Apple CarPlay, Android Auto distract drivers more than pot, alcohol, says study

https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-campaigns/infotainment#

by cglong • 6 years ago

344 240 6 years ago

lacker• 6 years ago

This study is pretty garbage. They tested 20 people, and they didn’t even pick 20 people who used CarPlay. They picked 20 random people who didn’t use CarPlay, briefly taught them how to use CarPlay, and then found that those people couldn’t use it well. Imagine testing how distracting texting was for someone who had never used an iPhone before the test.

acwan93• 6 years ago

Totally agree. I’ve driven nothing but CarPlay cars over the last several years (I used to rent a lot of cars), and when I drive a non-CarPlay enabled car now I’m super distracted.

catalogia2• 6 years ago

How long do you think it might take for a "carplay-novice" to become sufficiently accustomed to the tech that they're not as dangerous as a drunk driver? A few days? Weeks? Even if it's only a few hours, is a few hours of drunk-equivalence justifiable?

Imagine testing how distracting texting was for someone who had never used an iPhone before the test.

I understand analogies aren't meant to be strict equivalencies, but there is a large difference in severity here. Failure to operate an iphone correctly probably wouldn't cause a life threatening situation. Failure to operate a car correctly is far more concerning.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 6 years ago

I own two cars, a VW and a Toyota.

Here in Australia European vehicles aren’t required to put the indicator stalk on the right hand side of the steering column.

So I’m constantly indicating my intention to turn with the windscreen wipers in both cars, and constantly retraining myself, then I swap cars again.

Adding fatigue and other distractions doesn’t help.

dawnerd• 6 years ago

I'd say about as quick as it takes someone to get used to a Model 3's off to the side screen.

Also highly depends on the cars setup. I've had some rental cars where the screen was terrible and definitely was a distraction. Example being Audi and their button controls for carplay.

XzAeRosho• 6 years ago

I don't think the technology here is the problem. It's the implementation.

Most screens are placed in the middle of the dashboard, when it should be close to the gauges or nearly in front of you.

a012• 6 years ago

What I got from cars ads (and also YouTube videos) is the infotainment system seems like a flashy selling point for the car. And not any system is decent, even the expensive cars have shitty large touchscreen that's laggy or/and has too many layers to go through in its user interface. It's the worst car trends in recent years.

ntsplnkv2• 6 years ago

Touchscreens are simply cheaper. No need for switches, design of the controls, all the wiring, etc.

awinder• 6 years ago

I have a CX-5 and think they did a good job with the infotainment even if it was a bit delayed. The touchscreen is off when car is in motion and there’s steering wheel buttons + a rotating dial. tbh I just interact with Siri to set music or waypoints and maybe occasionally glance for gps.

GuB-42• 6 years ago

A similar study was made for phone calls, with similar results.

The counter argument is that while it is easy to let go of the phone when things get tricky. You can't sober up at will.

jjulius• 6 years ago

The counter argument is that while it is easy to let go of the phone when things get tricky.

And the counter-argument to that is that things can get tricky faster than you would expect. So tricky that even the time it takes for you to react and put your phone down or drop it still wouldn't give you enough time to prevent an accident.

People need to stop paying attention to phones while driving, period.

macintux• 6 years ago

There's also pressure from phone calls that you don't get when you're talking to someone in the vehicle: people on the other end can't see the traffic situation, so they don't know to shut up and let you drive, and there's social pressure on the driver to not let their surroundings distract them away from the phone call.

ken2• 6 years ago

If that were true, how do explain studies (like this one) that show that hands-free devices also hurt reaction time worse than alcohol? Drivers don't even need to "let go of the phone". They're looking straight ahead, and they have to respond to a big red rectangle, right in their field of vision. Yet somehow, they're still worse at it than people who have been drinking.

akadruid1• 6 years ago

I don't think it's as easy to let go as people think. Phone apps are designed to be engaging. If you watch footage of distracted drivers who cause crashes, they don't realise their brain has disengaged from the vital task. There is a harrowing example video here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/31/lorry-driver...

mrweasel2• 6 years ago

The fix for phone are certainly easier, just disable all controls if the phone is moving at more than 10km/h while paired to the car and disable all incoming notification.

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

This is one place where voice assistants could help. They can’t right now because they’re not good enough to rely on: I for one don’t trust Siri to do what I tell it, or even know how, without taking my eyes off the road to make sure. So the CarPlay system ends up underutilized because I can’t afford doing that.

ashleyn2• 6 years ago

There is also the privacy issue. Using Google voice in the car requires I turn on its always-listening functionality. Nope!

saagarjha2• 6 years ago

Is there no “press a button to listen” or “wait until you hear a wakeword” option?

kirykl• 6 years ago

I can ask Siri for directions when driving but then sometimes the phone needs to see my face to unlock it, which is counterintuitive. There should be an option for a verbal password

drewg123• 6 years ago

Its similar on Android. On my pixel, I'll often encounter this when trying to start music playin. Eg, "OK Google, open Spotify", only to have it reply "you need to unlock your phone for that".

gok• 6 years ago

One of the major benefits of CarPlay is that this is avoided, because there's a secure link established between the phone and car at setup time.

myrandomcomment• 6 years ago

You can unlock yourphone before you plug it in. There is a security feature that will require the phone be unlocked when connected to a USB device after not having been unlocked for a period of time.

Change it here:

Settings>Touch ID & Passcode>Allow Access When Locked

ape4• 6 years ago

What happened to those screens with dynamic 3D buttons (like bubble wrap). I guess it didn't pan out.

Edit: Found a video from 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tcawBX41VU

brenden2• 6 years ago

Computer screens are incredibly distracting regardless of the make or brand. It's basically a backlit distraction generator.

As a side note, I'm not a big fan of LCD displays in cars. I prefer analog gauges/dials/knobs, with minimal illumination for night time. At night, the less light you have inside the car, the easier you can see outside. Plus your eyes will be more well adjusted.

modzu3• 6 years ago

until driving anywhere with other people and their 2 million lumen led/laser headlights

aibara• 6 years ago

LCDs around the gauge cluster seem to encourage the display of extraneous information and eye candy, from making what should be a simple gauge extra gaudy and shiny, to adding useless images and readings all around (look at these leaves! Your car is so efficient!).

