Comments
By crazygringo 2025-09-2016:2711 reply > 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?
By nothrabannosir 2025-09-2019:037 reply I would support legislation which disables the touch screen when the passenger seat is unoccupied and the vehicle is in motion.
But I admit I’m being selfish: I don’t drive but share the road with people who do.
By LorenPechtel 2025-09-2020:104 reply Yeah, the passenger seat is a problem. I've been very annoyed with my phone before for locking out when my car is in motion--even when I'm not the one handling the phone.
You can actually make such 3D display that has left and right eyeball locations configured to correspond to left and right seats, and blank the driver's side channel so that the driver can't interact but the passenger could. It was briefly tried on few Japanese head units during 2000s, and then abandoned. Some Volkswagen-Audi cars emulate this feature for the optional secondary infotainment unit using a static privacy filter.
By brooksyd2 2025-09-227:05 My 2012 Range Rover has this to allow the passenger to watch TV while the driver still sees the normal menu. Works surprisingly well.
What phone doesn’t let you operate it while in a moving car? I’ve never heard of this.
By ghostpepper 2025-09-2021:353 reply Modern mazdas are one example - the touchscreen locks out above 5 miles per hour.
This is only feasible because the physical controls are excellent, and you can basically accomplish anything except typing an address or a song name without the touchscreen as input.
By AstroNutt 2025-09-218:18 My 2025 CX50 has excellent input controls. It's almost like using a mouse on the center console. Once you realize the home, back button, scroll and enter button are all within a fingers reach, it's very intuitive. It took about five minutes to master it when I first got the car and I realized how it worked.
On my car, the touchscreen only works when Android Auto or Apple CarPlay are enabled. I'm assuming all newer models are the same. There are lots of audio control built in the steering wheel too. I don't find any of it distracting.
By decafninja 2025-09-2023:532 reply The newest CX-5, their best selling car, abandons the knob, if that’s what you’re referring to.
Supposedly most buyers in fact, did not like the knob.
This seems to follow other manufacturers that formerly had knob based controls but similarly abandoned them.
By r-johnv 2025-09-216:35 That is so sad. The knob on my CX30 is such a favourite feature for me that I want to rule out car models that don't have a physical input in that location.
Sad to hear that I'm in a minority for loving that input.
I wonder if it's buyers (which I would find mildly surprising) or potential buyers (which wouldn't surprise me at all)?
By gedy 2025-09-2021:45 I have a new Mazda with CarPlay, you can touch the phone at any time? Or are you referring to the "extra" touchscreen on some models in addition to the control knob.
By to11mtm 2025-09-2023:51 Not necessarily a 'phone' but an 'app'; Here WeGo often won't let you pick a route for a destination you looked up if you're moving... I say 'often' because it seems to have a mood where sometimes it works but other times it literally shows a sort of 'cannot do this while vehicle is in motion' blocker...
By phinnaeus 2025-09-2021:52 iOS has had this feature for several versions now, I think it predates focus modes even. But today it lives under that umbrella as the Driving focus, which can activate automatically based on certain kinds of detected motion.
By Broken_Hippo 2025-09-2022:392 reply I'm pretty sure no phone does this on its own - if it did, people on public transport would have complaints.
It is probably a setting on your phone (driving mode, perhaps) or a setting when you pair it with your car.
By not_doctorq 2025-09-210:091 reply For what it’s worth, my phone (iPhone SE 3) DOES do the lock up when I’m on the public bus, requiring me to tap “I’m not driving.”
By yial 2025-09-210:25 You literally can turn this off in the settings. You have it set to enable driving mode automatically.
By LorenPechtel 2025-09-2120:201 reply Paired with the car.
By wlonkly 2025-09-220:10 I recently discovered that iOS supports both: you can have it detect driving by Bluetooth pairing or by motion (or disable it).
By dzhiurgis 2025-09-211:45 I had that on for 1 or 2 years and given up. Thanks for reminding me, it's a nightmare that makes using your phone less safe.
