MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Well, no shit, Sherlock! I’ve been saying this for the last seven - eight years! And yet car manufacturers insist on putting more screens in cars with touch interfaces and think they’re safe? If I get stopped when only touching a phone I could be prosecuted, yet a touchscreen is fine? 😖🤬
https://www.autoblog.com/news/new-study-finds-touchscreens-make-drivers-significantly-worse
Yep, absolutely ****ing stupid and totally unusable for myself if I’m in the car on my own unless I pull over, my finger tips, fingers are totally numb due to my spms and I’m can’t tell when I’ve touched the screen
Probably explains why I’ve had to get the screen replaced twice on my mg as I’ve cracked it from pressing too hard
As usual the article doesn’t actually bear much relationship to the study itself. Doing another task while driving makes your driving worse and driving makes your performance in other tasks worse. So far so obvious. What the study does is quantify the performance drop for the specific task of interacting with a touchscreen. What it doesn’t do is show that touchscreens are any worse than physical buttons (as it didn’t test that) yet that’s what the person who wrote the article decides to conclude.
Very much a reason I didn"t get a Ford/VW or the current facelift of a Vivaro Life. The older version, despite having a touch screen, has real buttons for the essentials like heating, media etc
What @roverpig said.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3746059.3747683
I’ll assume the study design is fine for what they wanted to measure. N=16 is probably an ok size for this kind of thing.
European safety council recently said that only cars with physical buttons for some operations will get a five star rating for safety.
I only use a touchscreen for SatNav and that's bad enough.
What it doesn’t do is show that touchscreens are any worse than physical buttons (as it didn’t test that) yet that’s what the person who wrote the article decides to conclude.
Of course they are worse than physical buttons. When you are accustomed to a given car you should be able to adjust many things via physical buttons without even looking. That is not something you can ever do with a touchscreen.
My car won't let me type into SatNav when car is moving so needs more of that sort of functionality to make them safer.
Older car with physical controls but does have voice control for the climate/ventilation Simple’s things like defrost , max min fan recirculate.
Do the latest touch screen cars not have voice control for these things?
Not a solution for unfamiliar car but could work for those stuck with one?
My car won't let me type into SatNav when car is moving so needs more of that sort of functionality to make them safer.
Neither will mine, it's a good idea except when you ask your passenger to do it for you and it won't let them!
I have a particular dislike for screens in cars because my 21 plate Octavia has possibly the most flaky, glitchy example of all time. I won't list all its many, many faults as I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it! It's Christmas morning bloke, chill out FFS!
I'll be car shopping soon and I know it will be very hard to avoid them altogether, but I will at least look for physical buttons for key functions.
I can't think of anything in our car that is controlled via the touchscreen that I need to adjust while driving. All the key controls are on the steering wheel, stalks and light button cluster. The outliers like changing navigation destination work better by voice control. Even the climate control and vents are controlled via the screen in ours but after initial setup we've not found a need to do anything other than set a temp and leave it on auto (demist has an override button). Even then it can be controlled by voice if really needed. I half miss the tactile nature of a physical button but not that much.
Do the latest touch screen cars not have voice control for these things?
They do. In-car systems are (IME) pretty poor, getting in a twist if you don't use exact command words which of course are all different from the previous car you owned. It's like operating your vehicle via a 1980s text adventure game.
Android Auto fares considerably better, and I assume Apple's offering likewise. It's clever enough to pull addresses from my contacts if I say "navigate to Dave's," though it doesn't have access to external functions like the aircon (or at least, I assume it doesn't, I haven't actually tried).
Give it twelve months and it'll all be AI powered. Ask it to drive to Dave's and it'll use MS CoPilot to buy you a canoe.
I can't think of anything in our car that is controlled via the touchscreen that I need to adjust while driving.
Exactly this - reviewers seem to whine about climate control being on the touch screen but it's pretty much set and forget. If there were physical controls for everything on the touch screen it'd look like the space shuttle flight deck so good luck finding the right button to press without looking.
