We know that phone using drivers perform worse than drink drivers. They regularly kill people because they're not concentrating on what's in front of them.
If you change the car's UI from something with low latency[1] to something with much greater latency[2] then you are definitely putting others at higher risk because drivers spend longer not concentrating on driving.
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1. See button, move hand, feel large physical button, look back at road, press button, feel feedback click.
2. See screen, move hand, see screen pops up menu on hand proximity, see menu item, click menu item, miss-press try again, wait for animation, attempt to select feature but hand moves due to bump in the road, move hand again, try to select feature again, miss-press try again, wait for feedback animation, look back at road.
Then why is anyone skating for the decision to abandon buttons in the first place? The driver is responsible for paying attention to the road rather than fiddling with the radio.
> Then why is anyone skating for the decision to abandon buttons in the first place?
Cost.
My guess would be that manufacturers want touchscreens because they're cheaper to develop and implement than an inventory of individual physical controls.
Adding a new touchscreen widget to a car that's already in production is just an over the air software upgrade vs a very expensive redesign/recall for physical controls.
Drivers don't think through the consequences of the control system at the time of purchase or have it as a low priority compared to things like purchase price.
I think it's pretty easy to tell yourself that your not going to mess with a screen while driving but in reality it's much harder to fight that compulsion. If it wasn't then we wouldn't need the "I'm Not Driving" feature on phones.
I don't find it hard to resist the compulsion. If I'm driving, I don't look at my phone. Seems like a pretty simple rule to follow.
Anyway, I understand that they're doing it because of cost, but if you're going to start saying the guy who worked on the infotainment system has blood on his hands because he implemented some animation that takes half a second then surely the person who put a touch screen in the first place is more culpable.
We know that phone using drivers perform worse than drink drivers. They regularly kill people because they're not concentrating on what's in front of them.
If you change the car's UI from something with low latency[1] to something with much greater latency[2] then you are definitely putting others at higher risk because drivers spend longer not concentrating on driving.
--
1. See button, move hand, feel large physical button, look back at road, press button, feel feedback click.
2. See screen, move hand, see screen pops up menu on hand proximity, see menu item, click menu item, miss-press try again, wait for animation, attempt to select feature but hand moves due to bump in the road, move hand again, try to select feature again, miss-press try again, wait for feedback animation, look back at road.