Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/09/19/are-touchscreens-in-cars-dangerous

by Brajeshwar • 10 months ago

238 227 10 months ago

jleyank• 10 months ago

They're quite difficult to use without looking at them, and I've got better things to look at while driving. Better buttons that don't move and have "presence" than I can feel without looking.

dazc2• 10 months ago

Physical volume adjustment buttons on the steering wheel are about the only control I feel comfortable using whilst the car is moving. Anything more complex with a touch-screen interface is an accident waiting to happen.

amluto• 10 months ago

What about physical buttons off the wheel? A well-designed car might have quite a few: window controls, sound system volume knob, temperature up-down, etc.

In my first car, I could operate the windows, climate control and sound system without taking my eyes off the road at all, although I had to glance briefly at the (fixed) display to see what radio station I was tuned to if it wasn’t obvious.

doug_durham4• 10 months ago

I have two cars with two different button layouts. I have to look at the physical buttons to use them. It's no different for me than a screen.

non_aligned• 10 months ago

I would be surprised if that's the case. For commonly-used functions, you quickly learn knob shapes and their general locations. I'm sure you can adjust volume without looking in both cars.

With touchscreens, it's not just that you lose the tactile component, but all these interfaces are modal, with buttons that disappear or move around depending on the screen you're on.

Oh, you're on the radio screen? There's no way to adjust seat heating from here... or if there is one, it's in a different place than on the AC screen.

Swenrekcah• 10 months ago

I won’t argue with your lived experience but this would make you an extreme outlier.

About 20 years ago, every teenager in the world who had a mobile phone was able to select a contact from their phonebook and type an entire message and send, in class with their phone in their pocket.

This is possible because of physical buttons and a deterministic user interface. The same applies to cars and other control interfaces.

dh20222• 10 months ago

I preface my post by saying that I do not drive one of these cars that use touch screens to input car actions. So maybe what I am describing below is already done.

I reject the idea of touch screens for car functions because it takes more than one level of navigation to reach the active button. If the UI designers would change the design so that when the car starts moving the touch screen would change and lock to a display where all driving-related buttons (heating/wipers/car stereo/gears) are close by, highly visible and activated with a single touch I could see myself using a touch screen in a car.

My main reservation is taking my eyes and attention of the road to focus on navigating a touch screen UI put together by 5 teams and 3 different committees.

dghlsakjg4• 10 months ago

Unequivocally, yes. They are absolutely dangerous.

Anything that takes attention away from driving increases danger.

Are they more dangerous than older interfaces? My feeling is overwhelmingly yes, but I would be willing to see a study or hear arguments that some touchscreens are an improvement. A touch interface is fine (not great) as long as it never changes. As soon as you have to search for a control or menu you are dividing your attention away from driving.

giantrobot2• 10 months ago

Even a fixed touch UI is dangerous. You can't brace your hand easily to hit a touchscreen and your hand will bounce around while driving. Hitting the wrong button is as or more distracting than having to search for a control. Then there's the shitty UIs with small buttons that are hard to hit accurately even at a dead stop. It seems like every touch screen UI takes all the sins of modern crappy web design and turns it all to 11.

They're just terrible UX for the inside of a vehicle you're driving.

cramcgrab• 10 months ago

Based on the data, no https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

dommer• 10 months ago

The report seems focused more on crash rates, accident involvement, rates with Autopilot / Full Self-Driving vs without, and active/passive safety systems. Has zero insight into touchscreen and their safety issues. Also from the car manufacturer not independent and isn’t without bias.

4ndrewl• 10 months ago

That data doesn't seem to be talking about the same thing - ie touchscreens vs physical controls.

dh20222• 10 months ago

I do not trust anything coming out of Tesla. If you have a third party report that would be more credible (i.e. a report not made by car companies or their customers).

dghlsakjg4• 10 months ago

The data you provided contrasts Teslas (exclusively touch screens) against all other cars (many of which also have touch screens).

It doesn’t even pretend to control for other relevant variables, and makes precisely no assertions about touch screens vs. non touch screens.

All it “proves” is that riding a mile in a random Tesla is safer than riding a mile in a randomly chosen non-Tesla.

Why yes, any Tesla is likely safer than my 1998 Lexus ES300 in a variety of ways. No, that doesn’t mean that the touchscreen is what makes it safe.

whartung• 10 months ago

The reason they're dangerous is not because you have to interact with them, per se, its simply because they provide to much information that takes a lot of cognitive processing to interpret.

Specifically, text. Reading is "hard". Even things as simple as the title of the song on the radio. Especially when the text changes.