My EV3 has I think 4 scrollable screens. I very rarely touch them as the voice recognition is very intuitive, it’s part AI based I understand. A steering wheel button wakens it, and it easily understands my Scottish accent when saying nav destinations or asking for changes in the heating for example. And then I can just ask Siri to do Spotify stuff etc. Phone charges wirelessly in the centre tray down beside the cup holders.
i reckon it’s the least distracting setup of any car I’ve had in the 40 years of driving.
I much preferred the wheel I had on my 2015 Audi for navigating around the screen. And the touch controls for the heated seats on my Kia don't work, cooling buttons either side do. A proper button is better. Probably a lot cheaper to produce a touch screen rather than the large number of parts required for physical buttons.
I'll be car shopping soon and I know it will be very hard to avoid them altogether, but I will at least look for physical buttons for key functions
Mazda still generally doesn't do touchscreens, and AFAIK even the ones that are touchable still have button control. It's one of the things I really like about mine!
Exactly this - reviewers seem to whine about climate control being on the touch screen but it's pretty much set and forget.
Maybe it's just me, but I adjust the climate control pretty much every time I use the car and on longer journeys whilst travelling.
To Nixie's point about what you actually use. I have just tried to think through a few normal journies.
- Sat Nav - either to set it or cancel it.
It is useful if the passenger can still do this while driving. I don't think physical buttons are easier than a touch screen for the sat nav, although a good voice control (VC) might well be.
- Lights, indicators, Cruise control
Lights, indicators, cruise control shopuld be physical buttons so they can be easily operated without looking
- Radio - On, off, choose station and adjust volume
These simple radio functions are easiest with buttons and dials. The touch screen / VC can be used for all the fancy functions
- Heated seats - on, off and lower temp
Buttons again so they can be operated without looking but less important if they automaticcally reduce the temp themselves
- Windows - open and close
Buttons so you don't need to look
- Car suspension and other tuneable features
If there are a million adjustable settings for suspension etc it would be useful to have a quick way to set 'sporty' and 'comfort' with all the subsettings having the prefferered defaults for these. Fine tuning isn't really needed when driving
Other than that, I can't really think where a million buttons help, other than the physical satisfaction of feeling the click. The biggest benefit of everything being electrictronically controlled is the memory function that sets the seats, mirrors, steeringwheel, seatbelts etc into the correct position for you if other people havce changed them. That way you are basically comfortable from the start and not trying to fiddle with adjustments.
Something that almost drove me to distraction on one of my past Mercedes was having to poke the screen every time you turned the car on to confirm that you were not being distracted by the screen.
One of the reasons I ended up with a Mazda CX60 as a company car rather than the other choices. The physical buttons are great.
50k miles in and and the rest of the car feels like a 'minimum viable product' unfortunately... 🤣🤣🤣
Fine tuning isn't really needed when driving
Adjusting them AT ALL isn't needed when driving.....
MG and polestar are two I've hired recently that get the human interface really wrong imo
Of WCAs list only heated seats is something that does not have a physical button in our car (ignoring mode as I don't think that is something you should adjust while moving). The heated seats respond well to voice control and typically I turn those on before moving anyway. Stereo volume and track control is on the wheel, as is cruise control. Station or music choice is voice (again tuning by hand I don't think should be done when moving unless wheel based). Nav in ours can be changed when moving or as it's mostly Google maps anyway by voice.
" it easily understands my Scottish accent "
Hmm the accent is'nt a problem but whenever I use a Scots word... and let's not even think about asking for gaelic song (at home via google smart speaker)
Yep big backwards step imo. Prefer to drive my 15 year old Caddy with actual buttons and knobs over the wife's Volvo that seems to have everything on a massive screen, that being said most of it can be controlled via the steering wheel..apart from the climate stuff which annoyingly you can only change using the screen.
Plus what happens in years to come when the screen malfunctions/breaks..the car will be rendered useless!
Exactly this - reviewers seem to whine about climate control being on the touch screen but it's pretty much set and forget.