My friend had an old Saab with the "Black Panel" button, which turned off all internal lights save the speedometer. If other readings became relevant (e.g., running low on gas), that gauge or light would illuminate. I drove a Peugeot 208 a few years ago with a similar function. I wish I could find a vehicle with something similar, but design is clearly moving in the opposite direction.

oceliker• 6 years ago

You could have a similar thing in the future if OLED panels in cars become feasible.

frankish• 6 years ago

Google glass was the best solution to this IMO. Able to look through the display and still see the road and more focus on voice control.

We need advancements in integrating with computers already so that our brains can interface with them directly.

capableweb5• 6 years ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted, it sounds like an excellent idea on first glance. Have a pair of glasses (not necessarily Google but something similar) that you use when driving, that is connected to your car. Now you get information right where you're looking so you can always look at the road.

jakear2• 6 years ago

Plenty of cars project a HUD into the windshield itself. This seems like the better option.

tschellenbach• 6 years ago

Android Auto is my favorite buggy product. When it works, it's amazing and I keep on using it even though it fails in every possible way.

When it's working well it's not distracting at all. When you run into bugs it's very distracting.

thedance2• 6 years ago

The bugs are mostly, in my experience, just cumulative jank resulting from excessive Android uptimes. Android, being about on-par with Windows 95 in terms of software quality, needs a daily reboot to keep itself running.

Marsymars4• 6 years ago

I once had my mom complain to me that nothing on her phone was working properly and discovered that it hadn't been restarted in something like ten months.

antidaily• 6 years ago

One of the tasks was finding a song on Spotify. Siri is pretty good at this with the right command (ex Play ‘KV Crimes’ by Kurt Vile on Spotify). But trying to find that via Spotify UI is nearly impossible while driving.

appleshore• 6 years ago

One of the most absurd consequences of CarPlay is the USB car ports are often 1 amp. So my phone dies faster. Combined with Apple forcing you to use Apple Maps, makes me cynical of basic technology. This is partly what makes it more distracting.

zwily• 6 years ago

You can use Google Maps on CarPlay now, I believe.

rgovostes• 6 years ago

Yes, third-party navigation has been supported for two years now.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

I guess wireless charging systems provide a benefit here because they decouple the data transfer from the charging.

76543210• 6 years ago

You bought a product from a company known to lock people into their services then complain about this.

Was it the constant commercials that sold you? The fruit logo?

leetcrew5• 6 years ago

I'm curious how different it would be if you could control Android auto with physical buttons. I'm not sure why touchscreens are allowed in cars at all. you can't use them without looking directly at them.

even voice can be distracting when you have to repeat variations of the same command five times and keep checking whether it actually works.

I hope this kind of thing doesn't get banned entirely. when it works, I find that having a good navigation system allows me to pay more attention on actually driving the car.

JCharante• 6 years ago

Is it true that you can't use touchscreens in cars without looking at them? I don't drive so I wouldn't know, but my experience touch typing on my smartphone (and I don't use it very often) and as a cashier during high school who used a touch screen point-of-sales system would lead me to believe otherwise. Sure you can't keep track of its state the entire time, but you only need to glance at it to know what state/screen to operate/navigate from.

debaserab2• 6 years ago

you only need to glance at it

I think you answered your own question.

harumph• 6 years ago

Obviously I can't say if this is universally true, but it is most certainly true for me. I have CarPlay, and I do my damnedest to control it with Siri. It always feels incredibly dangerous to use the touchscreen.

Because of the problems I have with Siri, I end up using the touchscreen much more than I'd prefer. My latest defensive habit is to queue up enough audio for the trip and not touch it again until I arrive.

I would definitely prefer hardware buttons.

ComputerGuru• 6 years ago

Glancing takes a long time because your eyes don’t just have to flick to and fro, you need to actually refocus your vision, scan for and find the object or point you’re intending to look at, switch contexts, then do it all over again.

mstade4• 6 years ago

I drive a lot and quick glance is usually fine I'd say, but touchscreens often require more than a glance because the UI isn't as static as a typical dashboard. You lose context between apps, and so you end up having to look a bit longer. But the worst part isn't the glancing to be honest, the worst part is that when you're driving there are all these little changes in the road that makes you miss your target on the screen. Maybe it's a little bump or maybe there's a tiny adjustment in the steering that does it, but you end up tapping the wrong thing so often you then have to go back and fix things, and that's where you get into trouble I find because now your attention is truly divided.

I like CarPlay, and found in the Mercedes models that had the little control wheel in the center console it worked well, because you had a physical switch to interface with CarPlay, but had the flexibility of the screen. I'm no expert, but I drive a lot of different cars and that so far is my favorite way of interacting with CarPlay.

I'd still prefer a simple dashboard with physical controls though.

amluto4• 6 years ago

As the owner of a modern car, PoS systems are in a whole different league than cars. In particular, PoS vendors actually care about making usage efficient.

In my car, if I want to increase the fan speed, I need to tap a small target, wait while the system lags out, and then tap a new target on a popup. Meanwhile, I’m trying to focus on the road at (effectively) infinity. It’s distracting and unsafe.

In my old, very well designed 1991 car, I could push the button to do this. It had two major benefits: it never moved and I could feel it. Touchscreens can’t replicate the feel of a button, but they could at least have the decency to keep controls in the same place.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 6 years ago

A point of sales system has the distinct advantage of not travelling at a combined speed of 60 metres / 200 feet per second.

leetcrew5• 6 years ago

the button targets are much smaller on most infotainment screens. also, the vehicle being in motion makes it a lot harder to rely on muscle memory.

tyfon5• 6 years ago

My fingers have pretty much memorised the few things I sometimes change from the screen while driving in my tesla, but 99% of what I would use the screen for can also be done via the buttons on the wheel / voice command. I still glance over when I do hit the screen though to make sure I did it correctly.

I think with the latest update I can also control the active suspension via voice which is the only thing I still use the display for while driving except for hitting cancel on the navigation once in a blue moon. Cancelling navigation might also be available via voice command now, I haven't checked.

In any case, voice and physical buttons (on the steering wheel) is much safer than touching or buttons below the screen the screen regardless. At least I feel much more in control personally when I can keep my eyes on the road and not glance away / feel my way to a spot on the screen.

mstade4• 6 years ago

My favorite interaction with CarPlay so far were the Mercedes models that had the little wheel in the center console that you could use to navigate. All you had to do was take a quick glance at the screen if you didn't already know how many clicks you had to turn the wheel, or if you did know you could do it without looking. In all the newer models I've driven they've replaced the wheel with a touchpad like thing which is awful.