We just have zero reasons to have touch screens in cars. They need to be removed, not restricted.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-09-2023:30 > We just have zero reasons to have touch screens in cars
A good sign you’re missing something is when you see zero reason for another’s effort.
Touch screens are a cheap, adaptable UI. They simplify supply chains and allow for a richer variety of context-dependent controls. The map on a properly designed touch screen absolutely renders less useful a phone for navigation, which in turn removes a host of potential distractions from the game.
Touch screens should be an option for car designers and buyers. But they should be done safely.
Might I recommend you the Lexus touchpad? Yes, touchpad. Like on your laptop.
Where is that located in the car? Near the gear stick I assume?
Does it move a mouse pointer on the screen?
By anonymars 2025-09-2120:07 There are different versions of it. Sometimes it's more akin to the Mazda wheel, but sometimes the navigation...
https://youtu.be/AF7YZHmMSzg?list=PLVornlshk2uo7s9MkRROCpNVg...
By mjevans 2025-09-2019:51 I would not.
I would support legislation that forced a recall of all defective cars (ones that required touchscreens to do basic car things).
Mazdas do lock the screen when in motion.
Actions can be accomplished using a 'big knob' button that can be turned or pressed. The driver can still distract themselves, but I believe it's to a lesser extent that the touch screen.
By para_parolu 2025-09-2023:301 reply Personal anecdote: I have mazda and tesla and drive both regularly. I’ve got many more times distracted with mazda knob trying to turn on album than doing the same in tesla. I used to think knob is safer until I started to see difference every day.
By decafninja 2025-09-2023:50 Also, IIRC the latest version of their best selling car - the CX-5, abandons the knob for pure touchscreen.
Supposedly the story is that outside of a small but vocal contingent on the Internet, most buyers did not like the knob.
By moogly 2025-09-212:29 In the MY2026 CX-5 (announced in July), the control knob went the same way as BMW's iDrive jog control: it's gone.
By guidedlight 2025-09-219:31 Unfortunately you can’t use the ‘big knob’ without looking at the screen, which is entirely self defeating.
By zzo38computer 2025-09-2022:34 I do not like touch screens, in general. I do not drive a car, but as a passenger I have found some functions (but not all functions) locked while the car is moving, even though it could sometimes be helpful for the passenger to operate it (or read it out loud) for the driver so that the driver does not have to (although this is only because the driver wanted me to do it; I otherwise have no use for them). However, physical controls would be better.
One not-so-fun place this could go is mandatory voice recognition commands, leading to everything said in the car being recorded and stored by the manufacturers.
By Silhouette 2025-09-212:291 reply Voice recognition might be the only UI worse for safety and usability than a touchscreen for normal driving operations.
Not that you're wrong about the privacy angle either.
By 1718627440 2025-09-227:272 reply Why? Talking won't prevent you focusing on the road?
By necovek 2025-09-232:44 Yes: attempting to have conversation is found to diminish focus on driving to a large extent — I remember seeing a study on this, and can vouch with personal experience.
Yes, you can do most of the driving, but "at the edges", when quicker reaction time is needed, it becomes noticeable. Similar to, ahem, drunk driving, though obviously, not as bad, and you can stop a conversation whenever needed.
Obviously, talking to a computer in your car would be less taxing than to a person, but when it misrecognizes the input, it might be the opposite.
By Silhouette 2025-09-2210:201 reply Because voice recognition is horribly imprecise. If you're controlling essential functions for driving then you need controls that are efficient, predictable, and reliable.
By 1718627440 2025-09-2214:32 Sounds like a implementation problem, not a problem with voice control.
We have a 20 old navi with voice control. You can't just say free form things, but it's very deterministic. Most commands you want to say aren't free form, so this doesn't really matter. It also confirms everything, so it will never do something without you knowing. It also has the best voice I got to know. Natural, precise, short AND friendly; no clue why all these modern voices with way more compute all sound like garbage.
