support here. Siri can discriminate voices against loud music and outside noise just fine.

I drive a convertible with the top almost always down, and have an unusually deep voice, and also hate talking to phones/cars. With my voice, I could never get Alexa or similar things to work at all- until the last few months when Apple's Siri started working perfectly at recognizing everything I say.

I don't love it, but I have to begrudgingly emit it works, and is safer to use. It works even with the top down on the freeway, and music is auto paused while it listens. I have it on a button so I have to press it first for it to listen, and basically only use it for selecting navigation destinations and music.

Add "turning on the windshield wipers" and "indicating with your blinker" to that list. Looking at you Tesla with your death-trap touch screen controls.

You have to use a touch screen for those on a Tesla? If true that is asinine, those cars aren't safe to drive.

Yes, for wipers you need to make window swiping gesture on the screen and for wipers you tap 3 times on either side of screen.

On my 25 year old Porsche that cost less than a FSD software subscription I can do those things with the tips of my fingers while pulling 1G in a turn with my eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.

Walking is free and you don’t have to do any of these things.

100% this. The good news is that we're in the majority. The bad news is hardly anything seems to be done about it. Maybe we should push back more? I'd happily "vote with my wallet" but it seems all the major auto manufacturers are going this route. Sad.

My car has a little sub menu area on the dash board behind the steering wheel with panels for media, phone, navigation and something else. These can be navigated with the steering wheel buttons.

The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Sometimes I'll try to use the voice thing but it rarely works even when I do guess a valid command phrase. At least if I have to drive about with a bug in the car, I should get use out of it!

> The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down.

Other than Tesla, which car manufacturer is stupid enough to put climate control behind a touchscreen?

Which car manufacturers aren't?

Ford: https://youtube.com/shorts/Q512IeZ3DEA

VW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rALQoMiZhag

Volvo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryIfmyiiETQ

BMW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=73zGfLmlx0I

Mercedes: https://youtube.com/shorts/PIO5n1b_Z0Y

The three knobs for air temp, air force and outlet were already pretty much perfect for the job.

We shouldn't have 89-year-old drivers in cars, either. Full stop.

In my city we've had three pedestrian fatalities in less than a year and all the drivers were aged 79 or older.

100% agree.

At least make them pass a road test. Make sure they can operate the car safely at the posted speed limit. Give them a vision test, maybe limit them to daytime driving. Some 90 year olds are fine to drive, but I agree many are not. And driving around 10-20 mph under the limit is a hazard in itself.

> At least make them pass a road test. Make sure they can operate the car safely at the posted speed limit.

... and perform 3 controls-based actions (ex: climate adjustment, audio).

The testee commonly provides their own car for OTR tests. If they drive a model with physical controls, it could better for everyone.

Mandatory regular (every 5-10 years) driving tests seem like a no-brainer regardless of age. Also seems like the driving tests should be more stringent.

The fact that people who passed the test 40+ years ago barely know the laws that have been introduced since is reason enough for regular retesting.

Yes a million times to this! It is crazy that you never have to retake your drivers license.

Oh no, much more often. People above 70 can deteriorate really, really quickly. I’d say yearly tests which include doctors checkups and actually driving with them.

Anyone can deteriorate quickly. My sister (mid-40s) was in a hospital for 3.5 weeks before Christmas due to an infection that rapidly progressed into sepsis. Even now 2 months later she still needs to use a cane to walk around and is out of breath climbing a single flight of stairs. Bodies are remarkably fragile. From initial onset of symptoms to septic shock was less than 24 hours.

Exactly. Lots of instable mental health conditions that make driving unsafe(mood disorders, schizophrenia, etc) can onset in people's 20s with almost no warning, as well.

A decent traumatic brain injury can happen at any time and most people never go to the doctor for those, too.

Anyone in principle can, but the elderly actually do.

There is a reason they don’t work anymore, and that they get frequent doctor’s checkups.

If you think the population from age 25-55 deteriorates as quickly as the population over 70 I don’t know what to tell you.