I'm in the market for a car, and I want something new or new-ish, but I can't find any cars I like without touchscreens all over the place. I'm now looking at used cars from around 2012, before all the touchscreen nonsense became pervasive, but still with most of the modern conveniences I'm in the market for. I'm not in a rush so I might just wait and see still, but I said that a couple of years ago as well and the touchscreen craze has just gotten worse I feel like.

modzu3• 6 years ago

i was looking for a "safe" car and that's why I didnt buy a current volvo. to add to the problem the screen is laggy too. kind of reminds me of cars before seatbelts. safety has come sooo much farther but seems we have a few new lessons to learn as we catch up with the shiny new tech.

i_am_proteus• 6 years ago

Car manufacturers should look to motorcycles for minimal-distraction UIs. I have a late-model BMW touring bike which has a sizeable number of features (adjustable suspension, throttle response, grip heaters, cruise control), all of which can be controlled by feel/touch from buttons on the handlebars.

That said, car drivers really should get in the habit of making playlists so they can set up music and maps before they start rolling.

PascLeRasc• 6 years ago

Audi Carplay has this too, their screens don't even allow touch.

I put a Sony XAV-1000 in my '07 Honda Fit recently, it was the only Carplay unit I could find with a physical volume knob. You can hold the volume knob down to activate Siri, so I never have to actually use the touchscreen. It's been very nice for Apple Maps/Spotify, I'd recommend looking into it.

fingerlocks• 6 years ago

I think most of them have this feature. In a Subaru you can the radio tune dial to navigate instead of touching.

pintxo3• 6 years ago

Have you considered a BMW with their iDrive controller for the satnav/entertainment?

I have yet to find a car with a better UX (aside from road handling, which I find equally good, but that’s another topic).

Touchscreens should only be allowed in cars with self-driving capabilities, and probably only on the higher levels.

ben940830298432• 6 years ago

BMW has a pretty decent non-touch infotainment system. It is a wheel style but they do also offer touch if you want to use that.

mortenjorck2• 6 years ago

This is something Apple could, at least in theory, fix on its end.

Right now, CarPlay interfaces with steering wheel remotes in the standard way where prev/next buttons change tracks and volume +/- changes the volume. What Apple could do is this: add a toggle somewhere in the OS that remaps these to cursor controls. This would, without any effort required on the part of auto manufacturers, bring something comparable to the Mercedes control system to the majority of CarPlay compatible vehicles on the road, all via an OS update.

unethical_ban• 6 years ago

IIRC Mazda is looking to remove touch from their driver UI.

scirocco• 6 years ago

Audi A5 - still a small wheel in the 2017 model

jquery• 6 years ago

The newer models (2019, at least) still have that wheel as an option. I love it. I didn’t realize how great it was until I had to rent a car with touchscreen CarPlay for a couple weeks and it SO distracting compared to the Mercedes wheel.

jordanthoms2• 6 years ago

Mazda is currently updating all their models with the new infotainment which removes the touchscreen. Android auto and Car play still work with a rotary controller. The screen is also closer to the eyeline of the driver so you don't have to look far away from the road

briandear• 6 years ago

Audi does this too. It isn’t a touchscreen.

ct520• 6 years ago

I hear yah. FYI Current gen maxima has a wheel used to navigate

crooked-v• 6 years ago

The screens are because all new cars in the US are required to have backup cameras now. The lack of physical controls to go with them is entirely on the car companies, though.

diebeforei485• 6 years ago

Audi had this scrollwheel too. It was great. The newer Audis have touchscreens and I find them distracting as well.

delecti• 6 years ago

It's funny to hear you praise that wheel, because internally (in the cloud software division, not hardware) everyone pretty regularly derides it. Of course our only interactions with the hardware are disembodied head units that we're paying 100% attention to, not trying to use out of the corner of our eye while driving.

wkimeria• 6 years ago

We have a 2018 Mazda 6 and a 2019 Honda Odyssey.

The Mazda does have the little wheel (it's down near the gearshift) and in addition the touchscreen on the display screen is disabled when you are in motion (which I think is a great idea). I adapted to it within an hour (I was coming from our older 2007 Honda Civic which has none of these)

The Honda does not have the wheel and you can use the touchscreen any time (which I think is a bad idea)

So a good compromise for you might be a Mazda (I think all cars will come with screens especially now backup cameras are federally mandated)

logical42• 6 years ago

There are Mazdas with the center tactile knob for CarPlay interactions.

ghaff• 6 years ago

It almost feels as if we pretend that "hands free" solves the distraction problem. In practice, I find that voice commands don't work reliably enough most of the time and, as you say, add the increasing frustration of repeatedly trying things and cursing at Siri or Google.

viburnum• 6 years ago

If I try to do voice commands while driving my field of vision narrows to a pinprick.

catalogia2• 6 years ago

I don't use voice commands but neither do I use the screen. I have my navigation app on my phone speak to me using text-to-speech while my phone is screen-down in the center console. When I need to input something I either have the passenger do it, or I find someplace to pull over.

Pulling over to make changes may not be the most convenient, but I think for me at least, it's safest.

giancarlostoro• 6 years ago

In fact that is why the audio buttons on the steering wheel are the only way I can listen to music off my phone. If I gotta unlock my phone and look down to find the "button" on screen its too distracting for my comfort level.

I dont know how people can text and drive. I usually see cars swerving and driving way too slow into a high way and it always turns out they are texting up a storm when you look.

leetcrew5• 6 years ago

they just don't realize how obvious it is from outside the vehicle. that's the scary part.

Waterluvian• 6 years ago

Not even from a safety perspective, but from a UX ergonomics perspective:

Give me a D pad, an OK and a Cancel button. And make a phone API that works exclusively by that and the sounds and chimes it outputs.

I just want every supported app to be in a top level list that I arrow through and OK. Then within any app the options are all navigable in simple ways. Overall functionality is reduced.

Voice control is a secondary system altogether.

thedance2• 6 years ago

You can control android auto with physical buttons. It’s really up to the car makers. In my car I rarely need the touchscreen. I use a pixel 3a in a Honda Clarity.

copperx• 6 years ago

Mazdas have a physical wheel to control Android Auto and CarPlay. I couldn't live without it. Also true for Toyota Yaris and the older Scion iA.

Marsymars4• 6 years ago

I hope this kind of thing doesn't get banned entirely. when it works, I find that having a good navigation system allows me to pay more attention on actually driving the car.