By mook 2025-09-2021:02 I would support that, as long as it specified all new cars (not existing ones).
I drive a car with a touchscreen. Obviously, I'm not touching it in motion otherwise my position would be dumb… sometimes it does dumb things and I'll just have to ignore it for the drive or find a parking space to stop and deal with it.
By oneeyedpigeon 2025-09-2017:121 reply > The question is, when is safety legislation going to be passed that prevents them from being used for any routine adjustments while driving.
We already have this exact legislation in the UK.
By quietbritishjim 2025-09-2018:331 reply Really? All new cars seem to have heating controls on a touchscreen. Are you sure you aren't thinking of something else, like the regulations against the use of mobile phones while driving? (Even that is allowed so long as it's on a mount.)
By shawabawa3 2025-09-2020:08 What car?
I've driven like 5 modern rental cars in the last year and none of them locked out the touch screen while driving, and most needed the touch screen to change the temperature controls
By YZF 2025-09-2018:56 What about Teslas? I know they're in the UK because I saw them there and they have many controls on the touch screen and almost no physical controls. How does that work?
By gambiting 2025-09-2021:00 I'm in the UK and my touch screen works fine at any speed. Anecdotes are kinda pointless unless you say what kind of car you have. Mine is a 2020 Volvo XC60.
By numpad0 2025-09-219:53 Basically every Japanese infotainment has this feature too. There's a "car is in motion" input cable that you are not to snip off. It's not rare to find that wire severed, eh good enough effort on manufacturer's end.
It's also software implemented. The screen works, just the apps on it grey out buttons while in motion. You can e.g. switch to radio, change volume, but not search or set destination.
By gerdesj 2025-09-2020:36 My Seic MG4 has volume +/- physical buttons under the touch screen as well as the usual steering wheel controls but all air conn controls are on the touch screen which works at any speed.
Quite a lot of the safety features rely on the Android tablet embedded in the dash. When you restart it (long press home button) quite a worrying number of warnings pop up on the display behind the steering wheel!
By subscribed 2025-09-2020:301 reply Does that mean that you have to park, say, Polestar o the motorway to change the temperature in the AC?
By magicalhippo 2025-09-2021:24 My Renault Megane e-Tech has physical controls for just about everything needed, but regardless it also has a voice interface, so I can tell it to adjust the AC or turn off the seat heater etc without taking my eyes off the road.
Physical controls were a must when getting a new car, but I find myself using voice a lot, especially in traffic.
By hedora 2025-09-2023:30 I would support legislation that requires routine controls to be safety tested, and further requires all functionality to behave the same regardless of vehicle velocity or whether it is in gear.
There could be a narrow carve out for the manual, and stuff like software updates that make the console reboot.
If you attempt to adjust the bass and treble on our kia when it is in gear, the fucking sliders are not only broken, but they randomly move around on the screen like a “I bet you can’t dismiss this dialogue” prank app.
On old bmws, you can set gps destinations using the jog wheel while the car is in motion.
On the new ones, that’s disabled, the voice control reads off legal disclaimers and aggressively times out, making you restart the flow if you dare pay attention to the road while driving.
On top of that the (enshittified) jog wheel is erratic if the car is in motion. How does this stuff pass safety tests?
The cars I have had don’t let you change BT settings or many other settings and Apple Maps at least doesn’t let you type in an address while you’re driving from the display I don’t think. I’ve done it from my phone as a passenger.
By bongodongobob 2025-09-2019:512 reply The Bluetooth thing infuriates me. If the connection fails on my way to work, I have to fucking pull over and park to reconnect my phone. It's literally just pushing the Bluetooth button on my dash. But oh no, that is not available when in motion. Navigate through multiple screens to adjust anything else? Totally fine.
And passengers don't exist and would never like to play music or navigate from the passenger seat! Gives me road rage every time.
The passenger can grab the phone that is connected via BT, CarPlay or Android Auto. In the case of CarPlay, someone in the backseat can connect to the phone that is using CarPlay by using Shareplay and control the music.