I have a modern LCD on my motorcycle, a BMW, that uses a WonderWheel (rotate to scroll up/down, and push or pull for right/left click) as an interface. It's very reminiscent of The Onions MacBook Wheel[0]. It is absolutely dangerous to use while riding. It's a cognitive black hole.

Obviously, the LCD is not alone in this case, the interaction pushes it all up to eleven. But the old school car interface was numbers and small words, and, eventually icons. Consider changing the temperature in a car, for me, I'd shove the hot/cold slider around until the air coming the from the vent was comfortable vs clicking up and down and deciding "do I want 72 or 73?".

And, yea, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I alone am a hazard when interacting with these things. So, maybe it's not fair for me to project my experiences to the population at large.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

birdman3131• 10 months ago

So I don't personally find text hard to read or very much focus impacting.

However, it is very person dependent. Personally, I am one of the fastest readers I know.

It's also day dependent. I've had days where my ability to focus switch is significantly impaired.

The big issue is that while there are people that touch screens are not going to impair their driving, you can't gear your system to them.

You have to aim it at the lowest common denominator.

Personally, I am a fan of my current vehicle which while being at 2015 because it's one of the police interceptors still has the basic ish radio. And has twist knobs for volume, tune, fan speed and temperature.

And while I probably wouldn't mind having the actual Ford sync stuff, I don't find myself missing it either.

fsckboy2• 10 months ago

Anything that takes attention away from driving increases danger.

parking takes attention away from driving, and as a result the danger drops.

dghlsakjg4• 10 months ago

Huh?

Parking is a subset of “driving”. When you are parking you are also still driving by most legal and practical definitions.

Once you have completed parking you are no longer driving, you are parked, that is the point at which the danger drops.

Parking itself though, is still driving, and is also when a significant number of minor and major collisions occur. Parking is so dangerous that we design many parking areas specifically to be durable to minor impacts as well as protect from parking mishaps. Bollards, curbs, concrete barriers, planters and other features are all placed to help lessen the dangers of parking.

skydhash• 10 months ago

An easy datapoint is race driving. There's no race car that have touch driving as primary input (or as input at all). As always, designing a tool should start with what master uses and then solving problems for a more general use. Touchscreens don't bring anything that improves car usage.

nine_k2• 10 months ago

Un-paywalled: https://archive.is/u1OqX

In short: various studies show that touchscreens draw attention of the driver for longer, so they are more dangerous at speed.

European agencies noticed and started requiring physical dedicated switches for certain most important functions to get a full safety rating.

Car makers also gradually revert to physical switches, and also push voice control for certain functions.

ghaff3• 10 months ago

Voice control is sufficiently finicky that I wouldn’t want to rely on it but it can help for things like navigation changes.

macrolime• 10 months ago

Voice control is much much much worse than touch screens. You have to try 10-20 times to spell out a command before it maybe does want you want, and that is if you're incredibly lucky

nine_k2• 10 months ago

That's weird. I never ever had trouble with voice menus on the phone, and I bet that phone lines are worse than what you can have in a car, and the processing resources spent on recognition should not be large.

aednichols• 10 months ago

Mileage varies a lot on this one. I have an Android Automotive car (not to be confused with Android Auto) and “Hey Google” is basically flawless for changing car settings while driving.

crazygringo• 10 months ago

An analysis published in 2020 by the Transport Research Laboratory, a British organisation, found that touchscreens impaired a driver’s reaction time more than driving over the legal alcohol limit.

The question isn't whether they're dangerous, anymore.

The question is, when is safety legislation going to be passed that prevents them from being used for any routine adjustments while driving. I.e. windshield wipers, AC, change volume, skip to next track, etc.

Like it's fine if you still use them to input a GPS destination, change long-term car settings, connect a Bluetooth device, etc.

But we need to separate out the actions routinely used during driving and legislate physical controls. Why is there not legislation for this already?

JustExAWS11• 10 months ago

The cars I have had don’t let you change BT settings or many other settings and Apple Maps at least doesn’t let you type in an address while you’re driving from the display I don’t think. I’ve done it from my phone as a passenger.

LoganDark• 10 months ago

It's an Apple thing to limit keyboard access when the car is moving. Android Auto doesn't have it.

HPsquared• 10 months ago

Voice controls are much better for that kind of thing anyway. I expect they'll continue to improve.

bongodongobob3• 10 months ago

The Bluetooth thing infuriates me. If the connection fails on my way to work, I have to fucking pull over and park to reconnect my phone. It's literally just pushing the Bluetooth button on my dash. But oh no, that is not available when in motion. Navigate through multiple screens to adjust anything else? Totally fine.

lazystar2• 10 months ago

Why is there not legislation for this already?