Anecdotally, over the years I've been driving, a majority of potentially collision-causing mistakes I've made (and that I've noticed) have been when I've been cognitively distracted by navigation systems and was looking for a turn/exit or thinking ahead for a turn/exit.

I've adjusted to always prioritize real-time safety even if it comes at the cost of missing my turn and having to double back to get where I'm going. I believe that following nav directions in real-time comes at a safety cost, and am skeptical that many people both realize this and make the appropriate adjustments.

leetcrew5• 6 years ago

I'm guessing this is a ymmv type situation. I personally find navigation to be by far the most stressful part of driving. I have a bad tendency to flip binary directions like left/right, east/west, etc. when I first had my license (before navigation apps for your smartphone really existed), I had to spend a lot of my cognitive budget trying to remember whether the turn at X St was a right or left and not paying as much attention to the evolving situation on the road. I'm always willing to miss an exit/turn if I notice it too late or there isn't room to merge safely. if anything, I'm more willing to miss a turn in an unfamiliar area when I know the nav system will automatically find a new route.

this probably varies depending on your spatial reasoning skills. my brother can take a quick look at a map and remember the connectivity of all the major roads and then navigate from memory. whenever I try this, I end up in a stressful loop of miss turn -> find place to pull over to look at map -> miss turn again. stress has a comparable impact to driving safety as distraction in my experience.

Krasnol• 6 years ago

I had one of those portable navigation systems before in my old car and had it mounted on the lower left end of the front window. It was perfect. I never felt distracted or in need to leave the street out of my view for longer.

Now I have a quite large navigation screen in the mid console and those optional arrows next to my speedometer. It really took some time to get me to not look and the centre screen. It took even longer to get used to just listen to what the computer lady says.

I can't understand how this centre screen has become a safe standard. Especially in countries like Germany where there is no speed limit. It's a toy for passengers.

_ea1k3• 6 years ago

I find that to be true, and actually consider this an advantage of GPS. I remember being super careful not to miss turns before it, because getting back might be difficult or confusing in some cases.

Now, I don't care so much. GPS can route me back pretty easily if I miss anyway.

sosborn• 6 years ago

I've adjusted to always prioritize real-time safety even if it comes at the cost of missing my turn and having to double back to get where I'm going.

To me, this is where GPS shines. If I miss an exit, it isn't a big a deal because the GPS will tell me the best route based on my current circumstances.

gkfasdfasdf• 6 years ago

Do you really use physical buttons on the dash without looking at them? I can't in any of my vehicles.

x3n0ph3n3• 6 years ago

I absolutely develop tactile memory of the stereo and A/C control panels.

_ea1k3• 6 years ago

Who cares about Android Auto with specific buttons, I wanted them to compare the same tasks to a old device.

How distracting is it to play a specific song on a radio from 1999? Or a specific FM radio station that isn't already programmed?

mlavin• 6 years ago

2000 Volvo with same radio interface as the earlier 850. For playing a particular song, rest my wrist on the shift lever and push seek next until it gets to the right track. For a specific station, same button until it lands on that station. Not particularly distracting, and minimal glancing at the LCD readout that only shows current frequency or track number.

capableweb5• 6 years ago

I'm curious how different it would be if you could control Android auto with physical buttons

You can, if the car is made that way of course, but the software supports it. I would not buy a car knowing it's only a touchscreen. At least in my car, the radial controls the focus on Android Auto and press it down to select. The screen is not a touch screen.

xenospn• 6 years ago

I agree. I don't think touchscreens in cars should be a thing. Anything that requires you to look away from the road is a huge distraction, especially a giant colorful screen.

silon42• 6 years ago

Also, the physical controls never change, so it's much less mental effort if you do glance at them.

jacobsenscott• 6 years ago

Physical buttons are much safer, and this is well known within the industry. But touch screens are cheap and easy - so automakers won't go back to physical buttons unless they are forced to by regulators.

deveac• 6 years ago

This is a great question.

There's no question that physical controls for the most common tasks in a vehicle (there are actually very few) take less attention.

Additionally, it seems like one great promise of software in a vehicle would be to augment and improve upon that fact by design. But it's terribly obvious that this has not been a design goal ever. The goal has been to take the familiar UX of your phone and transfer it to your car so that the media component is immediately familiar (this is nice), but all the while we could have been making the act of driving safer too...

supdatecron• 6 years ago

even voice can be distracting when you have to repeat variations of the same command five times and keep checking whether it actually works.

This is a silly argument, given the number of arguments that I’ve seen drivers participate in.

beatgammit• 6 years ago

It's pretty easy to set up navigation without voice control. Basically just pull over for a second, enter your destination, start navigation, then get back on the road. It probably takes the same amount of time as voice commands, but it's not nearly as distracting.

Pxtl• 6 years ago

Or Android's obnoxious tendency towards silent failure of the Google Assistant. How many times has your phone just just get stuck in the busy-spinner? Mine does often. No audio feedback, not even a way to stop it without picking up the device.

jrs95• 6 years ago

IMO touch screens should be banned as a part of safety regulations. There's simply no need from them in cars, it's a gimmick. Physical buttons are better and don't you to look at them to use them while driving.

m-p-3• 6 years ago

I hope Google and Apple will consider putting in place a solid way of navigating the UI with physical buttons. As much as I love Android Auto, I feel like I'm always constrained to use voice commands which I hate with a passion, and I already stick to my steering wheel buttons to control music playback.

yc12340• 6 years ago

Android already has a solid way of navigating UI with physical buttons. The first generation of Android phones didn't have touchscreens, so the whole OS was designed around DPAD controls — it's support for navigating UI with directional buttons is second to none.

The problem isn't OS itself, but applications. Android application developers are frequently implementing custom graphical components, that do not handle "presses" and "clicks" and instead try to directly interact with touchscreen.

Google have made a number of increasingly aggressive attempts to work around the issue — for example recent versions of Android try to infer purpose and interactivity of custom UI elements instead of expecting developer to declare it. But that does not help, when everyone is using a handful of fancy libraries, hardwired to require touchscreen.

Incidentally, the biggest offender is not a third-party component... It is RecyclerView — Google's official item list implementation, distributed as a separate library. It's support for DPAD navigation is so abysmal, that Google's own engineers (from different department, I presume), had to create Leanback framework largely from scratch instead of relying on official RecyclerView components.

aganame• 6 years ago

The only way my car will have a big screen on the dashboard is if it's an option to 100% ignore oit while driving.

mindslight• 6 years ago

I suspect this goes for all input based on a touch screen. Touch screens are horrible interfaces, which caught on because they're generic and fully reconfigurable by each app. But this reconfigurability pushes them into your low-level OODA loop, using your attention in imperceptible spurts rather than taking advantage of muscle memory, doubly so when the UI code is laggy.