I don't see how this realistically helps passengers play their own music
By JustExAWS 2025-09-2113:52 Well two things - if the driver has a CarPlay connected and then used SharePlay to allow the other person to control the playlist, then the other person can play anything they want to.
In our 2025 Kona - one of the cheapest cars sold by Hyundai - you can have CarPlay connected with one device and have another phone paired with BT for audio.
CarPlay doesn’t use Bluetooth. It is either wired or using WiFi direct
By bongodongobob 2025-09-2112:491 reply Not on my 2015 Subaru it can't.
A passenger can’t use your phone connected with BT and control the audio?
But it looks like the USB port in that model year Subaru supports the iPod protocol meaning if you have an iPhone, why wouldn’t the passenger be able to control the music?
If you have an Android it looks like it supports just using your phone as a dumb mass storage device that contains music.
By bongodongobob 2025-09-2122:261 reply The car has to be stopped to do anything involving pairing. I also do not have any iProducts.
By JustExAWS 2025-09-221:08 If you have an Android device, you still should be able to connect it to the USB port and play music from the phone without Bluetooth pairing.
https://www.subaruxvforum.com/threads/playing-over-usb-with-...
By JustExAWS 2025-09-2020:22 I use CarPlay and plug in my phone. I don’t have to worry about BT. My ancient old 2011 Sonic supported the iPod protocol. That meant I could plug my phone into the USB port for audio, on screen display of what was playing and I believe it could control it.
Voice controls are much better for that kind of thing anyway. I expect they'll continue to improve.
By Saline9515 2025-09-2018:491 reply The problem is that they imply that the car listens to all of your communications at all time, which many users would find creepy.
My last two cars had button-triggered voice controls, which solves that concern.
By Terr_ 2025-09-2021:24 IMO physical-world safety measures are underused. Not just because they provide pretty hard barriers to certain attacks, but also because they often exist in a world the human user can notice and verify.
For example, I would prefer to press a fob-button to unlock or start a car, but there are systems out there where thieves simply boost/relay the signal of your keys in order to open and and drive it away.
Sure, there are countermeasures involving complicated speed-of-light timing tricks, but it could have all been avoided with a button.
By sebastiennight 2025-09-210:061 reply It solves that concern if the trigger is built in hardware, not if it's software-driven.
By Uvix 2025-09-215:16 Most people already have a phone with a software-controlled microphone in their pocket; that’s generally considered good enough.
For someone who really wants that level of hardware control, they’re probably better served by an older car with less or no computers.
By Insanity 2025-09-2020:30 Yup, this is how I use my voice control in the car. It’s on the steering wheel.
It's an Apple thing to limit keyboard access when the car is moving. Android Auto doesn't have it.
By thanhhaimai 2025-09-2017:114 reply Android Auto also doesn't let you type while driving. Source: I was the one who wrote the system UI and Keyboard integration. It's still there last time I checked.
By gambiting 2025-09-2021:01 I literally just used android auto, while driving, to type in an address in Waze using the on screen keyboard(well, my wife was driving). Stock android on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
By gambiting 2025-09-2021:03 Except apps like Waze will show you "this app is being controlled by Android Auto" and won't let you do anything on the phone's screen, you have to use the Android Auto display to interact with it.
Which is something the driver can do too, which is why this stupid restriction is making the system less safe.
By JustExAWS 2025-09-2020:25 If they do, it’s not on Apple or the car manufacturer for making it unsafe. There are a laws all over the world about having an infotainment system and distractions.
By RandomBacon 2025-09-2117:14 There's a bug. I don't know how to replicate it, but a week ago the keyboard popped up while I was in (slow) motion (I was trying to select a previous saved destination) and I tapped on a random key to see if it worked, and it did. This was the only time in 5 years of me using Android Auto that it happened.
By serial_dev 2025-09-2018:351 reply I don’t think it’s universal, I have a car from 2023 and both Android Auto and Apple integration let me change the maps destination.
