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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

#341

Post by rafale »

messe wrote: post #161
rafale wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the iPhone for example? Or maybe the Porsche 911 GT3 RS? Markets have a lot of segments. Government should regulate the minimum absolute necessity. Like seatbelts... who were ironically a market invention/idea first.

Sure, and precisely what the "minimum necessary" entails is up for debate. The EU just believes that minimum to be higher than you do.

My personal opinion on this is that the minimum should protect me from others. This doesn't even include seatbelts I gave as example because I can (realistically) only hurt myself. This would include gas emissions, noise limits, headlight angle/strength rules, ... Certainly not the dashboard layout.

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

#342

Post by watwut »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #74
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awareness in my view is useless because touchscreens in auto infotainment are far more visually impressive so they will always be preferred from a buyer's perspective. What we need is to build a body of scientific evidence to support regulating Auto infotainment within some form of safety-critical guard rails. It is obvious that touch without mechanical/haptic feedback is dangerous both in terms of decreasing eyes-on…

Regulating is how we got here. They put the screens in to serve backup cameras. Once you need to have a screen somewhere why not make it replace all the stuff? Engineers love it because less moving parts, fewer parts. Software loves it because ship garbage now fix with updated version later. Designers love it because "clean lines and crap". Marketing loves it because high tech. Bean counters love it for all the above…

This is not true. The screens predate that US regulation. And that regulation is purely US one, EU does not require camera.

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

#343

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I would love to have an interface where I could choose what I want to see. Obviously the speed meter would be a requirement with a minimal size, and probably the "danger, something is wrong with your car" one. But I would like to change the size and position.

My dream setup would be a large digital speed meter, and the gas level (and how far I can go on that). And that's all.

I have zero use in the engine temperature, or my consumption, or whether I am efficient with the EV mode, or whatnot. These are the only information I ever cared about.

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

#344

Post by mindslight »

shkkmo wrote: post #338
mindslight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day I did a long cross country trip with a Garmin 60CSx hiking GPS, held in my right hand, which I was also shifting with. I didn't use it for turn by turn navigation (not a fan, especially for road trips), but rather a detailed map with a live "you are here" indicator. To look at it, I held the unit halfway up and glanced down when I could naturally spare the attention. For input, I pushed the buttons wi…

FWIW, while safe, that would probably be illegal in many states you pass through due to hands-free device laws.

That is probably true these days, unfortunately. The held-in-hand aspect was key to the device being easy to use safely. If the GPS had been mounted to the dash/vent instead (per current customs), then each button press would have taken more effort to visually register where the button was and verify that I was hitting it, similar to a touchscreen. Also, I suspect focusing on a more vertical screen would have required my eyes adjusting to cancel the ambient backlight, greatly slowly my ability to change focus.

I also did most of the driving barefoot, which it turns out actually is not actually illegal as many urban legends would have you believe. That too gave me much better control modulating the clutch, handy for things like rough dirt roads.

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

#346

Post by WalterBright »

richbell wrote: post #292
WalterBright wrote: post #287

Why would one need a study for this? It's obvious. I always have to look at the touchscreen to press a button on it, not so for buttons. The touchscreen doesn't always "take" it, either, and I have to try several times.

We shouldn't shame people for performing obvious studies: studying it can either disprove false beliefs, or yield more insight. There is a very real problem in the sciences that doing "unsexy" science is treated a waste of time.

I might actually agree with you, because if anyone did a study on icons in cars that are "obviously" better, they'd find they are much worse than using language.

For example, the fuel icon is a picture of a fuel pump with an arrow on one side of it, say on the right side pointing to the right.

Does this mean:

1. The fuel pump goes on the left side of the car and one inserts the pump to the right

2. The fuel pump goes on the right side of the car and one inserts the pump to the left

Both are quite reasonable interpretations. I always have to stop and think which one it is. If it said "cap on right" then there's no ambiguity.

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

#347

Post by ajross »

nkozyra wrote: post #327
ajross wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links? I'm genuinely not aware of any; certainly none relevant to the auto industry.

Really? Many have occurred and easily discovered with a quick Google. In my grad school CS human computer interaction we reviewed a lot of prior work and individually did our own. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50523-3_... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cartoq.com/physical-buttons... https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/cars/2022/08/ye... And many more. This largely confirms something t…

Uh... your third link is coverage of the same non-study being discussed, your second is an auto-generated link farm page that puts "study" in the title but doesn't even talk about one, and the first is a real study that absolutely does not substantiate what you're claiming.

Maybe link the "many more"?

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

#348

Post by Eisenstein »

phpisthebest wrote: post #324
Eisenstein wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are we reading the same page? because what you linked to is an example of Government shielding a bad actor from liability. At multiple points in the wiki entry they talk about how government protected the Swill Milk factories. I dont know if that is the shining example of government protection, nor the indictment of free markets you think it is. >>your Ayn Randian fantasy Nope, not an Objectivist. I am small l libert…

> I dont know if that is the shining example of government protection, nor the indictment of free markets you think it is.

Notice I mentioned the FDA -- which has as a mandate to ensure safe food and drink, not the local official who had no such mandate and powered monied interested held more sway than poor dead infants. You use a local official as evidence of a regulatory body in a time when local officials were actors for industry -- and expect me to think you spent more than 3 seconds thinking critically about that?

> I am small l libertarian

And, like most libertarians, (who are not just closet fascists calling themselves libertarians because libertarians don't bother to exclude them), your definition of 'extreme' could be anything from 'driver's licenses' to 'not being able to sell your own children', so who knows what line you stand on. Whatever it is, I would like you to remove yourself from all of the government protections you disagree with and see how long you and your libertarian friends last. Hint -- it has been tried numerous times, and always ends in hilarity and completely predictable outcomes.

Just two off the top of my head...

* https://boingboing.net/2020/10/19/libertarians-exit-pursued-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seasteading_Institute

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

#349

Post by dmix »

mattmcknight wrote: post #225
karaterobot wrote: post #113

There was that story about the U.S. Navy removing touch screens from their destroyers after their horrible usability was implicated in some very embarrassing collisions. That was in 2019. If that doesn't change anything, it's not a question of car manufacturers just not being aware touch screens are more error prone. As I think most people know, the main reason they use touch screens is because it's cheaper to develo…

> a lot of times they just give you a bigger touch screen, as though it were a status symbol for some people. The big screen in the Tesla is very useful for the map. In the olden times, I used pretty large map books, and the screens are about the page size of those books. I use it to search for locations, get a list of results, select one, choose a navigation path, etc. When the car isn't moving, it is quite useful a…

The steering wheel should be the primary interface for the driver. Controls volume, cruise control, etc. The only dashboard options are A/C, which you could technically get on a steering wheel too. The hazard lights could be a single button as well, doesn't need to be on the dashboard either.

Otherwise everything else can be on a big touch screen. You could also have an Alexa style system for when you're driving and can't look ("Alexa, turn down the "AC").

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

#350

Post by anon7725 »

willnonya wrote: post #254
ajross wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agree that GPS makes finding where you are easier but it's a fallacy to pretend maps are hard to use. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature should be able to locate themselves on a map. It's only when you become so oblivious to your surroundings because you only know how ot listen to the GPS that this seems difficult...

Locating yourself on a map while stationary and locating yourself on a map while operating a 3 ton vehicle at speed and looking for a particular turn are quite different things.
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