I'm certainly not condoning the practice, but texting and driving wasn't a serious public hazard until everyone moved away from T9. T9 was a deterministic input method, and while sure maybe you would look at the message before sending, each individual letter required little attention.

Back before smart phones / GPS navigation / etc took off I did a two month cross country trip using a Garmin 60CSx (handheld GPS with hard buttons) as a live map. In car-cities, I held the unit in my shifting hand, and checking the map was effortless as it was always in the state I expected it to be.

Holding the touch screen in your hand, and thus having more predictable positioning, is a setup up from using a touch screen mounted on the car's interior, which is moving relative to you from road bumps etc. Even worse are OEM touchscreens that have poor response. I'd love for more studies to be done on this subject to create better data, but I also wonder how much it will be fought by car manufacturers that have gone all-in on touchscreens in the center console (which seems to be all of them).

tinza123• 6 years ago

I found Android Auto dangerous because it works great normally, but when it stops working I tend to get a little panicking and intuitively try to "Fix" it while I'm driving. And that happened too often so I quit using it all together.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

If I'm understanding the study correctly, it's not that having one of these systems in your car results in you — at all times — being more distracted than if you had pot/alcohol in your system. Rather, when you are actively engaged in a task (eg, play song on Spotify), you are worse at lane centering and maintaining follow distance.

That is not as bad because you can choose when to start playing a song, so that you do it when traffic is calm. If you're driving under the influence, that's affecting you the whole time.

It would be interesting to see how these results look when the driver is performing tasks on a non-touchscreen setup. I can easily change the radio station in my car using steering-wheel mounted buttons, but changing the AC/heat is quite difficult without looking (in my Ford CMAX) because of the uniformity/location of the buttons. I'd guess the results would be similar to using a touchscreen setup.

lawnchair_larry2• 6 years ago

Yeah, the way they designed this test makes it meaningless in the real world.

onlyrealcuzzo• 6 years ago

I wish the title can be changed.

The idea that Android Auto or Carplay is worse than drunk driving is dangerous and disingenuous and complete misinformation.

That's what the title implies. It's not what the study found.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 6 years ago

you can choose when to start playing a song

I’m willing to bet a significant number of people don’t wait till it’s safe to use the system.

If you're driving under the influence, that's affecting you the whole time.

Could it be argued that driving under the influence is only affecting you when you have an at fault accident that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

I’m willing to bet the overwhelming majority of driving under the influence events are ordinary and uneventful.

cheez• 6 years ago

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, I even see police officers doing this.

kovac• 6 years ago

I've been taking a puff at the wrong time. Should have waited for the traffic to clear a bit :p

Title is just misleading, as is often the case with this kind of studies nowadays.

monadic23• 6 years ago

Sadly many phone functions have no physical equivalent. Things like navigating on gps and SMS have just enough voice functionality to get you to try and use them, but not enough to not be distracting from driving. This is why I disabled siri!

danaris• 6 years ago

First of all, I saw this on another site (I have forgotten where, unfortunately) that actually showed the comparisons of CarPlay/Android Auto usage vs some other situations. However, it seems like a significant oversight that things like "changing the radio station" and "adjusting the climate control" were not in the comparison. I'd really like to see what that looks like.

Second of all, it's horribly misleading to compare the degree to which using these systems impairs your driving to the degree to which being under the influence of alcohol or drugs does so. I have CarPlay, and while I fully recognize that paying attention to it to change things pulls my focus away from the road, I'm typically doing so for no longer than 2-5 seconds. Being drunk or high lasts much longer than that, and there's no way to just turn it off. Hell, even texting or a phone call takes orders of magnitude longer than that.

I don't know if there's a particularly scientific way to do this, but my gut feel is that a more useful number would be something like the integral of distractedness over time—so find the length of time of a typical phone call, and multiply the phone call amount of distractedness by that, and assign some reasonable length to the total car journey, and multiply the drunk/high distractedness by that. Then compare that to the CarPlay/Android Auto distractedness multiplied by 2-5s times some typical number of times people adjust it during a trip of the designated length.

leetcrew5• 6 years ago

it's definitely important to distinguish between perfect, typical, and worst case usage scenarios. when I use android auto, I typically set up navigation and a playlist while the vehicle is stationary. (unfortunately I can't usually do this while parked nose-in, because using the backup camera crashes android auto four out of five times in my car.) I have to imagine this is way safer than any kind of intoxicated driving. on the other hand, I'd bet someone dragging google maps around to see the next turn on the highway is just as bad as driving with a BAC around 0.1. it's definitely a flaw in the study that they gave specific instructions to the drivers instead of just observing their natural behavior.

anon1020102• 6 years ago

Does anyone excercise any critical thinking skills with these headlines.

Driving drunk is far far far more distracting and deadly than using carplay. Every Uber and lyft driver out there are running mapping apps. Every recent car is shipping with these (my wife's sister listens to her playlist on drive to work with it and uses the map).

I've seen drunk drivers. Carplay has nothing on booze. In an overseas country an ex-pat wanted to drive me drunk back to where we were going to be working. Within 2 minutes I'd taken the keys and started driving myself because he was all over the road - we had to stop so he could throw up.

Retric3• 6 years ago

“A new study says driver reaction times using this tech were worse than motorists with alcohol or cannabis in their system.” Alcohol impacts more than reaction times, but a drunk driver can actually be paying attention to the road. On the the other hand someone looking at a screen at best can use peripheral vision which may not be enough. Touch screens at the bottom of the console are sadly common and unusually bad.

PopeDotNinja• 6 years ago

It can be hard to finish a complete sentence when drunk. In case it wasn't clear for anyone, you still shouldn't do it.

imgabe• 6 years ago

There are also varying levels of drunk. At the legal limit in some places, some people might show very little impairment at all. It's impossible to compare without saying what level of alcohol or cannabis they're talking about and for what person with what tolerance. People react differently and consume different amounts.

jakear2• 6 years ago

Massive difference between driving at 0.08 and driving while drunk enough that your body’s survival is dependent on it violently expelling alcohol from your system.

awinter-py2• 6 years ago

yes, in theory the point of the limit is that it should be safe

klyrs• 6 years ago

Does anyone excercise any critical thinking skills with these headlines.