By stouset 2025-09-2018:43 You can’t type on the keyboard though. You can push large buttons to look for and choose gas stations, restaurants, etc.
By yieldcrv 2025-09-2021:57 > 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.
in that case, maybe I actually am a good drunk driver, if I ever did that
By idkfasayer 2025-09-211:46 [dead]
By foobarchu 2025-09-2017:18 This doesn't work if the entire market has converged, which it has. It's very similar to telling people who don't want a smart TV to "just buy something else", because that limits you to used options.
Used is great, but it means you aren't participating in the market and manufacturers will not account for you. In other words, you literally cannot "vote with your wallet". This is coincidentally also a big reason why monopolies and duopolies are bad.
By crazygringo 2025-09-2017:071 reply You know, seatbelts were also once optional, and something like less than 10% of people got them with their cars.
When it comes to safety regulations, it's definitely not "if you don't like it don't buy it".
Also, if you're distracted and get in a crash, you're not the only one who dies. It's your passengers and the people in the car you collide with that might die as well.
> It's your passengers and the people in the car you collide with that might die as well.
The people within automobiles are the people who I am least concerned about since they are encased by a machine that is engineered to ensure their safety. It's people outside of vehicles I'm most concerned about. Their only protection is their own wits.
By serial_dev 2025-09-2018:50 > machine that is engineered to ensure their safety
They are engineered for safety but they are not bulletproof. People die in car accidents every day.
I’d prefer not to lose someone I love because the driver behind me didn’t see we had to slow down because they were typing into their Maps app or they needed to use touch screens to change their AC settings.
Your fear seems to be unfounded if we can extrapolate data for Turkey: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-drivers-pa...
15k drivers and passengers dead for 3k pedestrians; 1.3M injured drivers/passengers for 170k pedestrians.
The only figure that supports your fear is that out of all injuries, 1.8% pedestrians die, whereas it's "only" 1.2% for those "encased in a machine".
But absolute numbers tell a different, more important story: ratio of deaths is 1:5, and 1:7.5 for injuries (meaning, they much less likely to be in a traffic accident).
Your data doesn't prove anything in this context. While traffic accidents involving pedestrians will involve two parties (the pedestrian and the motorist), a motor vehicle may involve just the motorist. It also fails to normalize the data in a meaningful context. There are many areas where people would either be foolhardy to walk, or it is outright illegal to walk. That forces people to spend more time in a vehicle (so the absolute numbers are meaningless). Places where pedestrians do not go tend to have higher speed traffic (increasing the risk to motorists).
For your numbers to be meaningful, you need to compare like to like. To say that pedestrians are less likely to be in a traffic accident you need to compare hours driving to hours walking in areas with traffic. Fatality rates are more of a judgement call. Distracted driving on a highway is going to increase the fatality rate for motorists (higher speeds) while having little impact on pedestrians (the ratio of motorists to pedestrians is much higher). Distracted driving on urban streets is going to decrease the fatality rate for motorists (lower speeds), while it almost certainly represents the fatality rate for pedestrians as you presented it. Ignoring the environment is valid if you are only concerned about the impact on other motorists. Considering the environment is important if you want to make meaninful comparisons to pedestrian fatalities (or injuries).
By necovek 2025-09-235:12 The entire thread is about risk of death/injury due to distracted driving due to touchscreens in cars, and who is more at risk: we don't have the numbers for this very specific context, but we can look at the whole picture and "interpolate".
I would argue that touchscreens see more use on motorways, and thus lead to more accidents than outside motorways (citation missing). This would mean we should be more or equally worried about other drivers and passengers who are at risk than about pedestrians.
By sebastiennight 2025-09-217:321 reply Imagine if MMA fights had a death risk (for fighters) of X%, but watching the fight on your TV (or just seeing it for a second while scrolling through channels) was 20% as likely to kill you as being in the actual fight.
Wouldn't you say it's fair to worry about risks to the non-participants, since they didn't ask or choose to get this additional risk into their lives?