Cars that dont kill their drivers are more likely to have repeat customers; i.e. other factors besides legislation will force car manufacterers to shift their designs back to this approach. My 2024 CRV has exactly what you describe.

mort96• 10 months ago

The fraction of car owners who die every year is relatively tiny. The fraction of car owners who die due to their own mistakes, where those mistakes were caused by the car, is even smaller. It's a segment of the market that is safe to ignore, financially speaking.

RobinL• 10 months ago

If that were the case they'd be no need for seatbelt laws

derriz• 10 months ago

The other factors being that enough people get killed so that a shrinking market share forces their management decide to change their car designs?

I have a libertarian streak when it comes to drugs, porn/prostitution, free speech, patent law, etc. but in this case I’m perfectly fine with governments “getting involved” to ensure that I can shop for a vehicle without becoming a random sample in a statistical study of car safety. Especially if a possible outcome is my preventable death.

NeotokyoFan2• 10 months ago

Survivorship bias, information asymmetry and product design is at play here.

100% rational and 100% informed consumers do not exist. There's both information asymmetry between manufacturers and consumers. I'm sure there's man fatal accidents that can be traced back to faulty components and improper design that gets covered up by manufacturers. The Volkswagen emissions scandal was just easily measurable.

Everyone likes it that way. Consumers are attracted to features, gimmicks and marketing because that's what works for marketing and sells. No one wants to buy a "900% less accidents than others" car. But everyone wants a bluetooth and wifi enabled car with seat subscriptions. Besides, what's a rational consumer gotta do? They gotta get up at 06:30 and make breakfast for little Timmy and take him to daycare. They need a new car by the end of the month so they better choose between big touch screen or little touch screen with a control knob.

If I can't get a dumb TV, I just don't buy a dumb TV or watch any TV at all. But you can't not travel by car.

drowsspa• 10 months ago

Being so ideologically rigid that you suggest survival of the fittest over legislation...

mitthrowaway22• 10 months ago

Cars kill more than only their customers. Can we at least have legislation to prevent cars from killing the people in front of them, who were never customers to begin with? Somehow we have laws requiring passenger airbags, but not pedestrian airbags...

unglaublich• 10 months ago

Cars don't kill their drivers typically, they kill people outside of the vehicle.

bryanrasmussen2• 10 months ago

People buy a new car generally every 5-7 years.

furthermore there does not seem to be any great brand loyalty in the market

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/automotive-consumers-more-di...

maybe because of being afraid of dying but probably not, but given how often people buy new cars (not that often) and the lack of loyalty, I think it would not make any sense from a business perspective to give a damn if the customers die (disregarding moral perspective which I'm sure is a primary concern for automotive manufacturers)

oneeyedpigeon• 10 months ago

The question is, when is safety legislation going to be passed that prevents them from being used for any routine adjustments while driving.

We already have this exact legislation in the UK.

quietbritishjim• 10 months ago

Really? All new cars seem to have heating controls on a touchscreen. Are you sure you aren't thinking of something else, like the regulations against the use of mobile phones while driving? (Even that is allowed so long as it's on a mount.)

nothrabannosir• 10 months ago

I would support legislation which disables the touch screen when the passenger seat is unoccupied and the vehicle is in motion.

But I admit I’m being selfish: I don’t drive but share the road with people who do.

mjevans• 10 months ago

I would not.

I would support legislation that forced a recall of all defective cars (ones that required touchscreens to do basic car things).

LorenPechtel2• 10 months ago

Yeah, the passenger seat is a problem. I've been very annoyed with my phone before for locking out when my car is in motion--even when I'm not the one handling the phone.

mook• 10 months ago

I would support that, as long as it specified all new cars (not existing ones).

I drive a car with a touchscreen. Obviously, I'm not touching it in motion otherwise my position would be dumb… sometimes it does dumb things and I'll just have to ignore it for the drive or find a parking space to stop and deal with it.

bo1024• 10 months ago

One not-so-fun place this could go is mandatory voice recognition commands, leading to everything said in the car being recorded and stored by the manufacturers.

everdrive• 10 months ago

We just have zero reasons to have touch screens in cars. They need to be removed, not restricted.

hbrav• 10 months ago

Mazdas do lock the screen when in motion.