Critical thinking means carefully examining evidence, even if it challenges "common sense".

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

Also, people who are driving drunk might also be using CarPlay. It's not as if being drunk makes you immune to the distractions of CarPlay.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

This study is a like micro-benchmark, and it makes sense to say that phone distracted driving can lead to a more acute loss of road awareness vs. being drunk, because your eyes might not even be on the road.

anon1020102• 6 years ago

Just in case I wasn't obvious enough, the issue with drunk driving is around much more than distraction. Drunk driving involves failures of judgement and comprehension, drowsiness and vision impacts (literally will not see a pedestrian, will not register a red light, will fall asleep and have a head on collision). In addition, driving while drunk is a continues impact. If you drive an hour and a half home wasted, you are going to be at risk / causing risk that ENTIRE time.

The article headline and narrative tries to generate a "carplay worse than drunk driving" narrative when this is totally unsupported.

First, the slow reaction time was measured while the subjects were told to carry out tasks on carplay. These tasks were very specific. Like use the BBC iPlayer app (ugh!) to play a specific radio station. Find and play summer by Calvin Harris, send text messages etc. AND the setting were such that you could not use voice for some of this.

OK - summer is in a ton of song titles, so finding summer by calvin hariss is going to take some typing. Making users use a THIRD party app on carplay is another whole issue.

So yes - if you are a total idiot who disables voice control and is trying to type out complicated things on carplay and send messages using text - you are definitely going to be temporarily distracted. They presented little evidence that while in use fatalities increase because of this risk.

My own observation is that folks stopped at stoplights are HIGHLY distracted by both their phones and infotainment.

I use voice control which works well, and I only do three tasks - message wife I'm heading home, get directions to home (driving time and detours)and play podcasts. I say this while waiting to pull out of a parking garage. In terms of actual road risk this in minimal.

Retric3• 6 years ago

It’s true people don’t individually spend a lot of time per interaction, but in country soon to hit 100 million touch screen cars, that’s easily millions of hours of distracted driving per year.

For a general risk comparison it’s percentage of time people are drunk driving x drunk risk vs percentage of time they interact with these devices x device risk. So, figuring out had bad things are during use is a very important factor.

bityard• 6 years ago

Actually, distracted driving and chemically impaired driving are two separate, orthogonal things. They exist independently of the other. A driver can be afflicted with either, both, or neither. One can be measured objectively (blood toxicity), the other cannot.

We might read reports indicating that X number of accidents were caused by distracted driving, but distracted driving is very hard to prove because it is easy to deny. The only statistics we have on it are either when a driver admits to not paying attention, or when there is overwhelming evidence for it, such as video.

I think we can easily assume that most at-fault drivers are not going to willfully admit to liability for causing an collision (especially if a party to the collision was hurt or killed), so it is safe to say that distracted driving is highly under-reported and underrated as a threat to road safety.

mouzogu• 6 years ago

This argument keeps recurring and I find it quite annoying. How is CarPlay or AA anymore distracting than having a tiny phone screen on your dashboard? Also, I think its more likely that the notifications for certain apps are distracting as opposed to the software in general which is incredibly useful (Maps, Spotify etc).

I don't understand the motivation behind these studies. Is there some financial gain to be made from this. Or perhaps I'm being too cynical.

Marsymars4• 6 years ago

How is CarPlay or AA anymore distracting than having a tiny phone screen on your dashboard?

I don't think anyone is making that argument.

The argument is that you shouldn't be using your phone via any interface while driving, because it isn't safe.

mrweasel2• 6 years ago

If it wasn’t going to cause problems for people in trains or busses, I would suggest a law requirering phones to turn off/hibernate if they detect that they are moving faster fast than 10km/h.

cutemonster• 6 years ago

don't understand the motivation behind these studies

1.3 million traffic fatalities yearly (worldwide).

Good to know if/when new tech distracts the drivers and adds to that 1.3 number?

ken2• 6 years ago

Everyone is focusing on the touchscreen, because those are easy to point a finger at (pun intended). In fact, this study confirmed what we already knew from previous research: even hands-free phone interfaces are terrible for driving.

The best hands-free reaction time in this study was still more than twice as bad as the effect from alcohol.

You simply can't operate a motor vehicle and a computing/communications device at the same time without seriously affecting your competency at both. Humans aren't built for that kind of multitasking. I don't anticipate any new technology which might change that.

Swenrekcah• 6 years ago

You can and it's rather simple. You just need physical buttons and a deterministic interface, like pretty much every phone had until the iPhone.

Pick a number to call from your contacts, or type it out, or even pick a contact and type out a whole message using one hand without as much as a glance at the screen.

sjwright• 6 years ago

You probably spend less than a few percent of your driving time navigating a touchscreen. And most of the time drivers will allot those tasks to reduced risk moments such as when stationary at a traffic light.

When you’re drunk, you’re drunk every second of the journey. You’re drunk at every intersection, you’re drunk at every pedestrian crossing, you’re drunk every meter of motorway.

They’re not comparable.

sumoboy• 6 years ago

What if you don't have CarPlay, trying to use Apple Music is a total joke with the worst UX. Even not driving it's a PIA to use.

princevegeta89• 6 years ago

I hate how the new Android Auto update is so unintuitive. In the past, the "Ok Google" was one blind click away in my car (Acura). Now, it is the last option in the screen where you will have to first navigate and click. What a bummer...

dep_b• 6 years ago

I've driven a BMW that featured a HUD for the driver and I think that would be a great way to display a lot more information that CarPlay and co do now on the console.

oblib2• 6 years ago

I really can't envision how anyone could think these toys would do anything other than distract drivers.

Truth is driving requires one's full attention and any distraction is going to reduce safety, even in a self driving car.

I don't really find it remarkable that it's worse than pot, or alcohol within the legal limit though. They didn't offer much info on the weed thing and that surely depends on how "high" one gets, but if they kept it within the same range as the legal limit of alcohol (a small toke or two) that's no surprise at all.

