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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

#191

Post by sa-code »

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!

Because it still makes mistakes, and it's not always clear when a mistake has been made.

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

#192

Post by Maxion »

jjav wrote: post #183
static_void_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even fuel injected ones?

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

#193

Post by resolutebat »

Reason077 wrote: post #81
focusgroup0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a ride with an owner of a brand new BMW with glass cockpit and minimal buttons. He complained to the dealer about not being able to find any of the actions in the endlessly nested menus. The dealer's response: Use voice controls. He tried it, and it's even worse than Siri in terms of reliability. Absolute unmitigated disaster.

I’ve yet to find any car where the voice control works speedily and reliably, unless using Siri via CarPlay. (Siri is actually pretty great at accurately recognising words, it’s just not always so good at doing something useful with them…) Even Tesla’s is really bad: “Turn off the wipers” frequently gets interpreted as “turn off the wife please” or other similar nonsense.

Tell a Tesla to "go home" sometime, and it will respond what's obviously the best interpretation of your wish, namely playing Boney M's minor 1979 hit "Gotta Go Home" on Spotify. Fortunately, "stop wipers", "stop navigation" or in fact any kind of stop at all will instantly pause the disco assault.

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

#194

Post by brabel »

onionisafruit wrote: post #87
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel? Yes: https://antiquecarmuseumofiowa.org/wp-content/uploads/1913-F... Well ... "are" is kinda stretching it...

My grandmother used to have a car where the horn was a button at the end of one of the stems. I think it was on the same stem that controlled the wipers. I wish I remembered what kind of car it was. I think it was from the 40s.

My parents had one of these... I believe it was Ford Corcel from 1978 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Corcel), a South American model, according to Wikipedia, based on Renault 12.

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

#195

Post by resolutebat »

roywiggins wrote: post #107
bhpm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be safer to require all cars to have voice controls? Then the driver doesn’t have to move their hand off the wheel at all.

Being able to honk the horn or turn the windshield wipers on from the back seat would certainly be an interesting feature, especially for people with kids.

On all cars I've driven voice control is not always on, you need to trigger it by pressing a button first.

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

#196

Post by drc500free »

pwg wrote: post #20
aurareturn wrote: post #4

Around 10 years ago, I started looking into buying a new car. I couldn't believe the number of cars that switched to touch controls even 10 years ago. It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. I refused to buy any car that replaced physical buttons with touch controls 10 years ago and I still have this rule today. Then again, it also boggles my min…

> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving. It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process". It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first ca…

My understanding is that the real driver is in being able to decouple the design of the controls from the rest of the interior design. I read somewhere that being able to design those in parallel with fewer dependencies makes a significant different in getting the car into production on time.

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

#197

Post by consp »

richardw wrote: post #173
userbinator wrote: post #16

But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn Are there really cars where the horn is not a physical button/ring on the steering wheel? IMHO the driving UX peaked in the 1960s, and was largely unchanged into the 2000s, until touch screens started taking over. Compare: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads... https://images-stag.…

Except for radios. It's very annoying that every radio had a different UX, likely in the name of innovation and differentiation. I think that's a safety issue for e.g. rental cars.

The radio is a feature in which a move to change station should not take more than a fraction oft a second. If it takes more you should stop. That is valid for any action but for some reason people start adjusting their entire audio setup while driving...

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

#199

Post by pmontra »

ok_dad wrote: post #143
static_void_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of the modern steering systems are just hydraulic or electronic power steering which boosts your input with a hydraulic or electric assist motor. You're still moving the mechanical linkage at any time you're steering, it's just that when the car is off the assist motor is disabled and because modern cars have massive tire contract patches, huge weights, and a lot more caster compared to yesteryear, it's damn nea…

Turning my car at low speed with the engine off feels much harder than 1.5 times the turning of an old times car of similar weight. I could hardly make it turn at all when it happened. I don't think I'd be able to make it through a real turn on a road. And I have a small car of about 1000 kg.

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

#200

Post by consp »

kedikedi wrote: post #104
user_7832 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really miss the feel of a physical throttle linkage on the snow and ice, I feel it's much more difficult to judge grip. The throttle is separated from the wheels/ground by the transmission and the whole engine, which makes me wonder if the response you felt probably was a combination of eg rpm/physical vibration and a few other factors. It should be possible to recreate these even in an EV, then.

The throttle feeling of a cable operated throttle is more about how much air the engine wants to breathe. I’d say it’s kinda still related to rpm, but it might be a completely different feeling on a turbo engine, that I haven’t experienced.

On most turbo engines these days they are electronically operated and have no linkage anyway. That's even the case in most modern petrol cars where people think there still is a linkage. And that trend has been going on for at least 20 years.
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