Actions can be accomplished using a 'big knob' button that can be turned or pressed. The driver can still distract themselves, but I believe it's to a lesser extent that the touch screen.

zzo38computer• 10 months ago

I do not like touch screens, in general. I do not drive a car, but as a passenger I have found some functions (but not all functions) locked while the car is moving, even though it could sometimes be helpful for the passenger to operate it (or read it out loud) for the driver so that the driver does not have to (although this is only because the driver wanted me to do it; I otherwise have no use for them). However, physical controls would be better.

yieldcrv• 10 months ago

An analysis published in 2020 by the Transport Research Laboratory, a British organisation, found that touchscreens impaired a driver’s reaction time more than driving over the legal alcohol limit.

in that case, maybe I actually am a good drunk driver, if I ever did that

hedora• 10 months ago

I would support legislation that requires routine controls to be safety tested, and further requires all functionality to behave the same regardless of vehicle velocity or whether it is in gear.

There could be a narrow carve out for the manual, and stuff like software updates that make the console reboot.

If you attempt to adjust the bass and treble on our kia when it is in gear, the fucking sliders are not only broken, but they randomly move around on the screen like a “I bet you can’t dismiss this dialogue” prank app.

On old bmws, you can set gps destinations using the jog wheel while the car is in motion.

On the new ones, that’s disabled, the voice control reads off legal disclaimers and aggressively times out, making you restart the flow if you dare pay attention to the road while driving.

On top of that the (enshittified) jog wheel is erratic if the car is in motion. How does this stuff pass safety tests?

Zanni3• 10 months ago

Depends enormously on the implementation and use case. My daily driver is a Tesla Model 3, which has a big, beautiful touch screen. But I almost never touch it while I'm driving. Anything I need to control can be handled by voice command ("set temp to 70") or the scroll wheels in the steering wheel. (The one irritating exception is the windshield wipers.)

JustExAWS11• 10 months ago

I absolutely hate the Tesla screen and the entire infotainment system. I refuse to buy any car without CarPlay support.

fiddlerwoaroof• 10 months ago

I’ve rented cars with CarPlay and the Tesla solution is a lot nicer imo.

dpkirchner• 10 months ago

Agreed. I've never once said "this car's software is great and I hope I can use it for a decade".

dfxm12• 10 months ago

I was annoyed that to get the safety features on the car I wanted, I had to get a configuration with a touchscreen (ironic, I know).

However, once I took it for a test drive, I was relieved to find that almost every button I want to press while driving can be found on the steering wheel without looking. Only the air con controls are left out.

moepstar• 10 months ago

The one irritating exception is the windshield wipers

Push the wiper button (left stalk) once, adjust with left scrollwheel (either up/down if on a recent firmware or left/right if it’s older than a year or so).

Facelift has a dedicated button on the steering wheel I think and then scroll wheel as well…

andruby• 10 months ago

Does that work on the model 3 without stalks? Ie: does it have a wiped button on the steering wheel?

Zanni3• 10 months ago

Awesome - I didn't know this!

YZF3• 10 months ago

My daily driver is also a model 3 and I do sometimes interact with the screen while driving. For example if I need to see alternate routes while navigating or if I want to check my power consumption. Or if I want to listen to some Internet radio station.

I think they key though is that you're not constantly messing with the controls. It's up to you to pick the right moment and to limit your "disengagement". This is very different than e.g. texting someone while driving.

There are many things you can do in vehicles without touch screens to get distracted. You can even get distracted purely in your head while thinking about other things. Maintaining focus on what's going on while driving is on you.

I bet the overall reduced attention span due to social media and other effects has a big impact on drivers being able to maintain focus while driving.

ncr100• 10 months ago

Touchscreens are like "secret handshakes":

When driving I may need to fine-tune a setting in a range, OR seek a specific touch- or switch-point amongst a field of identically sized levers or buttons.

My solution is to seek an anchor point with my hand while other fingers do the work. I like hanging my hand on physical knob controls, e.g. for volume, in a non-input direction and without motivating force to change the underlying value.

The problem with anchoring is that my arms jiggle like bouncy bridges, when driving over any kind of bump. This external force disrupts my solution. It can be somewhat solved by tighter grip on the knob or non-input region of the control.

Additional problems come from having touch-screens - they create an extra physical problem of reducing the anchor-safe areas on the dashboard.

And, I workaround touch-screen's problem of "need to anchor" vs "can't touch without committing to change" by tenting my hand on dead-zones of the screen, or around the bezel or surrounding non-input surface.

So touchscreens, for me, add complexity to using the vehicle as a tool to accomplish the deed. Like "secret handshakes" are to greeting.

JustExAWS11• 10 months ago

And with Apple’s brain dead idea to project interactive widgets that were designed for the iPhone onto CarPlay, it’s gotten less safe.