I worked for years designing and building custom cars. Honestly, that giant screen in a Tesla is the craziest thing I've ever seen in a car, and I've helped build some pretty crazy cars.

capableweb5• 6 years ago

Honestly, that giant screen in a Tesla is the craziest thing I've ever seen in a car

Same here. I cannot understand how people are fine with it. I once had to drive a car who had it's GPS display further down (where the AC controls usually is, basically) so you had to glance down towards the shifting stick to be able to see where you are going. That feels like a similarly crazy idea. I'm lucky my car has a display that is as far up it can be without blocking the view out of the windshield.

xedeon4• 6 years ago

You should actually test drive one. I've yet to meet an owner ask for more buttons or knobs. In fact, it's the opposite. With the new NLP voice commands, eyes and hands stand where they need to be.

globular-toast3• 6 years ago

I agree with you. But unfortunately the majority of the car users on the road aren't prepared to be "drivers". They don't like driving and just want to be somewhere quickly with minimal effort. Any extra distractions, conveniences and safety features that further hide away the responsibility are welcome. If you happen to be in an older, smaller car or, gasp, a naked human outside of a car then god help you.

dang• 6 years ago

We merged comments hither from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22646564, which points to a cnet.com article about this study and was originally the thread on the front page. We kept its title.

heavymark• 6 years ago

CarPlay obviously isn’t meant to be safer than not using tech in a car, it’s suppose to be safer than using a cell phone while driving which is most everyone at one time or another. So what masters is how safer it is using the system vs a handheld phone.

product50• 6 years ago

These types of studies look so biased as they will only get covered in news channel if the results are anti-tech. There is no mention of how much distraction would "changing a radio station" or "adjusting car heating" will cause - and benchmarking against those. Good that this came out during the current COVID-19 outbreak as the political brass is distracted enough to even consider this.

ulkesh• 6 years ago

Was this peer-reviewed? How does it compare with normal radio head units?

Anecdotally, I find CarPlay to not be distracting at all, mainly because I don’t fiddle with it while driving. I set up things ahead of time or I have a front seat passenger to help.

pfarnsworth• 6 years ago

The worst is the Tesla interface. It's great to look at and if you're sitting in the car parked, but if you're trying to drive it is terrible. To be honest, stuff like this should be legislated away, it's too dangerous.

Even something as mundane as turning on the fan requires several seconds of concentration because it's al. It's not like a regular car with buttons and knobs that you don't have to think about. You have to actively look for it as you drive which makes it very dangerous to use.

As for Apple Carplay, I have as well, and it feels like the designers don't actually use it for driving. Some decisions are absurd. For example, a lot of the buttons you need to press are on the opposite side of the display (at least for cars with drivers on the left side). It's totally dumb that they are on the opposite side that needs to be hunted for.

In terms of safety, big knobs and buttons are best.

xedeon4• 6 years ago

Voice commands with Natural Language Processing (which Tesla cars now support) is far superior than any knobs or buttons because you keep your eyes on the road and hand on the steering wheel.

I can pretty much toggle or set any media and climate settings(even open the glove box) after a software update last December.

jchw• 6 years ago

I fully agree. But: I believe in many cases this is because, with both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as I have used both for extended periods, they are simply buggy as hell.

Some car vendors have better implementations than others, but I frequently see things happen like the connection suddenly cuts or audio playback becomes choppy or sometimes the dash crashes entirely.

I suspect if it was less buggy it would be a lot less distracting, personally.

m3kw9• 6 years ago

I would say navigating a menu system takes more concentration than reading and tapping a msg with auto correct. Thus this study makes sense

awinter-py2• 6 years ago

woof touchscreens (though the chart makes it seem like voice is a problem too)

the US navy is removing some screen-based controls after an accident -- this is less about distraction and more about the complexity of the interface, but still

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john...

mazda the car company made a similar move last year

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

karlding• 6 years ago

On a similar note, what happened to cars that would lock you out of interacting with the infotainment system whenever you were driving faster than parking lot speeds? I assume this was some regulatory/safety requirement.

I remember cars used to either implement that feature, or outright prevented you from even pairing a new Bluetooth device when your car was in Drive. But then all of a sudden it seemed like automotive companies stopped and touchscreens became acceptable. Does anyone know what changed?

lawnchair_larry2• 6 years ago

Nothing, they still lock out those features. They have never locked out basic controls like changing inputs or start/stop/play, or some deep menu navigation. They do lock out things like typing a GPS destination, but not selecting a pre-set.

The NHTSA guidelines are here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/distraction_...

branon• 6 years ago

Is it just me, or does this source seem very unreliable?

tibbydudeza• 6 years ago

I could never get it work with my VW Polo headunit. Was just plain confusing and that was on a Samsung A70 while my daughter's iPhone worked out of box.

rusbus• 6 years ago

It's totally possible to make touch screen displays that can be operated in bumpy environments without looking at them -- Aviation has been using them for some time. Instead of clicking on buttons, interactions only require touching entire regions (eg. top and bottom half) of the screen when input is requested. (See apps like XCSoar, LK8000, etc.)

The problem is that they are either hard to learn to use, or really ugly. It's always really bugged me that Google Maps on a phone (or in Android Auto) has tiny buttons that are impossible to click for the most basic tasks.

It doesn't have to be this way.

aequitas• 6 years ago

What's I found even more frustrating about google maps is that one time it promted me to perform a survey about the app itself. During a trip, whilst driving. It was not a local guide thing or a play store thing. It redirected to a page inside the maps app which was just impossible to use whilst driving (and not much better when not driving also). Needless to say I didn't finish the survey. I wanted to complain about the fact I even got the survey in-app. But later there was also no way to get back to it.

chrstphrhrt• 6 years ago

Surprised to see cannabis reaction times slower than alcohol for driving. I wonder how they controlled for it, and whether the test accounted for high people driving slower and taking fewer risky moves like lane changes, turning corners without looking for pedestrians or speeding through yellow lights. Reaction time alone can be mitigated through adaptive behaviour, but not if you're not even looking at the road.

different_sort• 6 years ago

I think the carploy interface via controls on the wheel is good on my '17 subaru, but I absoloutely agree it is NOT for use by the driver when in motion. It requires a lot of focus, and if I can't get siri to do something for me on it then I wait until my next stop.

habosa• 6 years ago

I don't know what took me so long but I recently realized how many Bay Area drivers are driving while using their phones (I don't have a car). Every single day there are multiple accidents on 101 despite it being a straight line and traffic rarely going over 30mph at peak hours. How can this be? Easy: silicon valley professionals reading their email.

I drove around Spain for 2 weeks and didn't see a single car accident of any kind. More manual cars (occupy your hands) and fewer digital distractions. I saw 3 accidents on my way back from Oakland airport to my house.

US drivers need to get off their damn phones. It's so dangerous.