Maybe it's just me, but I adjust the climate control pretty much every time I use the car and on longer journeys whilst travelling.
Not just you.
Especially in winter if I've been out fell running/cycling somewhere not from home i'll have the settings pretty full on for 5 minutes then adjust down, then another adjust 10 minutes later.
Especially in winter if I've been out fell running/cycling somewhere not from home i'll have the settings pretty full on for 5 minutes then adjust down, then another adjust 10 minutes later
Voice command "maximum heating" does that, runs for a limited time then switches to normal. No need to faff with any controls while driving.
What it doesn’t do is show that touchscreens are any worse than physical buttons
What are they "worse” than then? Driving from the boot? driving blindfolded? hands tied behind their back?? That its worse than physical buttons is exactly what the study is comparing ffs
That its worse than physical buttons is exactly what the study is comparing
From the description in the article, drivers wera asked to do a simulated drive then repeat the drive while doing "tasks" on a touchscreen and a concurrent memory test. There is no condition where the drivers repeat the route performing "tasks" using physical buttons on the dash. From the study design it would appear that it does not set out to evaluate the impact of touch screen vs buttons, but solely to quantify the effect of using a screen on driving performance.
13 year old Transit. Everything is buttons. Apart from the mirrors, which you adjust by winding down the window, leaning out and wiggling it. It just works
On the Renault I've got a choice of a stalk or touch screen for controlling the radio. With the stalk I can select the channel and volume with no more than fleeting glimpses at the screen to see the station symbol. With the touch screen it's eyes off the road and trying to hit the right spot. The piano-style buttons for the things I use most I can find by feel - perfect.
Voice commands are not something I'm willing to learn...next car will hopefully have far less reliance of the touchscreen.
There’s a fundamental issue with right hand drive cars as most folk are using the touch screen with their non-dominant hand.
Polestar 4 here and there are shortcuts and voice controls which take most of the pain away.
Plus what happens in years to come when the screen malfunctions/breaks..the car will be rendered useless!
I currently have a 2010 E Class Mercedes convertable where the screen has malfunctioned. Mercedes to not offer replacement parts and will not fix it. The only suggestion the Main Dealer had was a test drive in a different car with a rubbish trade in value on mine.
I went to a specialist and they sdaid there was no way they could get a replacement screen that small but could fit a modern bigger screen in its place. This would just not fit the moulded dashborard and obscure at least 2 of the ventalation openers.
Basically I now have the three radio stations I had prgrammed in at the time and a clock that is only correct in the summer. Fortunatly HVAC and the other stuff I actually use is button controlled but I don't know, or can't remember what other features I am now missing out on
My Corsa has a button on the steering wheel to activate voice control, but you press it, it takes a second or two then it's ready for the command..... "Play radio 4." It thinks about it for a while ...... Then some more...... Then says, sorry this function is not available right now.
Exactly this - reviewers seem to whine about climate control being on the touch screen but it's pretty much set and forget.
It was the same on my old B5 Passat. Set the temperature you want and leave it. At start up heat was directed to the screen then as the car warmed up the vents would automatically move to footwell and the temperature would be maintained thereafter. If memory serves it was ported down to VW from Audi. My current B7 Passat is a lower spec Bluemotion model and has a manual system which has two big knobs controlling temperature and vents. It works fine.
There’s a fundamental issue with right hand drive cars as most folk are using the touch screen with their non-dominant hand.
I'm guessing you don't play piano. Anyway, isn't it better to keep your dominant hand on the wheel?
Voice commands are not something I'm willing to learn...next car will hopefully have far less reliance of the touchscreen.
Same here. I barely manage talking to humans, don't want the added burden of talking to machines in addition!
My cars have been LHD for over 30 years. Non dominant hand on the wheel is not a problem. In competition I felt RHD cars were a disadvantage in that the non-dominant hand had to constantly change tasks from handbrake to gears to steering - something done by the dominant hand in LHD.
What it doesn’t do is show that touchscreens are any worse than physical buttons (as it didn’t test that) yet that’s what the person who wrote the article decides to conclude.
