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

• lacker 7y 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 7y 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.
  • catalogia 7y 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.
    • TheSpiceIsLife 7y 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 7y 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.
• mindslight 7y 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. I'm certainly not condoning the practice, but texting and driving wasn't a public emergency 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. 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, to which you're moving relatively with road bumps etc. Even worse are OEM touchscreens that have poor response. I'd love for more studies to be done like this, 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).
• XzAeRosho 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      Touchscreens are simply cheaper. No need for switches, design of the controls, all the wiring, etc.
    • awinder 7y 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.
      • charles_f 7y ago
        Apparently Mazda recently went through a bunch of studies to make the infotainment systems less dangerous, the result was that they're switching back to physical dials and bringing screens into more natural field of vision. I must say that I am somewhat seduced by the (at least seamingly) data driven process. Source https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
• GuB-42 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
      • floatingatoll 7y ago
        I have several times in my life thrown my phone out of reach with no regard for who's on the call They understood, later. They weren't necessarily happy but when you explain to people "do you want me alive or do you want me to talk to you", their self-interest seems to kick in, at least.
  • ken 7y 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.
  • 7y ago
• saagarjha 7y 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.
  • ashleyn 7y ago
    There is also the privacy issue. Using Google voice in the car requires I turn on its always-listening functionality. Nope!
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      Is there no “press a button to listen” or “wait until you hear a wakeword” option?
      • ashleyn 7y ago
        There is in my car, but Google at least forces users to accept the "OK Google" functionality when they agree to the voice activation disclaimer. So once you enable that, the phone is always listening for "OK Google".
• kirykl 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tcawBX41VU
• brenden2 7y 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.
  • modzu 7y ago
    until driving anywhere with other people and their 2 million lumen led/laser headlights
  • aibara 7y 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 7y ago
      You could have a similar thing in the future if OLED panels in cars become feasible.
• frankish 7y 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.
  • capableweb 7y 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.
    • jakear 7y ago
      Plenty of cars project a HUD into the windshield itself. This seems like the better option.
      • capableweb 7y ago
        With glasses you could see warnings about cars passing on the right when you're looking to the left, so I still would like to see at least a prototype of the car HUD glasses.
• tschellenbach 7y 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.
  • thedance 7y 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.
    • Marsymars 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
    You can use Google Maps on CarPlay now, I believe.
    • rgovostes 7y ago
      Yes, third-party navigation has been supported for two years now.
  • gnicholas 7y ago
    I guess wireless charging systems provide a benefit here because they decouple the data transfer from the charging.
  • 76543210 7y 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?
• leetcrew 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      > you only need to glance at it I think you answered your own question.
    • harumph 7y 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 7y 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.
• aganame 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• gnicholas 7y 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_larry 7y ago
    Yeah, the way they designed this test makes it meaningless in the real world.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 7y 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.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • TheSpiceIsLife 7y 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.
• danaris 7y 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.
  • leetcrew 7y 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.
• anon102010 7y 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.
  • hashkb 7y ago
    Anecdotal! And your bias is obvious.
  • Retric 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
      • Retric 7y ago
• mouzogu 7y 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.
  • Marsymars 7y 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.
    • mrweasel 7y 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.
      • Marsymars 7y ago
        I'd be satisfied with simply stepping up police manpower for enforcement, and then much stronger punishment. e.g. for first-time violators, license revocation for a year, after which the individual is allowed to re-apply as a new driver, with all of the testing/license restriction/insurance implications of being an entirely new driver.
      • scarface74 7y ago
        It’s not a law, but iOS can automatically turn on “Do not disturb while driving.” It can turn on automatically either when it detects that you’re going over a certain speed or when you’re connected to Bluetooth or CarPlay. The second option would be able to distinguish if you are driving your car or riding in someone else’s car or on public transportation. Assuming that you’re not paired to your non primary vehicle.
• ken 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• oblib 7y 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.
  • capableweb 7y 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.
    • xedeon 7y 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.
      • AstroBoy69 7y ago
        Keep shilling for Musk daddy all over the thread. Your portfolio will recover soon (not).
      • capableweb 7y ago
        I have and I find it absolutely bewildering how someone is fine with a touchscreen on any car, I'm of the opinion it should be illegal, and seems the industry/regulation is catching up with that now. It's impossible to learn where to press because there is no physical buttons to learn by. Meanwhile, my car has physical buttons for everything and it took me about a week before I could control and navigate everything without looking. I could never do that with a touchscreen. I've had a smartphone since 2010 and still I cannot even type without looking, been practicing that for 10 years!
• dang 7y ago
  We merged comments hither from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22646564 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
  • xedeon 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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-py 7y 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-s-mccain-crash-ntsb-report-touchscreen-mechanical-controls 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-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
• karlding 7y 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_larry 7y 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_npfg-02162012.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/distraction_...
• habosa 7y 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.
• branon 7y ago
  Is it just me, or does this source seem very unreliable?
• tibbydudeza 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
• DailyHN 7y 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 7y ago
    Have you tried a charge only cable that lacks the data pins being hooked up?
    • DailyHN 7y ago
      No, that is definitely something I need to try. Thanks!
• trickledown 7y ago
  Distracting by design. All these devices are designed to get your attention. That is how they make money.
• rkagerer 7y 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.
• jagged-chisel 7y 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.
  • Tagbert 7y 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-chisel 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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-toast 7y ago
    Honda were still doing this well into the 2000s. Only their most recent models have, sadly, succumbed to the trend.
• alasdair_ 7y ago
  In what dosage? Can I get 30mg of CarPlay? Can we get 300ml of Android Auto? Without comparable dosage this is meaningless.
• megablast 7y ago
  It is insane that car companies can add whatever they want to make cars ever more dangerous.
• globular-toast 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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.
  • Tagbert 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
  This may be naive, but I wonder if switching the display to e-ink would help?