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Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

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Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#131

Post by phpisthebest »

mycocola wrote: post #118
phpisthebest wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I would love to see some EU legislation Why does the EU believe every facet of life needs to be ordered and control by government regulation, is there any area of life at all in the EU that should be free from government interference? That is an honest question because every time anything comes up the first response from citizens of the EU is to declare government should be the right and proper resolution to the pr…

What is government for, if not for solving the issues of the populace it is governing?

[flagged]

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#132

Post by richbell »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #60
LightG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You can say the same about about both sides. I prefer buttons and touchscreen. See the ioniq 5 for a good example of this implementation. Tesla seem to be trying to Steve Jobs / iphone the car experience, and I absolutely don't want that. And if having a different opinion to you means I'm of the hivemind, then so be it (frankly a ridiculous comment, but anyway).

The point is your opinion is concordant with every other poster in this thread, aka hivemind. Note that there is no nuanced discussion on this topic, everybody has already arrived at their conclusion. Nobody is asking whether some people are fine with touchscreens in cars and why that might be the case.

> The point is your opinion is concordant with every other poster in this thread, aka hivemind

By this logic isn't everyone who is pro-touchscreens also a hivemind?

> Nobody is asking whether some people are fine with touchscreens in cars and why that might be the case.

Many people are demonstrably bad drivers who are over-confident in their ability and down-play the risk of distractions. When drunk driving was made illegal, people were furious and insisted they were fine to drive drunk and that it was perfectly safe: https://youtu.be/W_tqQYmgMQg

Touchscreens, while convenient and extensible, are demonstrably inferior to static physical controls for saftey-critical contexts.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#133

Post by closewith »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #57
misnome wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we bought our last car we specifically avoided touchscreen-heavy interfaces. Worst we looked at was Peugeot, which not only had framerate stuttering _on the actual digital dashboard_, the radio turned on loud for us and although the digital volume button was large, you couldn’t just hold it down - you needed to repeatedly tap/lift/tap/lift/… to move it more than just one volume notch. We bought a (non-peugeot) c…

Oh, thank you for mentioning digital dashboards, I completely forgot about those! So, in addition to mandatory physical controls for common functions, my imaginary EU legislation would also prescribe that all essential vehicle information (speed, outside light status, fuel level) has a physical representation (lights, dials, etc., in the sense that there is nothing that could be described as 'software' driving these…

> So, in addition to mandatory physical controls for common functions, my imaginary EU legislation would also prescribe that all essential vehicle information (speed, outside light status, fuel level) has a physical representation (lights, dials, etc., in the sense that there is nothing that could be described as 'software' driving these).

We're way past that. All (to a rounding error) modern analogue dials are also controlled by software via the ECU. This has been true for decades now.

Few cars even have a mechanical throttle linkage anymore.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#135

Post by ajross »

jquery wrote: post #100
ajross wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the proper control to use for interacting with a navigation aid in the UK? Or are you saying that UK law forbids in-car maps? These arguments always end up in this kind of hyper-specific realm where they seem to apply only to Tesla's particular design choices. But, in car maps are everywhere now (and, yes, Tesla's implementation is by far the best), and the natural way you use them is with touch. They absolute…

Carplay (and presumably Android Auto, although I only have experience with Carplay) have the best car maps, and they are unavailable in a Tesla.

That's... no, I think that's just objectively wrong. Have you actually used all these systems? Display latency in the device-remote schemes is really pretty awful, where the Tesla screen scrolls like butter. Obviously no one is an expert on all these things, but I watch friends' vehicles and the occasional rental, and it's really not close.

I went quickly to youtube to check, and pulled up this comparatively recent Mach-E video showing carplay. It's... janky and clumsy. Buttons take 300ms+ to actuate. See the sequence starting around 3:15. No wonder it feels unsafe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ongr-sptxto

Now watch this one, which is actually two years old (not showing the current UI, and running on what is now one-generation-old MCU hardware):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGKOWyFzDBs

There are likely better examples, these are just ones that popped up first for me. But yeah, that's the state of in-car navigation UIs. And Tesla is absolutely the best.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#136

Post by detrites »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #73
detrites wrote: post #61

2028: Study finds that cars without any human controls are safer than those with

When the whole transportation system is built to eliminate drivers then yes, it'll be safer. For now though, a driver in control is better than our flawed software.

I disagree. Currently available retail FSD is already driving "in the ballpark" today. Add to that 5 years of continual large-scale data harvest, plus AI in general undergoing widespread research and innovation.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#137

Post by wolrah »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #57
misnome wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we bought our last car we specifically avoided touchscreen-heavy interfaces. Worst we looked at was Peugeot, which not only had framerate stuttering _on the actual digital dashboard_, the radio turned on loud for us and although the digital volume button was large, you couldn’t just hold it down - you needed to repeatedly tap/lift/tap/lift/… to move it more than just one volume notch. We bought a (non-peugeot) c…

Oh, thank you for mentioning digital dashboards, I completely forgot about those! So, in addition to mandatory physical controls for common functions, my imaginary EU legislation would also prescribe that all essential vehicle information (speed, outside light status, fuel level) has a physical representation (lights, dials, etc., in the sense that there is nothing that could be described as 'software' driving these…

> my imaginary EU legislation would also prescribe that all essential vehicle information (speed, outside light status, fuel level) has a physical representation (lights, dials, etc., in the sense that there is nothing that could be described as 'software' driving these).

Even "analog" gauges have been software driven for a long time now. My simracing seat setup has a gauge cluster out of a mid-2000s VW Passat that runs entirely on CAN.

If it does a gauge sweep when you turn it in you can be pretty certain it's software controlled, even if it has physical dials. This obviously hasn't been a major problem, so software control is not the issue here, bad quality software control is.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#138

Post by richbell »

samch wrote: post #90

I’d like to offer a possibly controversial alternative viewpoint on this. On a longer time horizon than just the past few years, we saw the introduction of touchscreens for drivers way back in the early 2000s. We just called them smartphones. Before that, rush hour commuters could be spotted reading newspapers, shaving, applying makeup, and eating breakfast while driving. All of those pose real dangers to themselves…

> The solution, in my opinion, is not about the controls in the vehicle. Rather, it’s about removing the distracted driver from the equation altogether and finally mastering the immense challenge of truly autonomous vehicles.

I agree with your overall premise, but this is a strange conclusion. If human drivers are the problem and they cannot be trusted to drive without distractions, it would be far easier and cheaper to fix that by investing in public transit.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#139

Post by lawn »

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

I am starting to wonder if the definition of a ‘luxury car’ in 2030 will be ‘no touchscreens’ and if economy cars will be chock full of cheap android devices just to shame the people who buy them into spending more to get a car with buttons and mechanical indicators.

Similar to how you can only find a TV without the crappy snart functionality if you pay a hefty premium.

Re: Study finds that buttons in cars are safer and quicker to use than touchscreens

#140

Post by lifeinthevoid »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #134

Many people including me will say that this is obvious, but even if it took a study, why wasn't this study done at some point _before_ incorporating this major design change into nearly every new car on the market?

Companies are mostly interested in earning money and not in undermining new ways of making money.
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