7 ms·

Can you safely operate the entertainment system while driving? With physical buttons, I can turn the volume knob or cycle through radio station presets without

Can you safely operate the entertainment system while driving? With physical buttons, I can turn the volume knob or cycle through radio station presets without taking my attention off the road. With a touch screen, you don't get tactile feedback and modal dialogs or different screens can block controls, so you have to divert your gaze and attention to the screen. I haven't driven in a Tesla, so maybe they've figured it out.

mdorazio 11y ago
Only if you use the steering wheel controls. Despite what others may believe, anything you need to do on the giant touch screen absolutely cannot be done safely while driving.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I wonder, is there actual evidence that physical buttons are better? I don't doubt that screwing with a touchscreen while driving is dangerous, but I have to wonder about the common wisdom that screwing with physical buttons while driving isn't.
  - skj 11y ago
    This is not evidence per se, but with physical buttons you don't have to take your eyes off the road.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I wonder how many drivers actually learn their controls that well. Anecdotally (which I realize is worthless, I just don't have anything better to go on) I see a lot of drivers taking their eyes off the road to look at physical buttons, and I was even in a crash where the driver just drove off the road while fiddling with the radio.
      - tzs 11y ago
        It probably depends on the design of the physical buttons. I've had cars where the physical buttons were sliders and I usually had to glance at them, especially when there were multiple slides parallel to each other (say for fan speed and hot/cold mix). That's because the part that I had to interact with would be in different places, depending on the current setting. It would require enough feeling around to make sure I had the right control that it would probably be more distracting than a quick glance. My current car (2006 Honda CR-V) uses round buttons for many things. I do not need to glance at them. The fan speed control is always in the same place. The hot/cold mix control is always in the same place. The air routing control is always in the same place. So, if I want to change fan speed, for instance, I reach to the same fixed location every time, and then rotate the knob clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on whether I want to increase or decrease the fan speed. Unlike with sliders, the current setting does not affect what I have to do to find the control or interact with it.
      - marcoperaza 11y ago
        It's not just remembering where the buttons are, it's the ease of using them. I don't have to remember the exact position of every button. I can feel for the button if I miss it, I can feel whether I'm fat-fingering other buttons and adjust, and I know when I've successfully pressed the button. This all adds up to me not looking at the dashboard.
    - bobwaycott 11y ago
      I was going to say the same thing. I know where the buttons are, so I can just feel for them without looking away from the road. Can't feel your way around a touchscreen.
      - jkestner 11y ago
        My Ford uses Fitt's Law to good effect. The big functions (phone, audio, navigation, climate) each have a button in one of the four corners of the screen. You can slide til you feel the bezel and press. That still doesn't help with subfunctions like picking a radio station, etc. but voice control and steering wheel buttons pick up the slack. I still miss well-placed physical controls.
        marcoperaza 11y ago
        That's a neat trick on Ford's part. Maybe car touchscreens need a different interaction language. Instead of touch being the primary action trigger, touch would only change the selection (and produce some tactile/haptic feedback as the selection changes) and a harder press (with its own distinct feedback) would actually activate the function. By dragging your finger around the screen, you could feel out the layout of the controls.
  - mdorazio 11y ago
    Yes, distraction.gov has some research you might be interested in, based on studies of actual car crashes. Note that the key point is distraction, not necessarily touchscreens by themselves. The problem is that it's impossible to use a touchscreen without looking at it, which means you're not looking at the road, and are thus distracted. NHTSA basically says that if it takes more than a single quick glance to perform an action, it's dangerous. This is why most OEMs lock out the touch screen controls while the car is in motion.
    - thrownaway2424 11y ago
      Ha! most OEMs like which ones? I've never seen a car where the touchscreen controls are locked while driving. At most I've seen ones that either won't let you use a touch keyboard while driving, or that will let you do that, after tapping a warning message about that being dangerous.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        Mazdas lock out the touchscreens when driving, forcing you to use the "commander" knob instead. And not all functions are available when moving.
      - vinay427 11y ago