Do you not understand that it doesn’t take long to become familiar with the physical location of important physical controls, enough to be able to locate them by touch, operate them as necessary, all without taking your eyes off the road?
I have come to that conclusion through actually driving a range of touchscreen predominant vehicles along with vehicles that, while having a touchscreen, it isn’t the primary means of controlling the most likely functions that a driver might need to interact with.
How many different types of vehicle have you actually driven with different types of controls and display fitted?
I specifically chose my Ford because the main climate controls were physical and easy to locate by touch and operate without having to look at anything other than the road. Anything else can be controlled by steering wheel controls, or wait until later.
All that should be perfectly obvious!
I'm guessing you don't play piano.
I play bass guitar. Badly.
Anyway, isn't it better to keep your dominant hand on the wheel?
Steering doesn’t require as fine motor control as navigating a bunch on menus on a touch screen does.
Crap touchscreens are worse than physical buttons, but I don’t think I ever really need to dig into any menu on my own car when I’m driving. Picking a music playlist is easier on a big responsive touchscreen, and literally every other control is accessible via the steering wheel buttons.
The climate control has been set at 22C for two years and the defrost button is in the bottom right hand corner.
On the subject of screens failing, buttons do the same. The hazzard light button on the Mercedes broke, just the red clear plastic bit so it failed the MOT. Mercedes no longer stock or supply this. Fortunately I managed to get a 2nd hand one from eBay, otherwise the car was a technical write-off as it was not road legal.
You'd have bought a 3rd party switch though in that case though preventing it becoming a write off.
After reading this I'm going to give voice control in my 2 year old VW. Though judging by the buggyness of the system I don't hold up much hope.
The latest update means the navigation selects random speed limits on roads it was previously fine with. Given that it's a PHEV and you are supposed to use the satnav so it can balance electric v petrol it's pretty shit that upgrades are making the functionality worse. I've not had reason to use the full adaptive cruise control since the latest enshitiffication/update but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence
Do you not understand that
As we used to say at work : "Cool story, now show me the data" . The study you're referencing here would be akin to sticking people in an unfamiliar car then measuring their distraction levels when they're asked to find the tyre pressure monitor reset button or turn off the traction control. They'd be scanning all over the dashboard looking for it, and the study results would likely be similar. So using that study to support a claim that touch screens are worse than buttons is as valid as using it to support a claim that haddock is better than cod.
I'm not arguing that touchscreens are the best solution for everything including wipers indicators etc and think that the new euro ncap regs are a sensible step. But it's possible to make a crap driver interface using buttons, screens, voice commands or whatever - I had an Alfa in the 80s where the control layout must have been done by a blind man throwing darts into the car through the rear window. My modern (button, touchscreen and voice controlled) car is much more complex yet simpler to operate than that.
I don't mind the touch screen. Makes the centre console cleaner
There’s a fundamental issue with right hand drive cars as most folk are using the touch screen with their non-dominant hand.
All the dials in my previous cars were on controlled my my left non dominant hand.
All the dials in my previous cars were on controlled my my left non dominant hand.
I have no problem using dials and switches with my left (non-dominant) hand, especially if another part of that hand is anchored on another part of the car e.g. indicators on left stalk whilst holding steering wheel, or turning a heating dial while other parts of the hand are resting on the centre console. It's the deliberate and repeated action of navigating through multiple touch screens without the option to steady another part of the hand that is harder for some folk.
The point you're missing, the purist is that the touch screen needs hand to eye coordinationeven xhen you've learned where everything is. Buttons only reqire looking and memorising once or twice. When I get in a new to me car I check and memorise the buttons I'm likely to need on the move, then slowly leran the others. Within a few drives I don't have to take my eyes off the road. With a touch screen I have to pull over for every thing on the screen or my driving will be shit.
If I get Android Auto read me my WhatsApp messages whilst driving it will ask me if I wish to respond. When I do so verbally it just comes up with giberish but it does seem to understand "no, **** off!".
