Just mulling this over prompted in part by a thread on here, watching top gear and by my own experiences.
I’ve always had crappy old bangers and the current car ( an oldish Volvo S80 ) has all kinds of info available on the dashboard readout. The first few months I had it, I was constantly fiddling with heating, satnav, mpg indicators ( instant and average )… Sometimes I’d get to the end of a road and realise I’d barely looked out of the car! Terrifying.
As soon as I realised I was doing this, I set everything before I started off but even so, I still sometimes catch myself being inattentive.
Edit – bloody phone posted too soon. So with newer cars, is the problem even worse? Do people sit and play with traction control? Are all these things massively distracting?