It is more a question of frequency. That is, the elderly deteriorate quickly more frequently than younger folks do. Younger folks can still deteriorate quickly under the right circumstances, but at a population level, that is a much lower frequency given that the average younger adult has more resilient immune system and greater muscle mass than someone in their later years.

Heck, I'm in reasonably good health, but if I get hit by a car crossing the road this evening, I could deteriorate quickly overnight due to injuries and be dead tomorrow. It's just less likely for me than it is for an elderly person that has poor vision and moves slowly while crossing the road as I am more likely to be able to spot a hazard and move out of the way.

The UK at least has a driving testing system with months-long backlogs. They're very slowly getting it under control, but they are doing so by providing around 150k tests per month.

There are something like 30 million license holders. Retesting just half of them every 10 years (and rescinding the licences if the rest) would require about doubling the testing throughput. And it would be political suicide - the so-called War on Motorists is a powerful media weapon. It's an obvious idea that would be very helpful, but I can't see it happening. Unless it's an online test affair, which at least could educate on some of the rule changes. I have confidence they could handily bungle that implementation, however.

At the very least, however, I think they should run some anti-lane hogging adverts and enforce that law more, and also make it a duty of heavy vehicles to slow down slightly to permit overtakes, since that's probably cheaper than the billions and billions they're evidently willing to spend on adding hundreds of miles of extra lanes to deal with the lower capacity of roads caused by bad driving.

We could ease into more driver testing by requiring retesting after certain types of incidents - vehicle goes off roadway for no apparent reason, collision in a manner suggesting impairment - but that might rely too much on the discretion of a responding law enforcement officer. Perhaps better to let insurance companies do a carrot/stick approach: discounts for periodic driver retraining/testings, required retesting after an older driver is at-fault in a claim. Disclaimer: am older driver by TFA standards.

Previously it was a political 3rd rail to even suggest a maximum driving age. "You can't take my freedom to travel!!".

But now, with Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options, it seems much more reasonable to implement such a thing. Why do we have to wait for someone to cause an accident before we take their license?

We don't even. Again in my city an octogenarian ran over two pedestrians in separate incidents a week apart, and nobody even suggested taking away their car.

> Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options

You mean taxis?

You are greatly understating the value and improvement that these services brought. Especially around accessibility.

In the city I grew up in taking a taxi was basically not an option. You can now typically get a ride from Uber or Lyft within 10 minutes.

In the city I moved to for college there were plenty of Taxis but could take 30+ minutes for one to show up, or maybe it would never show up and you’d have to call another company and hope they would eventually send someone to you.

These are anecdotes, but the massive increase in for-hire rides after these companies were introduced does show that they did improve the experience and made for-hire rides more accessible and appealing.

> But now, with Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options, it seems much more reasonable to implement such a thing.

Most octagenarians cannot afford to use these on a daily basis.

Heck, most of the country cannot afford to use these on a daily basis.

They shouldn't have to. They had their entire adult lives to build a society where you don't need a car, a society welcoming and useful to the old, the young, the disabled, and the poor. And they blew it!

> They had their entire adult lives to build a society where you don't need a car, a society welcoming and useful to the old, the young, the disabled, and the poor. And they blew it!

And ... you won't?

Correct.

A lot of cities are subsidizing ride share for the elderly, because it's still cheaper than running shuttles for the elderly, which is what they used to do.

Depends on the 89 year old. Some are as sharp as a tack, while others don't have a clue where they are let alone what they are currently doing. If you don't understand that, you clearly need to widen the range of people you interact with beyond your day to day experiences thus far in life.

I am in the middle of watching my own parents age, and it is eye opening. We have checks and balances in various systems exactly because there is a wide range of capabilities in the elderly. Where I live it is mandatory for drivers to be tested regularly once they hit 80, or at even earlier ages in the event of an accident or other precipitating event. This can include recommendation by doctors, social workers or even police. This works without needlessly discriminating against individuals.

The only counterpoint to this - when it comes to interacting with managing audio and navigation, the alternatives to a touchscreen are probably more dangerous. Maybe the worst offender was Lexus who offered a mouse pointer in lieu of touchscreen until quite recently.