^^ there does appear to be huge variety in the ‘smartness’ of the voice control systems. My BMW i4 was terrible, as is my wife’s A1. My Kia is great, never seems to miss a beat on commands or dictation of messages.
I don't know about anyone else. But I think haddock is better than cod
Thanks VW
MEHR KLIMAANLAGE SCHNELLIGKEIT BITTE
There’s a fundamental issue with right hand drive cars as most folk are using the touch screen with their non-dominant hand.
It's just the same for left handed people on RHD cars 😉
Can you not point to/touch something with your left hand or do I have a superpower?
13 year old Transit. Everything is buttons. Apart from the mirrors, which you adjust by winding down the window, leaning out and wiggling it. It just works
15 year old Transit for me. Don't have to worry about the air con settings as I don't have Air Con, well, it has windows that open.
Mind you, the only electric vehicle I've found myself interested in for any length of time is the Slate.
I saw a review of a Tesla where you had to drag up and down on the display just to select forward or reverse! Thats got to be the worst implementation of a touch screen interface.
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/does-it-work-tesla-s-stalk-free-interior/
@thepurist - the whooshing sound you hear is the point going right over your head. The actual point is that with a touchscreen it’s just not possible, no matter how long you’ve had the vehicle, to learn where to place your fingers on a touchscreen when there’s absolutely no tactile feedback to tell you that you’re actually contacting the place you need in order to operate the function you need! My old Octavia was pretty poor when it came to operation of certain functions, because there were a row of identical buttons underneath the climate control system that were impossible to tell apart and some of them didn’t actually have a function, because it wasn’t a high enough specification vehicle.
One of the worst examples I came across for really poor ergonomic design was the Citrôen C4 Grand Picasso, circa 2018/19, which had all of the drivers information placed in the centre of the dashboard on two LCD display screens:
I can assure you, from personal experience of driving a significant number of these vehicles, that trying to locate and adjust things like screen demist, fan strength and a bunch of other functions, when the buttons are all completely flat and have no haptic feedback, and everything is outside your line of sight while driving, is bloody stupid!
Christ, you can’t even see how fast you’re going because all necessary information is completely outside your line of sight!
I drove a fair number of those awful bloody things, and while they’re very comfortable, and there’s lots of room in them, unless you have a passenger who can be relied upon to operate things for you, from a driver’s perspective, they’re bloody awful things!
I didn’t just drive them for a couple of miles, I might be driving for several hours, cumulatively several hundred miles, if not more; horrible, hateful things to drive.
Here’s the interior of my car, everything I need to operate is within reach and is a physical rotary knob, which will put a corresponding visual notification on the screen, not that it’s important to know the actual fan speed, temperature or radio volume, because it’s obvious when it gets cooler or hotter, and the radio or audio is operated from steering wheel controls.
My modern (button, touchscreen and voice controlled) car is much more complex yet simpler to operate than that.
I think part of the confusion (for me at least) is that for instance, my mini will tell me that the tyre pressure is low, which is a good thing generally, but after you put air in, you'll need to reset the system that manages it. So that's (on the centre console) touch the screen for car, now you've got either car settings or systems setting, choose one, (it's systems not car btw, no, I don't understand why either) find then the tyre management option which is another sub menu, now press reset; which isn't a clearly labelled 'touch here' and it'll perform a reset, now this could be a few seconds at motorway speeds, but at stop start town traffic speeds could be 5/10 mins, and then once that's done, touch a symbol on the screen to 'accept' the reset. It's fantastically complex and you have to do part of it while driving/moving. As it's mini, all BMW cars are the same.
It's clever, but given the ability of driving for some folks, bonkers. I'll bet money that some folks are driving around with underinflated tyres, and won't do anything because the system that manages is so complex - Obviously a sub section of folks won't ever check their tyre pressure anyway, but BMW have created a system designed to alert you. it should be easier, not more difficult.
My view is that if an aeroplane can have touch screen then so can cars .
