Live data from Hacker News

Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

slate.com

621–630 of 1001 posts

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#621
post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that these cars pass safety certification, makes me question certifiers. It's illegal to look at your phone while driving, for good reason, but it's legal to fiddle with a damn computer screen, because it's part of the car. I predict it's a matter of time before we'll see a correlation between number of crashes, and cars with touchscreens.

Do auto insurance rates on touch screen cars show this to be the case? Cars with touch screens have been around long enough that they should have data, and consequently be charging more for insurance on those cars if they are is that is indeed the case.

Auto insurance models like many other insurance models are often not that smart. The insurance company will charge more of there is more claims payout, but they also want to attract certain client segments and compete with competitors.

Also, claim rates have all kind of confounding factors. Maybe a car is safer but more prone to theft, or more dangerous but easier to repair, or has better controls but is driven by inexperienced drivers etc.

They need to make a profit over their whole insured client population, not necessarily over any given segment or car model, so I wouldn't use insurance rates as data points in determining car safety without a lot of caveats.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#622
We were in the market last year for a new car. After test driving a few with touch screens, we decided to instead go for a barely driven 10 year old model. No touch screens and far fewer digital parts and connections which well eventually break.

That cost Mercedes $150k.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#623
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compounding this on a touchscreen is slippage. Cars can be bumpy. If you slip and hit the wrong control it can take an unacceptably large amount of concentration (given what you are meant to be actually concentrating on when driving) to work out where you are now, how to get back to where you are, and try to do the original thing again. A few seconds of confusion and distraction is more than enough to kill. Tactile b…

Especially this. I had too many times where the road was bumpy and I needed to press a button on the infotainment system. You need to rest your thumb off screen first in order to be able to press the correct button on the touchscreen. It's an unsafe way to control the car.

Funny. I usually rest all my other fingers offscreen to press with my thumb as that feels like it gives me the most stable tap.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#624

I wouldn't mind touchscreens as long as these imbecile developers would strictly limit UI response time to under 16ms. In no world where you're barrelling 3,000+ lbs of mass at tens of miles an hour should you be distracted by some moronic app or subsystem failing to respond in time because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." Any software running as a part of a motor vehicle should be federally…

The thing is that with physical buttons you’re suddenly back with electrotechnical engineers, whom, on the whole need to be a whole lot more competent than software engineers to do their jobs.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#625
I thought I would hate it but I really don’t mind mine. I like a few important buttons on the steering wheel but I always to look to remember which is which anyways.

Maybe I don’t drive far enough often enough. I honestly expected to hate it but it’s made almost no difference to me.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#626
The problem is that people love touch screens. I could never figure that out. I have always hated touch screens. They are imprecise, dirty, they inevitably hide information when you have to place your hand over them and they make packing information tightly really hard.

But, people love them because they have what appears to be zero learning curve and people hate to learn even the simplest of tasks.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#627
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what? You've got physical buttons? Big whoop. That physical button that takes 500ms to respond is still as dangerous. No, that's wrong. Problem with touchscreens is that (1) you need to look at them and (2) there is no tactile feedback of whether you pressed it or not and (3) you need to hover your arm in a moving car at just the right spot. Physical buttons cleanly resolve all of these major problems. If the ac…

It is not about 'looking and pushing' the button. It's about stateful UI. physical layout of buttons is usually stateless - press button thing turns on, press it again it turns off. You don't need to think in which menu you are, and where to press, while driving.

That is not really true these days. for a Long time many cars have had small screens in the center of the dash and 4 way buttons to navigate into menus of the car to preform different tasks. These buttons are contextual to the menu they are in, and many even have double tap, hold, etc options with in the button response matrix.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judgement should have been against tesla, not the customer. Wipers are essential and should not require fiddling

Sounds like the driver was attempting to adjust non-critical features of wipers not turning them off and on We should be very careful not to include the kitchen sink in with "essential" items. Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not

Depends on how hard the rain is pouring down.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#629
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." I used to be an infotainment software engineer for an Auto maker. There’s this idea in the software industry that because the software behaves poorly on your car’s system, it must’ve been written poorly by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits.…

Windows 95 runs pretty well on 10 year old hw and does much more than these car screens do. So no, software is fundamentally crap there.

Windows 95 runs on 25 years old hardware now. I can run a full XFCE based GNU/Linux DE with ease on a 10 yo laptop.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#630
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only saving grace of those is the ease of cleaning spills. Otherwise I completely agree with you and GP - how annoying it is that every physical button is now a clunky touch surface!

> The only saving grace of those is the ease of cleaning spills. Disagree. Spills can turn hobs on & off, and at best cause the entire control surface to lock up and start beeping - which can quickly turn worst, if a hob happened to turn on a split second earlier. Knobs. On the front, not on the top.

That only works for full stoves, something I don’t think I’ve seen in 15 years.

How do you do knobs on the front (or side) with an embedded cooktop? Raise it by 3 inches so you have space for knobs?

Post reply on HN