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

futurism.com

371–380 of 386 posts

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

#371

I would love to see some EU legislation about car dashboards. As an occasional driver of many different brands and types of vehicles, I continue to be amazed at the usability crimes being committed in the name of 'looking cool' (stated reason) as well as 'cost savings' (most likely the real reason). Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should h…

I agree using the touchscreen is annoying on occasion; but more legislation I’m totally opposed. We’d get much worse results over time as bad practices are enforced by the largest of car companies to further prevent new stuff from being tried. Honestly having the m3 dash clear of the clutter and most features on automatic gives me personally more focus on road and those around me. But yeah hitting the rear defroster…

As a M3 driver I both love and hate the touchscreen. Everything is easy except when you are driving in traffic, being an older 60+ person with the car bouncing up and down at 100KMH, I find myself not being safely able to use the touchscreen at all in these situations I ask the passenger if there is one or use the voice control, though getting the correct wording for this takes a little bit of training and things like directing the air vents I have no clue how to do.

Maybe a senior mode with big touch buttons and text and less of the bling would work for me or as someone else suggested some sort of USB add on with physical switches which integrated with the bottom of the touchscreen. Im not holding out much hope for either though.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>where only a few companies control an entire industry. I feel like we are now into the absurd... You know what kills competition. REGULATION. Every industry where you can cite limited competition I can tell you the regulations that killed that competition. Unregulated industries have LOTS of innovation and competition. Regulated industries have slow innovation and no competition. Free market work because of competi…

There is no fair market without someone ensuring a fair market. Before the FDA grocers were selling milk to families which "was routinely adulterated with water, rotten eggs, flour, burnt sugar and other adulterants with the finished product then marketed falsely as "pure country milk" or "Orange County Milk". People like you went on about how regulation would kill the industry and hurt the market, but what was reall…

“The milk drawn from the cows was routinely adulterated with water, rotten eggs, flour, burnt sugar and other adulterants with the finished product then marketed falsely as "pure country milk" or "Orange County Milk".”

Yikes. Hard pass on being a poison-tester for every entrepreneur that dreams up a cost-cutting measure to increase their profits selling me food. Looks like it took years for the image of milk to recover.

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because leaving it "to the market" is always a race to the bottom, and there ends up being no choice on voting with your wallet.

You do know that Touch Screen got included in Cars due to government regulations right? The government mandated Backup Camera's and once you had to put in a screen to serve as display for the backup camera then it only makes since to use that screen for more and more things This is yet another unintended consequence of government regulations, where by now people want to use government regulation to "fix" the problems…

I've used only 3 cars with backup cameras and none were touch screens.

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

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is toss out their iPhone because it has a lighting cable, and most are not even tossing the chargers as for less than $5 you can get any adapter to any other port... You must have forgotten the days where all chargers had a molded cable instead of the USB-A socket that is standard these days, and the plug was different for each and every brand. So each phone came with both a custom cable and a custom charger…

That was never really the case, even back in the Flip phone days it was Mini USB which some people did not know was a standard. Then came micro USB, which was used for ALOT of devices, and still is Then came Apple brought Lightening which USB then responded with USB-C >> where all chargers had a molded cable So, you can still put an adapter on the end.

Not really: Samsung had its own, LG, Sony, etc. As proved by the existence of this monster: https://www.ebay.it/itm/362002853418

> So, you can still put an adapter on the end.

So you have changed your problem from finding one of N charger to finding one of N(N-1) adapters, assuming someone actually built and sold for example a Samsung-to-LG adapter. Not a great improvement.

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

#375
"Study finds out that water is wet"

Jokes aside, I always found the touchscreen to be annoying to use in specific conditions:

1. I have to watch the touchscreen to find the button, with physical button I can just feel where the button is while watching the road

2. On bumpy roads touchscreen is almost unusable, it is so hard to press on the right point that I'm forced to use voice commands

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

#376
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…

>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.

Im fine with that and maybe music playlist control

But for the rest traditional are better

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

#377
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should in this case, this involves road and public safety.

the ultimate safety is ban all cars and stay at home. it is always an exercise in balancing. Legislating UI seems... weird? If people feel uncomfortable driving with touch screens, they may choose not to buy cars with touch screens.

UI in a car that makes drivers potentially more distracted.

I don't care about how comfortable or uncomfortable this makes people with touch screens driving, there's large evidence for them being more dangerous.

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

#380

They needed a study for this?

On the one hand, "no kidding, we knew that. Duh." On the other hand, doing a study to confirm what we think we know to be true is not always wasted effort. For the simple reason that we are sometimes wrong. And for the reason that studies can measure magnitude of such an effect. And variation. And for the reason that for many contexts (e.g. safety legislation or safety standards) a study is proof and a call to act, i…

Of course I was being facetious, and I agree that studies needed (and need) to be done in order to “prove” that tactile controls are safer. It has always been extremely hypocritical to me that certain states like Maryland crack down harshly on mobile device usage but basically ignore distracted driving because of engagement with a screen in your vehicle, which can be just as dangerous.

In my opinion, screens per se aren’t bad, however there should be a set of standards (possibly international) for a core set of redundant tactile controls such as audio volume/mute, any and all essential vehicle functions, ALL climate control functions, and obvious preset buttons for major infotainment functions such as audio, climate, navigation, and communication. I drove a vehicle recently that didn’t have an easy way to switch between Waze on CarPlay and the vehicle’s built-in SiriusXM audio. And some makes have moved to a completely screen-based gauge cluster, which is neat in concept but allows for shenanigans such as the possibility of accidentally choosing a “theme” that hides basic information or is confusing with no obvious way to revert. Mercedes is especially guilty of this. There are so many more examples.

Essentially, we need a Vehicle Control Bill of Rights.

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