You can stretch this even further, but only if you can give me a number of pedestrians who have never used a road vehicle (public transport included), or had a motorised delivery to their home or office. (This is analogous to watching an MMA match but never partaking, right?)
Oh, roads are useful for them too?
All the drivers/passengers are pedestrians too, and very close to all pedestrians are drivers or passengers on the very same roads.
This is about a moment of time and their active mode of transportation.
(The closest one gets is by using subway strictly, which requires a significantly more expensive underground infrastructure)
By sebastiennight 2025-09-228:501 reply I feel like this is blurring the lines a bit too much. The analogy in my metaphor would be that you're conflating "anyone who's stepped foot in a gym" (pedestrian/public transport users who might have ordered from Amazon a couple of times this year) with the "people who get in the octagon daily" (car drivers).
I know we're several levels of nesting deep at this point, but we were not talking about the general usefulness of roads ; we were comparing the asymmetric impact of making cars safer for the people in the car vs for other people involved (eg bikes or pedestrians).
> All the drivers/passengers are pedestrians too
This is too wild a generalization, as you could compare either the amount of "miles traveled" or "time spent" and see that there most likely is a vast gulf between:
- People who mostly do everything by car (eg the vast majority of all Americans I've met, but also true in many places including Caribbean islands with no/bad public transport)
- People who almost do nothing by car (eg the vast majority of people I've met inside the walls of Paris, although Uber has surely changed the ratio)
It feels like you're taking a group of people who might drive or be in a car 2 hours+ per day and walk a total of 150 steps to/from their car, vs. another group of people who might walk 8,000+ steps along streets/roads a day and get a cab to the airport once a quarter... and saying they're basically the same.
By necovek 2025-09-232:55 If one wants to dig deeper, that's surely welcome: it's not me bundling these people groups together, it's different research authors (and you).
The discussion was on safety of touchscreens in cars, and you brought the claim that pedestrians are more at risk, which I countered with some statistical data from one study.
By contextualizing the data without supporting it with evidence, you are driving your unfounded point. For example, I can argue touchscreens are used much less on roads with pedestrians, since you tune your AC/music/navigation... more often on long motorway trips (I similarly have no basis for this claim other than personal gut feel).
The point is that more people who are injured or die in a traffic accident are not pedestrians: the "machine engineered for safety" does not protect them any better than pedestrians have it: if there are deaths due to touchscreen use, plausibly it's more drivers/passengers than pedestrians.
By lokar 2025-09-2017:13 That's not a very good argument when we very directly socialize the risks of operating motor vehicles on public roads.
Your poor judgment impacts me, so I get a say
By hamdingers 2025-09-2018:43 Childish take. This isn't a matter of preference, it's a matter of life or death for every road user put at risk while you're fiddling with your touch screen.
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.
By serial_dev 2025-09-2018:57 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.
> 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.
By Ajedi32 2025-09-2223:25 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...)
By NeotokyoFan 2025-09-2017:211 reply 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.
By SoftTalker 2025-09-2018:352 reply You can buy an older car without any screens.
By whynotmaybe 2025-09-2019:10 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
By NeotokyoFan 2025-09-2021:51 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?
By unglaublich 2025-09-2017:341 reply Cars don't kill their drivers typically, they kill people outside of the vehicle.
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.
By bradfa 2025-09-2023:56 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.
By arp242 2025-09-210:55 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.
By RobinL 2025-09-2017:05 If that were the case they'd be no need for seatbelt laws
By bryanrasmussen 2025-09-2018:022 reply 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)
The average car is 12 years old. You don't junk that old car you move it on to someone else
By Terr_ 2025-09-2021:32 > 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...
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.
By bryanrasmussen 2025-09-2110:28 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.
By derriz 2025-09-2017:15 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.
Being so ideologically rigid that you suggest survival of the fittest over legislation...
By lazystar 2025-09-2017:36 geez. I never said legislation wouldnt be a good thing, i only suggested that it might not be needed. good lord HN.