No matter what you think about Apple’s “wall garden” for safety reasons Apple use to be very strict about the interface for CarPlay apps and responsible app developers were thoughtful about their CarPlay interface.

Now developers widgets will end up on CarPlay even when they didn’t intend it.

theropost• 10 months ago

Interesting point about touchscreens..I think it highlights a bigger issue with “safety” features sometimes backfiring. For example, that relentless beeping when the passenger seat detects weight but it’s just a backpack or groceries. I wonder how many drivers have been more distracted trying to silence the alarm than they would’ve been just ignoring the bag in the first place. Feels like we’ve traded one kind of risk for another. Do they really research this, or is it more of a gimmmic

SilverElfin2• 10 months ago

Dial based navigation for the screen is best. You can use it by muscle memory on cars that have it. While we’re at it let’s also get rid of auto start stop, which is frustrating, saves little, and harms long term durability.

ghaff3• 10 months ago

I can’t believe you can’t permanently disable auto start stop among all the myriad settings on my Honda. Fortunately there’s a very convenient button I’ve learned to reflexively hit after I start the car.

SilverElfin2• 10 months ago

The law prevents you from selling vehicles with a permanent disable feature. Some cars have after market workarounds but on most of them you have to turn it off manually each time you start the car. The worst are cars that put that switch deep in some menu.

turkishdelight• 10 months ago

It isn't just the touch aspect, but also the "ruin your night vision" aspect. Most pedestrians don't carry lights around, or even wear light-colored clothing at night.

Zanni3• 10 months ago

Tesla screens switch to dark mode at night.

qball2• 10 months ago

All screens (that aren't OLED ones, which aren't generally suitable for cars due to their shorter lifespan) still glow when displaying black.

So it's still a glowing thing in your field of vision. Of course, you're already going to be flash-blinded by retards leaving their LED high-beams on as they pass you, so maybe none of this matters.

nathan_compton• 10 months ago

Dangerous, probably, fucking stupid, definitely.

dark__paladin• 10 months ago

I'll save you the read: yes

bilsbie2• 10 months ago

You’d tbink would at least be some design guides for the UI to be bigger and more forgiving.

Why make people try to hit tiny targets while they’re driving? Every button could be a square inch.

qball2• 10 months ago

Garbage software in automotive is guaranteed because it's a cost center. Why bother hiring the best when good enough will do? It's not like the customer has any choice, right?

The only company that doesn't treat it like this is Tesla (and to a point Rivian), but they're software companies that just happen to produce cars rather than the other way around.

radonic• 10 months ago

I agree that touchscreens in cars are dangerous. But the real problem is that complex actions that can't be done quickly by feel and familiarity are more distracting, so replacing them with difficult to use combinations of buttons and lights would be no better. I suspect some safety measures integrated into phones and car interfaces to prevent certain actions also could cause frustration and distraction.

But these things may be only a temporary problem. Self-driving vehicles may soon become the norm.

annexrichmond• 10 months ago

I find using CarPlay more dangerous than my phone. At least with my phone I’m using a familiar interface and I can use at any angle. With CarPlay my panel is awkwardly positioned, the UI is confusing, and I have to pay far more attention to what I’m doing.

I’m not suggesting at all it’s ok to use your phone while driving, and is unlawful for a good reason. Yet CarPlay, a dumbed down phone bolted to your dash, is totally fine, despite being no more safe IMO

CharlesW2• 10 months ago

One point in the "pro" column is that every CarPlay implementation supports voice control, which is safer than taking your hands off the wheel even for physical controls.

oblio• 10 months ago

Does that work well, and does it work well in every language where CarPlay & co are sold?

harrall• 10 months ago

My phone is also mounted above my dash immediately to the right of my steering wheel, allowing me to always have the road in sight.

With many in-car screens, you have to look down and right. You can’t even see the road in your peripheral anymore.

I’ve driven for over 20 years and have only slammed on my breaks 3 times in my entire life and not once in the last 10 years.

I’m going to admit: I’ve done extremely bad things while driving but for 20 years, my eyes basically have never left a small window that includes the road, even if I’m fiddling with my phone or stuffing Panda Express into my face with a stupid fork.

I literally bring a phone mount with me when I rent a car on a trip.

rr808• 10 months ago

Agreed - my old car wasn't "smart" and I had phone on a dash mount for GPS. I now have a new car and it works better but the ergonomics are worse.

theonething• 10 months ago

Mazda does a good job with screen placement. It's higher up on the dash, so you can see it clearly while looking straight ahead in normal driving position. Ie you don't have to take your eyes off the road to see it. Also, instead of touch screen to navigate and select, you use a scroll wheel that is in the center console behind the gear shifter. It's within easy reach of your right hand (in left driver side cars) and again, you don't have to take your eyes off the road to use it.

bilsbie2• 10 months ago

Something like Tesla could improve on this by having a shortcuts type system the user could set up.