It’s an odd one. They make cars look modern, and save car companies a shed load of money.
Personally I won’t buy a car without physical buttons
I think ( could be wrong ) that Porsche have now even gone for a physical button that turns off all the stupid driver aids in one go , now that is progress!
Re CountZero’s post -
We’re currently looking for a replacement for our 10 year old Golf. Whilst it was dated inside, it was fairly intuitive to drive and most of the controls where I’d expect to find them and easy to operate. New EV’s however… what a shitshow.
I appreciate they’re more complicated, so need more controls, but who thought not having a display in your line of sight was a good idea? I’m not talking about the centre touch screen per se for background systems controls and mapping, that I can live with, but no dash in front at all with speed and current car status? Wtf?
We quite liked the Volvo ex30, but the no dash thing was a complete deal breaker for me. I don’t want to be taking my eyes off the road all the time to see what’s going on thanks very much, no wonder there’s so many accidents on the road these days, way too many distractions.
the whooshing sound you hear is the point going right over your head.
Sigh. No CZ you are failing to understand that my critique is that the paper being referenced does not say that buttons are better than screens. That's it - your opinion is fine, and I've already agreed that screens are not a great choice for regularly used functions.
Take one extreme where everything (indicators, gear selection etc) is on the screen and it would be diabolical. Take the other where everything has a physical control and these days your dash would be a mass of tiny switches, most of which you'd barely touch. I'd suggest there is a sweet spot where the most frequently used things are on stalks or buttons and all the stuff you don't need is tucked away on a screen. I'd even be fine if the screen locked above 5mph.
Hopefully we're heading for some sort of convergence where layouts become more standardised again - 30 years ago you had lights, wipers, indicators, heater and radio and they were all in pretty much the same place in every car (except some that put the indicator on the wrong side so you wiped the screen every time you turned right).
As nickc says, part of the problem isn't "touch screens vs physical buttons" (though that absolutely is a problem) but rather, you've got to go hunting for things.
I've never used the trip counter. Off the top of my head I don't know how. It's a setting somewhere. It's also on the steering wheel controls but I've got to first scroll left-right through various views on the mini display on the main dash to get to the one that controls it, then uppy-downy to the particular trip setting.
Worse, the odometer is buried somewhere in the touchscreen, what's shown on the dash instead is the useless trip. As far as I can tell this can't be changed. Remember when someone asked you for the car's mileage, you'd say "oh, I forgot, I'll just go check" and you could read it through the window without even unlocking the door? On my last few cars it was in darkness until you armed the ignition, which was a minor inconvenience. Increasingly you'd have to do more things like actually start the car and/or scroll through information displays. Now you don't even get that luxury, it's ... somewhere? ... in one of the settings screens.
They make cars look modern, and save car companies a shed load of money.
It astounds me that an "infotainment" system would be cheaper than physical switches. We're depriving tomorrow's young drivers of the unbridled joy of going scrumping round scrapyards. My 1970s Fiesta looked like the flight deck of Concorde by the time I'd finished replacing blanking plates with the contents of my snorkel pockets.
This article summarises the very real issues with modern car design:
VWs used to have a button in the glovebox to reset the tire pressure warning. Then about 10 years ago this changed to having to do it through settings in the stereo. My son's Polo radio didn't work and the tire warning light came on which couldn't be reset because the damn radio didn't work. VW wanted £3.5k to replace the unit in the glove box (its just a screen on the dash).
Managed to fix it by shorting a jumper in the control unit and using some dodgy software downloaded from the internet. But what a faff.
It astounds me that an "infotainment" system would be cheaper than physical switches.
Touch screens allow for virtual buttons/switches to be added in software - any time even on the fly.
So no physical buttons or associated wiring needed = Cheaper.
(And to some, sexier)
As it's mini, all BMW cars are the same.
my last car was a BMW i4 and the tyre pressure system could only be adjusted/reset if stationary with handbrake on..
you did have to drive a bit to get it to register/update the pressures, that’s the same on my current Kia, where again, reset can only be done once safely stopped.