121–130 of 135 posts
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Add "turning on the windshield wipers" and "indicating with your blinker" to that list. Looking at you Tesla with your death-trap touch screen controls.
You have to use a touch screen for those on a Tesla? If true that is asinine, those cars aren't safe to drive.
One thing to add to this, it's amazing that in 2025 voice assistants still suck so badly. You'd think this is a problem AI could finally nip in the bud. But even giving my phone the dumbest of instructions will result in an agonizing back and forth where it doesn't hear me quite right and constantly has to repeat back things. Heaven forbid you ask the phone to do anything useful like change a setting or pull up direc…
"Pull up directions" is something I feel my phone is extremely good at. What phone are you using?
Localization is not a solved problem.
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Oh no, much more often. People above 70 can deteriorate really, really quickly. I’d say yearly tests which include doctors checkups and actually driving with them.
Anyone can deteriorate quickly. My sister (mid-40s) was in a hospital for 3.5 weeks before Christmas due to an infection that rapidly progressed into sepsis. Even now 2 months later she still needs to use a cane to walk around and is out of breath climbing a single flight of stairs. Bodies are remarkably fragile. From initial onset of symptoms to septic shock was less than 24 hours.
A decent traumatic brain injury can happen at any time and most people never go to the doctor for those, too.
We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…
My car has a little sub menu area on the dash board behind the steering wheel with panels for media, phone, navigation and something else. These can be navigated with the steering wheel buttons. The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Sometimes I'll try to use the voice thing but it rarely works even when…
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My car has a little sub menu area on the dash board behind the steering wheel with panels for media, phone, navigation and something else. These can be navigated with the steering wheel buttons. The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Sometimes I'll try to use the voice thing but it rarely works even when…
> The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Other than Tesla, which car manufacturer is stupid enough to put climate control behind a touchscreen?
Ford: https://youtube.com/shorts/Q512IeZ3DEA
VW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rALQoMiZhag
Volvo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryIfmyiiETQ
BMW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=73zGfLmlx0I
Mercedes: https://youtube.com/shorts/PIO5n1b_Z0Y
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You have to use a touch screen for those on a Tesla? If true that is asinine, those cars aren't safe to drive.
Yes, for wipers you need to make window swiping gesture on the screen and for wipers you tap 3 times on either side of screen.
This seems to be an real and important problem with capacitive touch screens. My elderly mother is often unable to make a touch register on recent Apple devices when a touch appears to have clearly happened and with reasonable force. She blames it on her fingers being "numb" but there genuinely seems to be a problem unrelated to her actions. (I've used the devices in question, and they appear to be fine. This is not…
They behave unreliability when I use the fingers on my left hand. I play guitar, so I assume that callouses are the issue. Older folks often have calloused finger tips; it's somewhat inevitable.
I often make or repair things, as well as work in my yard. At the very least, this often renders fingerprint recognition useless for days or sometimes weeks at a time. Sometimes my finger tips get scuffed enough that it affects touch screen use, too. I wear gloves when I can, but that is its own issue. "Screen friendly" work gloves don't stay that way for long, and aren't great anyway.
I also live in a northern area, so for about half the year humidity is very low. Even drinking plenty, and using moisturizer, my skin gets dry enough sometimes to make screens unresponsive.
Of course, we also get actual winter here. Even the best "screen friendly" gloves I've tried have been mid at best, just as with work gloves. Certainly not good enough to rely on.
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that's the issue with industries like this.. no one asked for touchscreen controls, but they're cheaper and make the manufacturers more money. no one asked for their private conversations to be recorded and sold, but that juicy data is profitable. it's not like people can stop buying cars until the situation improves. joe q public can't be expected to start a grassroots movement and go lobby, he needs to get to work…
> no one asked for touchscreen controls When they first came out in cars, most people wanted one. Even I did. Then I got one and learned how terrible it is.
I had learned about the GM touch screen interface because I worked for Hughes at the time, and after GM's purchase of Hughes in 1985, they recruited a bunch of engineers from Hughes to automate and improve the vehicle designs and production lines. I had been offered a TDY position in Flint, MI, but who would want to leave Southern California for a job in that place? Just one of many offers that I never regretted turning down.
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Yes, for wipers you need to make window swiping gesture on the screen and for wipers you tap 3 times on either side of screen.
On my 25 year old Porsche that cost less than a FSD software subscription I can do those things with the tips of my fingers while pulling 1G in a turn with my eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.