For example on nice days I want to vent the outside air into the car instead of ac or heat and it’s a good five+ buttons to click.

zoklet-enjoyer• 10 months ago

Of course they are. I don't know why they were ever allowed

Maro• 10 months ago

Anybody who has used a touchscreen and spent an extra moment fiddling on the screen, and then had to adjust the steering knows that touchscreens are dangerous. In my cars touchscreens are only for Android Auto, which is managable, all the core driving stuff is traditional knobs and buttons. I'd never buy a fully touchscreen car like a Tesla. Sitting in them for Uber drives is more than enough for me..

llboston• 10 months ago

Traditional buttons and knobs are not the solution. Voice control with local LLM will be the future.

amatecha• 10 months ago

That sounds terrible. I want less computers in my car, not more!

phito• 10 months ago

Please no, I hate using any voice control, even if it works well. Sometimes, especially when I am alone, I do not want to speak.

EatFlamingDeath• 10 months ago

Thanks stranger, for speaking up for all of us that hate voice control. Sometimes I just want quiet.

mylifeandtimes2• 10 months ago

That's going to work great when you are driving home in the rain from a dentist visit and cannot get it to understand when you say "turn on windshield wipers".

gwbas1c• 10 months ago

The problem with voice control is that it requires you to know (or guess) a lot about the thing you're trying to control. When it malfunctions, it takes more, not less, attention than a touchscreen.

I've driven Teslas for seven years, and I still have no ^%$#^ing idea what I can and can't do with voice control.

kjkjadksj• 10 months ago

Voice control barely works. 50 = 15.

rsync• 10 months ago

I think that touchscreens are dangerous in cars but I’m open-minded and can imagine implementations that wouldn’t be unsafe…

What I am absolutely convinced of is that touchscreens are cheap and tacky.

The current trend of so-called “luxury” cars with wrapping screens all the way around the passenger is terrible.

A high end, or luxury, car should have physical controls and physical dials/gauges.

I’m reminded of a quote I heard describing the then new Bentley SUV: “what a poor person thinks a rich person’s car looks like”.

RandomBacon3• 10 months ago

so-called “luxury” cars with wrapping screens all the way around the passenger is terrible.

I'm thinking about the upcoming Ramcharger, but one drawback is the stupid screen in front of the front passenger seat. I'd rather have a leather dash.

hinkley• 10 months ago

Part of the reason I’ve held onto my Jetta for far too long is that is has about 2 dozen physical buttons on the dash, and almost half of them are wired to the entertainment system. Including a handful on the steering wheel.

Every time I eyeball an electric vehicle it’s a clown car from a UX perspective and I have people who would be pretty upset if I died trying to change the song on my stereo.

Group_B• 10 months ago

Agree, I do think Mazda gets it right though. No touch screen for most models. Screen is controlled with a knob. It’s a tiny bit clunky, but a million times better than all the touchscreen bs.

hyperrail• 10 months ago

Consumer Reports' reviews of newer Mazdas always stress the infotainment system as a big negative, to the point that I would seriously reconsider them as a result.

Apparently it's a case of "right idea, wrong execution." The deep menu hierarchies and small text make the jog wheel knob controls even more awkward (in CR's view) than a decent touch-screen system plus a few buttons. [1]

Maybe that's one reason that BMW has just abandoned their Mazda-like wheel controller [2], despite having had it for years before Mazda.

(Interestingly CR says the latest Mazdas do have a touchscreen, but touches are allowed when the car is moving only for CarPlay/Android Auto.)

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/mazda/cx-50-hybrid/2025... - "the CX-50's infotainment system is frustrating and distracting to use while driving. [...] the text- and list-based menu structure forces drivers to glance away from the road for too long. Even simple radio tasks require multiple taps and twists of the rotary controller knob"

[2] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63576709/bmw-kills-idrive...

saddat• 10 months ago

A Tesla without head up display is just ridicules. No speedometer than on center display

chrisldgk2• 10 months ago

Anecdotal evidence, but I’ve been driven into twice over the course of the last two weeks after driving every day for ten years and never having had a crash. Whether it’s touch screens mounted in the car or people being on their phone, something has to be done about people being distracted while driving.

I’m in Germany and using your phone while driving can lead to your license being revoked - the problem is that it’s not really enforced at all in my experience. Maybe it should be.