DailyHN2• 6 years ago

I refuse to connect android auto. Now, whenever I charge my phone in the car, multiple prompts continuously pop-up to enable android auto.

It's become unnecessarily dangerous if I'm using GPS for directions because now I have to continuously press "decline" and "not now" so I can see my directions. This has happened multiple times in a minute. Very dangerous - merely ceasing to ask after the tenth decline would probably save lives.

techdevangelist• 6 years ago

Have you tried a charge only cable that lacks the data pins being hooked up?

DailyHN2• 6 years ago

No, that is definitely something I need to try. Thanks!

trickledown• 6 years ago

Distracting by design. All these devices are designed to get your attention. That is how they make money.

jagged-chisel2• 6 years ago

A terrible 'feature' of CarPlay is asking by voice to have an app launched, and having Siri reply "I'm sorry, I can't do that while you're driving." It's because the app doesn't have a CarPlay implementation. It's an app that just needs to be running in the foreground do that I can get into the company parking garage. Now, I've had to take my eyes off the road (I do this at any red light that I hit between the interstate and the deck - but it still moves my focus...) find the app on the phone and tap it.

Tagbert2• 6 years ago

Why do you need to lauch that app while you’re driving if you only need it to get into the parking garage? Can’t you pause at the garage, launch the app and enter?

jagged-chisel2• 6 years ago

For some reason, it can take nearly a minute for the app to get its bluetooth and GPS bearings all settled. All the while a line is forming behind me..

So sure, I can do that. But it'd be better if the pain was felt by Apple rather than co-workers.

tylerl• 6 years ago

The study is fundamentally flawed and the article (headline claim in particular) is nonsensical.

The study is flawed in that it lacks a control group and is missing information about relevance. You say people don't see the road when you tell them to look at a screen. Wow, color me shocked. But if you're going to demand change, you need to be able to put that fact into context. Like, what are the measurements when asked to perform the same action in the built-in head unit? And is this a contrived example, or does it represent typical use.

The headline has a similar problem. We already know that driver reaction time is effectively infinitely high for distracted driving. If the driver doesn't see the obstacle then they aren't just slow to react, they don't react to it at all... because why would they react to something that they don't realize exists? So you're comparing that fact to delays caused my chemical impairment? How? A driver with phone integration will have no impairment at all if he's not looking at the display at precisely the time of the incident, but intoxication has a persistent effect.

psychomugs• 6 years ago

The 90's was the pinnacle of in-car UX. No distracting touchscreens, no "eco" gauges that are more distracting than useful, just nice buttons and dials that let you do and know what you need and nothing more.

zzo38computer• 6 years ago

I agree, and I just hate touch screens in general. (I don't drive a car, but I still hate touch screens anyways.) Keyboard is much better. Not just car, but many other things (including television) have bad UX, too. They try to make a better UX but make a bad UX instead. I try to work against that writing my own software, although I cannot change the hardware; I can merely to suggest how to make a better one. For one thing, you should include a numeric keypad (if not a full keyboard); it can be useful for implementing many kind of functions.

globular-toast3• 6 years ago

Honda were still doing this well into the 2000s. Only their most recent models have, sadly, succumbed to the trend.

rkagerer• 6 years ago

Doesn't surprise me. Used Android Auto for a while, in my opinion it's a terribly designed interface for the purpose.

I miss tactile buttons and knobs that you could develop muscle memory around.

alasdair_• 6 years ago

In what dosage? Can I get 30mg of CarPlay? Can we get 300ml of Android Auto?

Without comparable dosage this is meaningless.

megablast• 6 years ago

It is insane that car companies can add whatever they want to make cars ever more dangerous.

globular-toast3• 6 years ago

I've recently upgraded to 2010 model car with a multi-function display after driving a 2005 Honda for the past 5 years. I've never been more distracted behind the wheel. The novelty has worn off a bit now so I don't look so much, but I can only imagine how distracting a full smartphone being there would be.

lvturner• 6 years ago

To me the biggest issue with all this is that it uses the center console screen for almost all data display - I much prefer using a phone mount and putting things just to the side of my steering wheel so I don't have to take my eyes off the road.

easytiger• 6 years ago

Been driving hire cars with huge touch screen UIs. Utterly awful and feels way way more dangerous than talking on the phone.

Look down, interact, wait to see if you hit the right spot, try again, wait to see visual confirmation of successful input. Often all the above fleeting between road and panel.

Voice interaction is pure UI cancer in a number of ways and doesn't help

carlmr• 6 years ago

The touch screen aspect is just one thing. At least in my car (2018 Seat Leon, i.e. VW group) the connection is very unstable, it doesn't retry on it's own, then sometimes there's no sound, sometimes there's no picture, then sometimes it reboots. All with a good USB cable. Starting the connection almost always takes 2-3 attempts. I'm guessing bad timeouts in the software.

It's highly distracting when you have bad UX and bad programming. And good software quality can't be legislated, in my experience at least the more regulation there is the worse the SW gets, because it gets written by bureaucrats, not software minded people.

specialist• 6 years ago

I recently tried CarPlay in a rental (for a long road trip). I gave up. Way too frustrating to use. Very distracting.

For instance, one stretch thru Dallas, my phone and CarPlay, which were connected, were giving me different turn-by-turn instructions.

Cliche: person with two watches doesn't know what time it is.

So I disabled CarPlay and just used aux-in for the audio from my phone.

Tagbert2• 6 years ago

That’s an odd result. CarPlay is just a way to mirror your phone’s screen and audio to the car’s screen. If you have one map app showing maps and giving directions then it would be the same on both screens and only one audio stream. Perhaps if you had two map apps running at the same time you might get different directions.

bhauer• 6 years ago

This seems to be an argument in favor of Tesla's full-stack approach of pairing high-capability infotainment with advanced driver assistance features. Tesla's data on collisions suggests the driver assistance works to reduce incidents.

Using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to add higher-capability infotainment to an otherwise unassisted vehicle does seem obviously risky and the data from the linked study appear to confirm that. My own anecdotal experience is that I am very distracted by Apple CarPlay in rental cars (my own vehicle is too old to be compatible). This is especially because the user interface is slow, with too much emphasis on animation rather than immediacy, and with too many behaviors that require waiting, such as resetting the map back to full-size.

Fudgel• 6 years ago

This may be naive, but I wonder if switching the display to e-ink would help?

Apple CarPlay, Android Auto distract drivers more than pot, alcohol, says study

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