Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?

> Why is there not legislation for this already?

Cars that dont kill their drivers are more likely to have repeat customers; i.e. other factors besides legislation will force car manufacterers to shift their designs back to this approach. My 2024 CRV has exactly what you describe.

The fraction of car owners who die every year is relatively tiny. The fraction of car owners who die due to their own mistakes, where those mistakes were caused by the car, is even smaller. It's a segment of the market that is safe to ignore, financially speaking.

If that were the case they'd be no need for seatbelt laws

The other factors being that enough people get killed so that a shrinking market share forces their management decide to change their car designs?

I have a libertarian streak when it comes to drugs, porn/prostitution, free speech, patent law, etc. but in this case I’m perfectly fine with governments “getting involved” to ensure that I can shop for a vehicle without becoming a random sample in a statistical study of car safety. Especially if a possible outcome is my preventable death.

Survivorship bias, information asymmetry and product design is at play here.

100% rational and 100% informed consumers do not exist. There's both information asymmetry between manufacturers and consumers. I'm sure there's man fatal accidents that can be traced back to faulty components and improper design that gets covered up by manufacturers. The Volkswagen emissions scandal was just easily measurable.

Everyone likes it that way. Consumers are attracted to features, gimmicks and marketing because that's what works for marketing and sells. No one wants to buy a "900% less accidents than others" car. But everyone wants a bluetooth and wifi enabled car with seat subscriptions. Besides, what's a rational consumer gotta do? They gotta get up at 06:30 and make breakfast for little Timmy and take him to daycare. They need a new car by the end of the month so they better choose between big touch screen or little touch screen with a control knob.

If I can't get a dumb TV, I just don't buy a dumb TV or watch any TV at all. But you can't not travel by car.

Being so ideologically rigid that you suggest survival of the fittest over legislation...

Cars kill more than only their customers. Can we at least have legislation to prevent cars from killing the people in front of them, who were never customers to begin with? Somehow we have laws requiring passenger airbags, but not pedestrian airbags...

Cars don't kill their drivers typically, they kill people outside of the vehicle.

geez. I never said legislation wouldnt be a good thing, i only suggested that it might not be needed. good lord HN.

People buy a new car generally every 5-7 years.

furthermore there does not seem to be any great brand loyalty in the market

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/automotive-consumers-more-di...

maybe because of being afraid of dying but probably not, but given how often people buy new cars (not that often) and the lack of loyalty, I think it would not make any sense from a business perspective to give a damn if the customers die (disregarding moral perspective which I'm sure is a primary concern for automotive manufacturers)

You can buy an older car without any screens.

Yes and no, in some places older cars become "naturally" hard to find, either because they don't survive the salt in snowy regions, or they're not allowed on the road because they don't respect the anti pollution regulations

Do you have a source for that five to seven years period? I skimmed your link but it does not seem to prove your point.

The average car is 12 years old. You don't junk that old car you move it on to someone else

I guess that depends on the country? In the US, motorist fatalities from crashes outnumber pedestrian/bicycle/etc fatalities like 4:1, I think? I guess that includes both motorist killing self or occupants and also motorist killing other motorists.

> The average car is 12 years old.

That's not the same statistic though: If the only car in the world was manufactured 20 years ago and had 4 owners, then the average ownership-duration would be 5 years, a much smaller number.

____

Survey says [0] people tend to cycle vehicles in 8 years.

[0] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of...

I can drive a Ford model T as well. I don't think they'd let me in emissions-free zones, though. Do you know anyone who I can call?

In the US there are probably 1000x miles traveled in cars vs on bicycles or as pedestrians everywhere except probably the top 10 metro areas. That the casualty rates are only 4:1 shows the danger that cars pose to non-car road users.

The metric you would need for this is "fatalities and crashes caused because someone was struggling to deal with their bloody touchscreen", which can be both motorists and non-motorists. I don't think anyone is tracking that.

I don't really have a single source for the 5 - 7 years, I've read it before and kept it in my mind, the article I linked was for the shrinking brand loyalty as I thought that might need more confirmation, that said

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/heres-how-often-americans-re...

which implies less than 5 years for 2/3s of Americans, although not sure what the average is.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that most people will own 10 cars in their lifetime but querying How many cars does the average person own in their lifetime gives me 8.

Assuming car buying age is from 18 to 72, that gives 54 years of car buying, and 8 gives us 6.75 years per car if the average owns 8 cars. 5.4 years if the average owns 10 cars.

How would pedestrian airbags on a vehicle work?

Great question! Like this:

https://newatlas.com/volvo-v40-pedestrian-airbags/21734/

Does having touchscreen controls affect insurance premiums? ~100% of the market buys insurance. (Well, I guess unfortunately that's a bit optimistic. 100% of the "operating legally" market anyway...)