        Lexus vehicles used to do this, at least back in 2006, so that you could only operate basic functions but could not set navigation destinations, etc. It was a huge pain, but given the touchscreen-only interface it made sense to minimize distractions. With my current car in one of the best designed control wheel UIs in the industry, I can navigate the menus almost exclusively without looking at the display (given some practice).
      - kalleboo 11y ago
        I believe it's the law in Japan, or at least they all do it here (in addition to disabling the obligatory built-in TV). Most dealers will pull out the sense wire from the back of the console if you ask them to
      - thebakeshow 11y ago
  - superuser2 11y ago
    It should be obvious that keeping your eyes on the road (you learn to use volume and HVAC controls by feel pretty quick) is less dangerous than looking down at a screen.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I'm wary of obvious things, because so often they turn out to be wrong.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - superuser2 11y ago
        You really don't believe that watching the road is safer than not watching the road? I appreciate skepticism, but that just seems too extreme.
        mikeash 11y ago
        I'm really not convinced that having your eyes on the road and your attention on your fingers is safer than glancing away. I think it's probably right, but I'd like something better than just "it's obvious!"
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Attention is a funny thing. Talking on a phone with your eyes on the road can take quite a bit of our attention. Its not about the eyes - glancing here or there is what we do all day. Its the mental model in our head - more than one is hard. Imagining the person on the other end of the phone call is a mental model - and it can push the 'road model' right out. So it depends on how much cpu it takes. Not just where we're looking.
  - mikey_p 11y ago
    Are you seriously asking if muscle memory is a thing? Because yes, it's absolutely a thing and anyone that's done much with interfaces would know this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Doesn't that apply to touchscreen interfaces too?
  - alblue 11y ago
    In general aviation aircraft the important levers/buttons are all explicitly sized/shaped/coloured differently to avoid confusion. The last thing you want to happen is come in for landing, reduce your throttle and discover that you've accidentally pulled the mixture/cut-off to kill the engine. Fortunately that's the kind of mistake you only make once ...
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Heh, as if. In my plane, the flaps, spoilers, and landing gear levers are all inches apart, have similar colors, and similar shapes. But yes, clearly they should be. But there's a pretty big difference between critical flight controls and controls for the music or HVAC.
- robmcm 11y ago
  What if you are not driving, but using auto pilot?
cynix 11y ago
I usually engage Autopilot before operating the touchscreen, so that I can take my eyes off the road briefly.
cstejerean 11y ago
My Dodge Charger has touch screen control for most functions (but not all). I have not found any trouble operating it while driving, but I'm sure there is a big difference between finding buttons on an 8.4" touchscreen vs 15" or larger.
- bradlys 11y ago
  I have a 2014 dodge charger. I absolutely abhor the touch screen for just about any function. It's painfully difficult to use without looking as too many buttons are close together and you have to really lean over to operate most of them. I feel it was poorly designed. (Just like having the cupholders behind the shifter) I cannot operate the touch screen reliably without looking at it and even while looking it's still difficult. I'm glad it still has physical controls for most functions although even those aren't very good (it's hard to feel the difference on some of the buttons).
- i_laugh_at_you 11y ago
  Lots of people text and drive but I wouldn't advise it.
theseatoms 11y ago
Relatedly, does anyone have a sense of how far out we are from consumer-grade haptic-feedback touchscreens? Seems like the obvious next step.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  >Relatedly, does anyone have a sense of how far out we are from consumer-grade haptic-feedback touchscreens? Well, they had them in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While not actually shown close-up in the show, the technical manual explained that the flat touchscreens actually provided tactile feedback, and of course were reconfigurable. How'd they do it? Simple: according to the technical manual, they used miniature force fields. We're not very close to developing any kind of force fields right now.... On a more serious note, I believe there's been some research into using ultrasonics to provide some kind of tactile feedback. And of course lots of phones now have vibrating feedback.
- vinay427 11y ago
  The BlackBerry Storm had a haptic system, but it didn't seem to catch on, and it also did not have separate buttons so was not as easy-to-use as a menu with conventional buttons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Storm

mdorazio 11y ago

Only if you use the steering wheel controls. Despite what others may believe, anything you need to do on the giant touch screen absolutely cannot be done safely while driving.