Rant over, I’m just honestly pissed about my car being wrecked TWICE and me being paranoid looking in the rear view mirror every time I’m stood still because people apparently can’t register a car standing at a signal.

BriggyDwiggs42• 10 months ago

I mean I doubt the problem went from 0 to 100 in the last few months, so I’m just not sure your anecdote says much about the amount of distracted driving, just bad luck.

chrisldgk2• 10 months ago

Yeah no, I agree. Still though, I do think people being distracted while driving is a big problem.

WaitWaitWha• 10 months ago

anecdotal experience: I rent cars quite often and most of them are now touch screen to some extent.

Touchscreens are extremely distracting for me. I have to look at the screen to make sure I am touching it at the right spot. Often I have to select the "page" the necessary buttons is on, even for very simple things like adjusting the temperature or turning the fan up or down. In some cars this takes several touches.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are just as bad. for some reason the interface is inconsistent enough across vehicles that requires me to look at the screen. I no longer connect my phones to the vehicle. This of course creates another problem. Most "smart" cars no longer have radios; the expectation is that a paired phone will stream the audio. On pre-"smart" vehicles, I could turn on and off the radio, select stations, without looking even in unfamiliar vehicles after a few initial glances. Not so with "smart" cars. Either I will have to fiddle with the phone, or with the "touch" screen, which triggers the multiple taps to find the place where the "radio"/audio is located.

Some big auto manufacturers plan to drop Android Auto and Apple CarPlay because they want that sweet, sweet personal data juices flowing to them.

I have also noticed that some of my senior friends struggle reading the screen, be it glare or text site, or icons that they do not understand.

I think voice recognition is a viable path for people who can speak clearly (my voice sounds like a '46 Cletrac Crawler on full power, should see the AI driven transcription!)

ponector• 10 months ago

Really curious which car has no FM radio as pretty much every model has it as default option.

atoav• 10 months ago

Or phrased in a different way: "Is an interface that forces drivers to look away from the road dangerous?"

To which the honest and obvious answer is that it is hard to imagine it wouldn't. My old 90s VW Polo could be operated completely blindly after driving it 10 times, any new car is much harder to operate blindly.

qmr• 10 months ago

Well duh.

https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperfor...

hk1337• 10 months ago

Simple answer is an unequivocal yes but people are also dangerous. If it’s not a touchscreen, it will be something else.

Havoc• 10 months ago

It means taking eyes off road while navigating a possibly multi-level menu.

Contrast that with old school radios that had physically distinct feeling buttons (and physically elevated dots - like on the f and j key on keyboards) and yeah absolutely.

I'd be much more interested in how an HUD and say voice control compares. I could see that being very competitive safety wise

ajsnigrutin• 10 months ago

Touchscreens are great! You can put intuitive UIs on them, so if you need to reset the TPMS setting, change the backlight color, set "coming home" light duration, cabin illumination delay, etc., it's much easier to do so on a touchscreen than to fiddle with a menu in a single line, or even worse, hold some weird key combination when powering on the car.

But for basic radio controls, AC control, windows, etc., physical buttons are the way to go!

aftbit• 10 months ago

They should be replaced with multi-function displays like aircraft. Keep the contextual screen, just require a handful of physical controls along the side and bottom of the display. This allows people to interact with them without taking their eyes and attention off the road.

The_President2• 10 months ago

The old school Supra/Saab wraparound cockpit style driver seat was an operator's favorite.

ViscountPenguin• 10 months ago

Anecdotally, looking through the car windows of the miriad of lunatic drivers who've sped through zebra crossings without stopping at my local crossing, they're much more likely to be fiddling with their car screen than average.

NoNameHaveI• 10 months ago

I own an older Lexus RX350, which I upgraded the stereo head unit from an outdated cassette/CD player to an Alpine unit with Android Auto/Apple Car Play. While it certainly packs more features, needing to look down to do things like frequency search is inherently dangerous because it takes my eyes off the road. Compounding the matter is if I hit a bump, and it makes my finger bounce and I end up hitting the wrong button and spending MORE time looking at the screen to make a correction. I do my best to use voice recognition while in motion, but sometimes it just doesn't work. For routine items like fan, temperature, volume, etc, hard buttons make sense. But things like updating maps are much harder to do via hard buttons.

rbalicki• 10 months ago

Many years ago, I saw a video of a touchscreen input demo where the touchscreen could tell how many fingers you were placed on the screen, i.e. track each finger independently. So, for example, you might imagine that two finger scrolling up/down controls the volume, three fingers controls the AC strength, etc.

