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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

#261

Post by buildbot »

InCityDreams wrote: post #218
PreInternet01 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The last 'owned' car that I drove was my wife's quite-high-end Audi. It had a digital dashboard, which was OK and looked extremely cool... until those moments when..... So, wtf did you put up with all that (presuming it wasnt a company car)? And, even then, you should have a trail of paperwork a mile/ kilometre long to audi - publish all that.

I’ve had 2 Audis now with the virtual cockpit and literally never had an issue- this seems like something an Audi dealer would replace under warranty as defective right away.

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

#262

Post by alphazard »

musicale wrote: post #229
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #224

Now that it's 2023 I can say this without reprisal: no shit Sherlock! /s This is the automotive analog to the removal of headphone jack on smartphones. Except I was never all that bothered with the removal. I've been using BT headphones almost exclusively before AirPods. I guess I'm not sure what my point is; maybe that even if it's objectively worse other factors dominate in consumer purchase decisions. Thankfully,…

> This is the automotive analog to the removal of headphone jack on smartphones The big issue with cars removing buttons is that buttons are useful tactile affordances - they are operational controls that tend to have a single, clear and discoverable purpose, and can be located and operated by touch/feel without having to look at them, which is particularly advantageous when operating a vehicle.

This is really understated. The primary interface to most of a car is tactile.

Consider a vehicle, which had touchscreens instead of pedals. It required bare feet to operate. Advertised as totally ground-breaking, users could adjust the width between pedals, and switch between automatic and manual modes of transmission. The pedals have beautiful typography displaying the text "gas", "brake", and "clutch" on their icons.

Wrong for the all same reasons as blinkers, wipers, defrost, audio power on/off being on a touch screen.

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

#263

Post by ryanfreeborn »

cs702 wrote: post #18

The actual "study" (really, an unscientific test) is here: https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperfor... At home we have both traditional vehicles with lots of knobs, and vehicles (Tesla) with mainly touchscreen buttons and voice commands. My personal experience: * It takes at least a few weeks to become familiar enough with the touchscreen buttons and voice commands that they become second-nature.…

I don't see familiarity being with the touchscreen buttons being the issue. The issue is that actually touching a certain amount of pixels on a disembodied screen, while driving, while the car is in motion, is actually annoyingly difficult. No matter how attuned you are with them. I owned a Tesla for several years, and it never got better. It distracts the driver considerably. Unless they drastically increased the size of the interaction points on the screen and/or improved the gestures used to interact, I just don't see touchscreens being a good primary point of interaction between the driver and the car (at least until the driver really isn't regularly "driving" anymore).

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

#264

Post by helf »

“No shit”.

“Oh golly gee guys stop using phones while driving! Tell ya what, we will give you a touchscreen for fucking every other function in the car except actual steering so you won’t have enough spare eye time to look at a phone!!”

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

#265

Post by twelve40 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #170
messe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazingly bad takes. > Ironic since safety laws is what put the screens in the cars in the first place Screens themselves aren't the issue. They didn't mandate touch screens, or the removal of non-touch controls. (EDIT: in fact, the removal of non-touch controls in place of touch controls is a perfect example of the market resulting in a race-to-the-bottom cost-saving measure that you're in denial of in your other co…

Talk about Amazingly bad takes. >They didn't mandate touch screens ofcourse... they just mandated a large expensive screen that naturally the automakers and consumers would love to have right up front visible to the driver for about 10secs per use of the vehicle and be used for nothing else ever. This is the kind of "forethought" that makes for terrible regulation, and unintended consequences, I bet you would make fo…

flat in terms of what?

nominal gdp went from 11 tril in 2008 to 14.5 tril in 2021, averaging about 1.66% per year. That's not flat. Are you using some different kind of metric?

PS more to the point, the next entity that comes anywhere close to that number is Japan and its several times smaller, so eu will remain relevant for a while even if it completely stops growing.

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

#267

Post by macintux »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #241
pseudosavant wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only navigation thing I can do that feels safe while driving is “Hey Siri, take me to XYX.” Any non-verbal way to interact will take your eyes and hands away from driving far too much.

Which is great when it works but possibly the most irritating thing in the world when it doesn't.

No matter what I tried recently, I couldn't get Siri to provide directions to Kohl's. It simply couldn't understand what I was asking for.

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

#269

Post by cal85 »

ajross wrote: post #193
cal85 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They absolutely make finding your way around [...] safer How so? Not disputing, just curious what you mean.

Getting lost and staring at a map is vaguely dangerous. Having a map that gets you a clear answer faster is safer. This really doesn't seem controversial to me, it only seems so in this thread because "Tesla". If you frame it in other ways, it seems more obvious. Is anyone demanding that FedEx drivers or Doordashers use paper maps? Should your Uber driver pull over every time the route changes?

I feel like the paper map comparison is a red herring. Most people who are in favour of the UK’s rule against ‘interacting with a device while driving’ would probably also say you should pull over before messing with a paper map too; it’s probably just much harder to legislate for that (or maybe less necessary because people do that so rarely). No one is arguing that using a paper map while driving is safer.

Not that I necessarily support the legislation, I lean pretty libertarian, I just don’t take your argument that it’s ‘obviously’ safer to let people use phones in their cars because otherwise they’ll use paper maps. That’s just not what happens. What actually happens is either they interact with their phone more briefly and surreptitiously to avoid detection by police, or they just pull over and interact with their phone at the side of the road before getting going again. Either way I suspect the law has the desired effect of reducing the amount people are distracted while driving.

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

#270

Post by acdha »

javajosh wrote: post #97
acdha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only by coincidence. They’ll do that if they think they can get away with it no matter what type of controls it has.

If your car doesn't have any internet connected software, then there is no mechanism to make a feature artificially scarce, requiring you to pay money on an on-going basis to remove the artificial limit. People may have sold subscription services for cars before 2010, but they were luxuries and without "teeth". This is different.

> If your car doesn't have any internet connected software, then there is no mechanism to make a feature artificially scarce

Here are things which were actually shipped for decades prior to internet restrictions:

* charging for updates to mapping, and later GPS, software

* restricting features based on physical dongles

* restricting features based on dates (don’t forget that times can be set passively using radio so you can’t just easily roll the clock back)

* restricting features based on use counts (anyone think some MBA isn’t dreaming of “pay $1000 for 200 crush-it™ acceleration boosts!”)

* having some indicator of feature use (burnt out fuse, EEPROM, etc.) so using something you haven’t licensed means you can’t get any official service or warranty claims

Beyond that, we’re talking about controls. Touchscreens are not internet access and there’s no reason to think the two would be linked here when they aren’t in any other area.

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