mikeash 11y ago
I wonder, is there actual evidence that physical buttons are better? I don't doubt that screwing with a touchscreen while driving is dangerous, but I have to wonder about the common wisdom that screwing with physical buttons while driving isn't.
- skj 11y ago
  This is not evidence per se, but with physical buttons you don't have to take your eyes off the road.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I wonder how many drivers actually learn their controls that well. Anecdotally (which I realize is worthless, I just don't have anything better to go on) I see a lot of drivers taking their eyes off the road to look at physical buttons, and I was even in a crash where the driver just drove off the road while fiddling with the radio.
    - tzs 11y ago
      It probably depends on the design of the physical buttons. I've had cars where the physical buttons were sliders and I usually had to glance at them, especially when there were multiple slides parallel to each other (say for fan speed and hot/cold mix). That's because the part that I had to interact with would be in different places, depending on the current setting. It would require enough feeling around to make sure I had the right control that it would probably be more distracting than a quick glance. My current car (2006 Honda CR-V) uses round buttons for many things. I do not need to glance at them. The fan speed control is always in the same place. The hot/cold mix control is always in the same place. The air routing control is always in the same place. So, if I want to change fan speed, for instance, I reach to the same fixed location every time, and then rotate the knob clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on whether I want to increase or decrease the fan speed. Unlike with sliders, the current setting does not affect what I have to do to find the control or interact with it.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      It's not just remembering where the buttons are, it's the ease of using them. I don't have to remember the exact position of every button. I can feel for the button if I miss it, I can feel whether I'm fat-fingering other buttons and adjust, and I know when I've successfully pressed the button. This all adds up to me not looking at the dashboard.
  - bobwaycott 11y ago
    I was going to say the same thing. I know where the buttons are, so I can just feel for them without looking away from the road. Can't feel your way around a touchscreen.
    - jkestner 11y ago
      My Ford uses Fitt's Law to good effect. The big functions (phone, audio, navigation, climate) each have a button in one of the four corners of the screen. You can slide til you feel the bezel and press. That still doesn't help with subfunctions like picking a radio station, etc. but voice control and steering wheel buttons pick up the slack. I still miss well-placed physical controls.
      - marcoperaza 11y ago
        That's a neat trick on Ford's part. Maybe car touchscreens need a different interaction language. Instead of touch being the primary action trigger, touch would only change the selection (and produce some tactile/haptic feedback as the selection changes) and a harder press (with its own distinct feedback) would actually activate the function. By dragging your finger around the screen, you could feel out the layout of the controls.
- mdorazio 11y ago
  Yes, distraction.gov has some research you might be interested in, based on studies of actual car crashes. Note that the key point is distraction, not necessarily touchscreens by themselves. The problem is that it's impossible to use a touchscreen without looking at it, which means you're not looking at the road, and are thus distracted. NHTSA basically says that if it takes more than a single quick glance to perform an action, it's dangerous. This is why most OEMs lock out the touch screen controls while the car is in motion.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    Ha! most OEMs like which ones? I've never seen a car where the touchscreen controls are locked while driving. At most I've seen ones that either won't let you use a touch keyboard while driving, or that will let you do that, after tapping a warning message about that being dangerous.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Mazdas lock out the touchscreens when driving, forcing you to use the "commander" knob instead. And not all functions are available when moving.
    - vinay427 11y ago
      Lexus vehicles used to do this, at least back in 2006, so that you could only operate basic functions but could not set navigation destinations, etc. It was a huge pain, but given the touchscreen-only interface it made sense to minimize distractions. With my current car in one of the best designed control wheel UIs in the industry, I can navigate the menus almost exclusively without looking at the display (given some practice).
    - kalleboo 11y ago
      I believe it's the law in Japan, or at least they all do it here (in addition to disabling the obligatory built-in TV). Most dealers will pull out the sense wire from the back of the console if you ask them to
    - thebakeshow 11y ago
- superuser2 11y ago
  It should be obvious that keeping your eyes on the road (you learn to use volume and HVAC controls by feel pretty quick) is less dangerous than looking down at a screen.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I'm wary of obvious things, because so often they turn out to be wrong.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - superuser2 11y ago
      You really don't believe that watching the road is safer than not watching the road? I appreciate skepticism, but that just seems too extreme.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        I'm really not convinced that having your eyes on the road and your attention on your fingers is safer than glancing away. I think it's probably right, but I'd like something better than just "it's obvious!"
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Attention is a funny thing. Talking on a phone with your eyes on the road can take quite a bit of our attention. Its not about the eyes - glancing here or there is what we do all day. Its the mental model in our head - more than one is hard. Imagining the person on the other end of the phone call is a mental model - and it can push the 'road model' right out. So it depends on how much cpu it takes. Not just where we're looking.
- mikey_p 11y ago
  Are you seriously asking if muscle memory is a thing? Because yes, it's absolutely a thing and anyone that's done much with interfaces would know this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Doesn't that apply to touchscreen interfaces too?
- alblue 11y ago
  In general aviation aircraft the important levers/buttons are all explicitly sized/shaped/coloured differently to avoid confusion. The last thing you want to happen is come in for landing, reduce your throttle and discover that you've accidentally pulled the mixture/cut-off to kill the engine. Fortunately that's the kind of mistake you only make once ...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Heh, as if. In my plane, the flaps, spoilers, and landing gear levers are all inches apart, have similar colors, and similar shapes. But yes, clearly they should be. But there's a pretty big difference between critical flight controls and controls for the music or HVAC.
robmcm 11y ago
What if you are not driving, but using auto pilot?

