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.

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whartung 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

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birdman3131 11 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	mylifeandtimes 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> So I don't personally find text hard to read or very much focus impacting. - Have you benchmarked your speed on text vs non-text controls that are otherwise equivalent? (i.e. both are button presses, both are always in the exact same location, ...)? - Have you benchmarked how this changes as you loose the similarities? Does this benchmark measure "time to complete task" or "time spent looking at control" (turning a physical knob vs a screen slider) - have you benchmarked your speed for fixed-location controls vs controls which may be buried in a menu item on a touch-screen? Do these benchmarks change if the control has delayed onset (pressing "play" takes 2 seconds to start the music, and you get no tactile response to tell you if you have successful pressed the button or not) Have you benchmarked how these skill comparisons decay with impairment? Do they decay equally, or does the text-based skill decay faster? Look, given this is HN I fully believe you are in the upper 99% on several aspects, making you with text controls faster than me with manual. But the question is would YOU be faster with text or manual? And how consistent is this?

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skydhash 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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fsckboy 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Anything that takes attention away from driving increases danger.

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

	▲	dghlsakjg 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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giantrobot 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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cramcgrab 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	dommer 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	dh2022 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		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).
	▲	4ndrewl 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That data doesn't seem to be talking about the same thing - ie touchscreens vs physical controls.
	▲	dghlsakjg 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.