Hacker News Reader

Comment by KeytarHero | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that while more and more jurisdictions are banning cell phone use while driving, vehicle makers are increasingly resorting to touch screens for things like stereo and climate control. When using a smartphone while driving is illegal, how are in-vehicle touch screen controls meant to be operated by the driver not banned?

As much as I love Tesla and what they are trying to do to the car industry, they are the worst offenders in this. Hopefully by the time I can afford one, there will be legislation making entirely touch-screen dashes illegal and they'll have the usual 3 dials for climate control, that you can operate without having to take your eyes off the road.

View on HN

Agreed. I got infotainment/navigation touch screen in my Subaru. It is really hard to use without looking at the screen. Even after 2 months of driving, I haven't been able to develop muscle memories like I have for other controls on the car.

Luckily, infotainment screen doesn't really host anything critical. My uses include navigation and phone. Both of those functions should be used while parked anyways. I just cannot imagine changing a/c settings only at stop light.

All the controls on the Tesla are 1.5" or larger which makes them easy to use out of your FoV while keeping your eyes on the road. Cellphones are a much smaller surface area and require a lot more focus.

How would you like those three dials to control the rest of the car systems? And, isn't this what BMW tried to do ages back with that single 'iButton' control that everyone hated?

Uhh, the same way almost every non-luxury car made between 1960 and 2010 did it? A dial each for temperature, fan speed, and where the air is blowing. Plus a button for air conditioning and/or recirculate. No touch screens, no menus.

People have been using cars without touch screens for 50+ years. The UX is a pretty much a solved problem by this point. Yet now car manufacturers seem to want to mess with something that worked great, just so their cars seem cutting-edge.

You do understand that there is more than just climate control that can be adjusted in a vehicle these days? There's navigation and direction finding, traffic alerts, radar proximity warnings from other traffic, radio and entertainment systems, telephony functions, systems monitoring and alerting for various components, current engine and transmission ststus, location data, environmental data...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com