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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

arstechnica.com

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Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#181

Post by modeless »

techdmn wrote: post #17

Touchscreen controls are the feature on my Tesla I dislike most. Try poking a small icon an arms length away while bouncing over typical Midwest roads and you'll see that it's impossible to do while keeping your eyes on the road. Physical controls would be fantastic, but at the very least they could: * Radically improve the ability to control the car with the scroll wheels on the steering wheel. I don't mean assignin…

> I mean having a cursor I could glance at, then put my eyes back on the road while I click right twice, up once, click again and then scroll to change whatever.

They added a menu kind of like this in a recent update. Long press the left scroll wheel and then you can control a bunch of things using a menu that's controlled entirely by the wheel, no touchscreen.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#182

Post by alexey-salmin »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #25
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least the steering wheel and pedals still behave the same. For now, companies are experimenting with drive by wire. Don't think I like that concept.

Why? Brake by wire is already a thing.

There must be a physical connection though? How do you stop if you're out of power? If not, I can only think of truck-like system where brakes are "on by default" and user input disactivates them.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#183

Post by jjav »

static_void_ wrote: post #89
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least the steering wheel and pedals still behave the same. For now, companies are experimenting with drive by wire. Don't think I like that concept.

Electronic power steering already exists. It's used in a lot of cars, and has been for at least 10 years. Your car may have one of these systems in it. In an electric power steering system there are steering angle and torque sensors that know what direction the wheel is turned an how hard it has turned, and this is connected to an electric motor that powers the gears to move the steering rack. There are still regulat…

> Pretty much every car since the late 80s has electronic throttle control and there are no mechanical linkages from pedal to throttle body.

All 90s cars I've had or worked on had a real cable from gas pedal to throttle body.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#184

Post by kabes »

ggreer wrote: post #160
breadwinner wrote: post #11

Couldn't agree more. Tesla is the biggest violator. In new Teslas, they are removing physical stalks, so if you want to reverse the car, you have to use on-screen controls!

Is someone forcing you to drive a Tesla? Yes, many people find these touch screens annoying, and they’ll tend to buy cars with physical controls. But just like people who prefer physical keyboards on their phones, these consumers are a vocal minority who aren’t big enough to cater to. If touch screens make cars less safe, then we should see higher liability insurance rates for such cars. So far that doesn’t seem to b…

No but because so many people still buy tesla because they're cheap and despite the lack of controls, suits at other manufacturers think they now have to get rid of physical controls as well.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#185

Post by ggreer »

devsda wrote: post #179
ggreer wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is someone forcing you to drive a Tesla? Yes, many people find these touch screens annoying, and they’ll tend to buy cars with physical controls. But just like people who prefer physical keyboards on their phones, these consumers are a vocal minority who aren’t big enough to cater to. If touch screens make cars less safe, then we should see higher liability insurance rates for such cars. So far that doesn’t seem to b…

> Is someone forcing you to drive a Tesla? The same argument can be made about other products too but it only distracts from the real problem. Bad practises and products do stick around regardless of their actual usefulness and benefits. For example take headphone jack. Nobody forced anyone to buy an Apple phone without a headphone jack, yet it is a challenge now to find a good premium/mid-range phone with a headphon…

You overestimate how much people want headphone jacks. Most people today use Bluetooth headphones and don’t miss their headphone jacks at all. I honestly forgot that my phone lacked a headphone jack until you pointed it out. That is how little I use wired headphones.

Moreover, why would every manufacturer copy a design that consumers don’t want? If the feature is so widely desired, it would only take one manufacturer not removing the headphone jack to win market share. Your model of the world requires every manufacturer to be incompetent in the same way. A much simpler explanation is that phones are a very competitive market and the manufacturers have calculated that, like physical keyboards, headphone jacks are not a feature most people care about. They prefer the headphone jack be sacrificed for better water resistance, better battery life, and lower cost.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#186

Post by jeffchien »

Spivak wrote: post #153
dzhiurgis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media. My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem. Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!

Check how Mazda did it with their ring control. I love it in mine. No touch screen needed. It's amazing that accessibility is such an afterthought that having a physical wheel that tabs forward and backward through a UI as the primary means of using it is unfathomable until it's actually implemented.

I just wish Android Auto had an option to disable activity boundaries for spinning so I can spin from Maps to media, and use the joystick control for directional selection (i.e. it tries to find the next button in that direction). I was excited for Coolwalk but then never got used to switching between Maps and media with the joystick. In the end I just reverted to pressing the Nav and media buttons then spinning.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#187

Post by JeffL »

amluto wrote: post #101
bhpm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those controls are commonly located on a touch screen, which is the topic of the article.

I’m not sure Tesla ever launched this abomination, but: https://www.theverge.com/22348668/tesla-prnd-drive-mode-park...

Yes, I have it. It's great. I much prefer a quick swipe on the side of the touchscreen to having a giant physical gear selector wasting a ton of space.

I honestly love just about everything about the UI of the refreshed Model S, from the yoke to the turn signal buttons to the on screen gear selector. Only thing I don't like is the horn button for the two times a year that I honk it.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#188

Post by otherme123 »

I_Am_Nous wrote: post #36
shepherdjerred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Brake by wire is already a thing.

If my steering wheel isn't connected to my front wheels mechanically, that's asking for a lot of trust. Previously a severe mechanical issue would be the only thing to worry about. Maybe on an EV with always connected and charged batteries it would be better, but on ICE I can imagine a number of ways the electrical system suddenly fails and now the wheel does nothing, even if just for a short lag. At least on brake b…

Mechanic connections can, and do, fail. Ask Ayrton Senna. AFAIK, steer by wire are already doing full redundancy, like it was a plane.

There has been a number of plane accidents related to physical connection between the yoke and the actuators (cables loosing tension under high temperatures, or cut/trapped on a deck failure). Electric cables does not suffer that, and they are easily doubled.

SbW makers are already making software that does constant surveilance of the system, something that traditional systems has never done.

The number of dead people caused by the steering column going straight through their chest in a collision is huge. That shouldn't happen with SbW.

I hate the trend towards car controls in a screen, but Drive by Wire sounds like a real advance towards better cars to me. DbW without redundancies and continuous tracking could be a safety issue, but with them I don't think it's an issue. Fly by Wire has a good safety record.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#189

Post by Beldin »

userbinator wrote: post #50
c22 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pedals do not behave the same.

You mean you don't press the left one to stop, and the right one to go?

Around here the middle one is to stop, left is to switch gears. Except in go-karts, those only have 2 pedals.

Re: European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

#190

Post by croo »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #114
cwillu wrote: post #2

A start, but not far enough: anything a driver might be reasonably expected to do while driving should have a physical control. Zero-force, zero-feedback, zero-travel controls should be illegal for such functions.

Obvious limitation is something like Maps and media. My guess ones that use mechanical dials (i.e. Lexus until ~ year ago) cause more distraction than touchscreen by simply being harder to use and taking more time to solve your problem. Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!

> Given how well chatgpt's voice recognition works - why not just put it on all cars!

Because saying "roll down the left window" is still a fucking nuisance compared to a click of a button.

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