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Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?

(www.economist.com)
238 points Brajeshwar | 1 comments | 20 Sep 25 15:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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crazygringo ◴[20 Sep 25 16:27 UTC] No.45314757[source]▶
> An analysis published in 2020 by the Transport Research Laboratory, a British organisation, found that touchscreens impaired a driver’s reaction time more than driving over the legal alcohol limit.

The question isn't whether they're dangerous, anymore.

The question is, when is safety legislation going to be passed that prevents them from being used for any routine adjustments while driving. I.e. windshield wipers, AC, change volume, skip to next track, etc.

Like it's fine if you still use them to input a GPS destination, change long-term car settings, connect a Bluetooth device, etc.

But we need to separate out the actions routinely used during driving and legislate physical controls. Why is there not legislation for this already?

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cramcgrab[dead post] ◴[20 Sep 25 17:00 UTC] No.45315075[source]▶
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zeta0134 ◴[20 Sep 25 17:06 UTC] No.45315135[source]▶
It's becoming increasingly more difficult to find cars that don't pull this nonsense, as removing physical controls (in favor of a fiddly awful touch OS) is a cost saving measure during manufacturing.

... also, whether I purchase it or not makes little difference if I am the pedestrian killed by some other driver who was sold an unsafe vehicle.

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1. serial_dev ◴[20 Sep 25 18:57 UTC] No.45316216[source]▶
Funny enough, two years ago I bought a Dacia because they still had physical buttons for everything like it 2005. It blew my mind when I was in my friends Tesla the things that can be only controlled by touch screen.