This also gave you another two degrees of freedom: expansion vs contraction and rotation. So, you might start with three fingers close together and expand out. Or you might rotate three fingers clockwise to proceed to the next track.

This gives you enough degrees of freedom to never need to look at the screen for routine actions! Sadly, I haven't seen anything about it since then. Large changes like this to UX are going to be inherently hard to introduce into cars, but alas, feels like a missed opportunity.

stavros• 10 months ago

All (multitouch) touchscreens support this. For example, my BYD Seal supports a three-finger swipe, up/down for temperature and left/right for fan speed.

The main problem with this is that people don't tend to remember complicated, unintuitive gestures like expanding/contracting/rotating/etc.

bethekidyouwant• 10 months ago

I’ve been in cars with really dumb selector wheels in the centre console and I imagine they can be just as distracting.

aeternum• 10 months ago

Human driving is the thing that is dangerous and will soon be banned. Enjoy it while it lasts.

wslh• 10 months ago

What happens when water drops into these touchscreens? Do they have the same issues mobile phones have?

znpy• 10 months ago

Touchscreen are incredibly dangerous in car. I have clear memory of operating controls in my car without looking at them (meaning: i could keep my eyes on the road) because of muscle memory and tactile feedback.

Basically: if i hit the button row that controls the radio i can recognize it using my fingers. I know the third button is "next station". I remember the dial at the left of that button rows is for volume. I don't need to look. I can keep my eyes on the road.

But with touch screens? Everything goes away. Not only i cannot employ any kind of memory anymore, i also might do things i don't want to do, because the control changes (different UIs) and i cannot be sure in what UI the touch screen currently is without looking at it (and taking my eyes off the road).

It's crazy that modern cars have 10/13/14 inches display right at the driver side.

diebeforei485• 10 months ago

Voice control is the safest, and Tesla's voice control is good.

epgui• 10 months ago

Yes.

mazone• 10 months ago

The most dangerous about the touch screen in my car is a warning message that come up first when the entertainment system boots, warning about using the screen while driving that i need to accept.

doright• 10 months ago

Touchscreens on older cars used to disable themselves if the car was in motion. I think how the safety of in-car controls is perceived has changed since then.

aidenn0• 10 months ago

I read somewhere a statistic that using CarPlay increased reaction times more than texting, which is a bit terrifying.

danans• 10 months ago

I suspect that many of the accidents that happen with touchscreens are frontal collisions with slowed down cars when the driver is distracted with the touchscreen. A few regulations that might help with this:

All cars with touchscreens need to have automatic forward collision detection and emergency braking, and if it's not enabled, the touch screen should have very limited functionality. No scrolling music, no sending texts, etc.

A car with forward collision detection should show a clear warning a few seconds before it triggers the brakes, and indicate the warning on the screen. Chevy is already doing this by showing a "seconds before collision" indicator on the display in front of the driver. They should make it even louder (visually) and disable the touchscreen if it falls below 2 seconds.

theturtle• 10 months ago

Short answer: yeah.

ok123456• 10 months ago

Lex Fridman lied. People Died.

user1999919• 10 months ago

cars statistically ARE DANGEROUS. The public has just been brainwashed into believing this yearly sacrifice is okay.

The_President2• 10 months ago

As King, I declare we designate a large volcano for the Car Gods for which from here forward, all destroyed cars must be shipped to, and sacrificed.

danielodievich• 10 months ago

Driving a 2002 Mini here with fully analog controls everywhere. I don't need to look at anything and I love it. Since I hardly drive anywhere this should last me a while.

Fun thing is that this car has volume and radio channel change buttons on the BACK of the steering wheel so you can do change things with just a flip of a finger without moving anywhere. I told my little kids it had voice recognition to change volume and radio but it could only understand russian. They only figured that out once they started to try to drive it. They still laugh about it.

KevinMS• 10 months ago

And don't replace them with fake buttons that are also distracting. Buttons and knobs need to be designed so you can quickly glance to target them, but from then on, you can feel or hear how you are interacting with them.

8n4vidtmkvmk• 10 months ago

You shouldn't even have to glance. Just feel around.

0manrho• 10 months ago

Yes, and terrible UX to boot.

lunias• 10 months ago

Touchscreens are only useful in instances where I don't want to carry around peripherals; i.e. mobile devices. If it's installed in the dash of a car, it's not mobile and there is a better way to interface w/ it.

seanssel• 10 months ago

I didn’t want any touchscreens in my car when moving on from my ‘01 Integra (RIP). Got a 2021 Mazda3, and I think the layout is fantastic with the wheel and physical buttons. It also comes in manual :)

Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?

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