But I agree that there should be a federally mandated set of commonly-used buttons while driving that have to be tactile - windows, HVAC, audio, etc.

I’ve not used the mouse pointer but the previous models had a rotary encoder which is easier to work with. What isn’t mentioned is that there are hardware controls on the steering wheel for volume, next previous etc so you don’t need to interact with things very much

Hardware controls are not useful if you listen to lots of audiobooks/podcasts/etc.

> Hardware controls are not useful if you listen to lots of audiobooks/podcasts/etc.

Presently, that's what I exclusively listen to. I get in my car and the narration auto-starts where it left off. I occasionally adjust the physical volume knob. I tweak the library at home every couple of months.

I guess the missing context here is how long the podcasts/playlist is vs how long your journey will take. I can see it being an issue if they are short, in a mixed order and you need to skip ahead etc.

I've a habit of stopping every two hours on longer journeys for a rest so that's when I would organise content for the next leg of the trip.

>when it comes to interacting with managing audio and navigation

Depends what you mean by managing audio - 90% of my audio interaction is adjusting volume and pressing the next/previous buttons. All easily done on my steering wheel buttons, though there are buttons near the radio to do the same thing (though they are capacitive buttons that are barely better than a touchscreen). I recently discovered that the "mute" button on the steering wheel is actually a "pause" button which is perfect since I rarely want to actually mute audio, but just pause it.

We do lots of long roadtrips with the kids. So switching between child specific playlists or audiobooks is something we have to do.

Android Auto was honestly a game changer. Good voice controls, minimum distractions, and if you do have to interact with it it's fairly minimal.

Fucking around with your stereo while driving has never been safe.

> Fraking around with your stereo while driving has never been safe.

I offer it depends on the stereo. My radio adjusts are rarely more than a single button push and/or a knob tweak. Eyes aren't required.

Lock the screen while the car is not in "Park".

Too late. Tesla has set the example of removing the turn signal and drive selector stalks. I believe there is a law that the emergency flashers need a physical control, which is why teslas have a dedicated button.

I think we smoothly transitioned from touchscreens in cars being a luxury signifier, to them being both pretty cheap and STILL kind of a luxury signifier, though to a smaller extent nowadays.

Some really nice haptics could mitigate this somewhat, but by the time you succeed at that where others have failed, why not just give me a knob.

I wonder if Gen Alpha will prefer pure touchscreen controls in cars.

The youngest in gen alpha are just being born, there's a real chance they may not learn to drive at all because self driving is ubiquitous.

> there's a real chance they may not learn to drive at all because self driving is ubiquitous.

I don't see unattended self-driving becoming the norm during the next 20 years. I'm skeptical it'll happen in 50 years.

There are an uncountable number of non-foreseeable driving events and road conditions. I believe we'd have to rethink/redesign roads to adjust to limitations of FSD.

Past that: A top reason for late teens not driving now is parents can't afford car insurance rates that approach their housing costs.

Preference is irrelevant. It's demonstrably dangerous. Maybe Gen Alpha will also prefer cars without functioning headlights, but those are thankfully banned.

100% agree

While I much prefer physical buttons, I do think gestures could be made to work.

This would require a level of polish and sophistication that I have no reason to suspect car manufacturers would ever by capable of. I can only imagine making some sort of awkward swiping gesture while frequently glancing at the screen to verify that it worked.

Let’s start by making gestures preferable to buttons while sitting on a couch to control the TV channel okay buddy

I'm forced to quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy:

"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."

As a side note, the F-35 has a touchscreen interface that has been described as difficult to use when the jet is in motion.

I wonder if the touchscreen was a factor in recent crashes? They never say more than "in-flight malfunction."

Tactile feedback is still a big issue with gestures. With a physical button you can feel that you have hit the button, can easily find it by touch if you missed it, and you can feel that you successfully actuated it. All of those are difficult on touch surfaces. Not insurmountable, but you have to put a lot of effort into things you get for free with physical interfaces

That's true, especially with haptic feedback being unviable in a car.

I believe BMW just got rid of gesture controls, which they've had for a long time in the past month.

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