cynix 11y ago

I usually engage Autopilot before operating the touchscreen, so that I can take my eyes off the road briefly.

cstejerean 11y ago

My Dodge Charger has touch screen control for most functions (but not all). I have not found any trouble operating it while driving, but I'm sure there is a big difference between finding buttons on an 8.4" touchscreen vs 15" or larger.

bradlys 11y ago
I have a 2014 dodge charger. I absolutely abhor the touch screen for just about any function. It's painfully difficult to use without looking as too many buttons are close together and you have to really lean over to operate most of them. I feel it was poorly designed. (Just like having the cupholders behind the shifter) I cannot operate the touch screen reliably without looking at it and even while looking it's still difficult. I'm glad it still has physical controls for most functions although even those aren't very good (it's hard to feel the difference on some of the buttons).
i_laugh_at_you 11y ago
Lots of people text and drive but I wouldn't advise it.

theseatoms 11y ago

Relatedly, does anyone have a sense of how far out we are from consumer-grade haptic-feedback touchscreens? Seems like the obvious next step.

Grishnakh 11y ago
>Relatedly, does anyone have a sense of how far out we are from consumer-grade haptic-feedback touchscreens? Well, they had them in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While not actually shown close-up in the show, the technical manual explained that the flat touchscreens actually provided tactile feedback, and of course were reconfigurable. How'd they do it? Simple: according to the technical manual, they used miniature force fields. We're not very close to developing any kind of force fields right now.... On a more serious note, I believe there's been some research into using ultrasonics to provide some kind of tactile feedback. And of course lots of phones now have vibrating feedback.
vinay427 11y ago
The BlackBerry Storm had a haptic system, but it didn't seem to catch on, and it also did not have separate buttons so was not as easy-to-use as a menu with conventional buttons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Storm