By mitthrowaway2 2025-09-2017:301 reply 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...
By RandomBacon 2025-09-2117:181 reply How would pedestrian airbags on a vehicle work?
By mitthrowaway2 2025-09-2121:49 Great question! Like this:
By WaitWaitWha 2025-09-2019:321 reply anecdotal experience: I rent cars quite often and most of them are now touch screen to some extent.
Touchscreens are extremely distracting for me. I have to look at the screen to make sure I am touching it at the right spot. Often I have to select the "page" the necessary buttons is on, even for very simple things like adjusting the temperature or turning the fan up or down. In some cars this takes several touches.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are just as bad. for some reason the interface is inconsistent enough across vehicles that requires me to look at the screen. I no longer connect my phones to the vehicle. This of course creates another problem. Most "smart" cars no longer have radios; the expectation is that a paired phone will stream the audio. On pre-"smart" vehicles, I could turn on and off the radio, select stations, without looking even in unfamiliar vehicles after a few initial glances. Not so with "smart" cars. Either I will have to fiddle with the phone, or with the "touch" screen, which triggers the multiple taps to find the place where the "radio"/audio is located.
Some big auto manufacturers plan to drop Android Auto and Apple CarPlay because they want that sweet, sweet personal data juices flowing to them.
I have also noticed that some of my senior friends struggle reading the screen, be it glare or text site, or icons that they do not understand.
I think voice recognition is a viable path for people who can speak clearly (my voice sounds like a '46 Cletrac Crawler on full power, should see the AI driven transcription!)
By ponector 2025-09-2021:02 Really curious which car has no FM radio as pretty much every model has it as default option.
By annexrichmond 2025-09-2017:072 reply I find using CarPlay more dangerous than my phone. At least with my phone I’m using a familiar interface and I can use at any angle. With CarPlay my panel is awkwardly positioned, the UI is confusing, and I have to pay far more attention to what I’m doing.
I’m not suggesting at all it’s ok to use your phone while driving, and is unlawful for a good reason. Yet CarPlay, a dumbed down phone bolted to your dash, is totally fine, despite being no more safe IMO
My phone is also mounted above my dash immediately to the right of my steering wheel, allowing me to always have the road in sight.
With many in-car screens, you have to look down and right. You can’t even see the road in your peripheral anymore.
I’ve driven for over 20 years and have only slammed on my breaks 3 times in my entire life and not once in the last 10 years.
I’m going to admit: I’ve done extremely bad things while driving but for 20 years, my eyes basically have never left a small window that includes the road, even if I’m fiddling with my phone or stuffing Panda Express into my face with a stupid fork.
I literally bring a phone mount with me when I rent a car on a trip.
By theonething 2025-09-213:34 Mazda does a good job with screen placement. It's higher up on the dash, so you can see it clearly while looking straight ahead in normal driving position. Ie you don't have to take your eyes off the road to see it. Also, instead of touch screen to navigate and select, you use a scroll wheel that is in the center console behind the gear shifter. It's within easy reach of your right hand (in left driver side cars) and again, you don't have to take your eyes off the road to use it.
By rr808 2025-09-2023:39 Agreed - my old car wasn't "smart" and I had phone on a dash mount for GPS. I now have a new car and it works better but the ergonomics are worse.
One point in the "pro" column is that every CarPlay implementation supports voice control, which is safer than taking your hands off the wheel even for physical controls.
Does that work well, and does it work well in every language where CarPlay & co are sold?
By commandersaki 2025-09-215:20 It's been a bit buggy since its release, sometimes a voice command registers but the action doesn't perform, this is usually between updates of minor or major version of iOS. However, when it works, it works pretty well. I can do about 90% with Siri and Voice Control. The other 10% is a bit annoying - it could be that there is a voice control command and I just don't know it, but usually resort to touch which is annoying.
In my experience (3 years using CarPlay in English, in a Chevy Bolt), it does work well for the kinds of things I wanted to do while driving, which were generally related to navigation, music, and podcasts.
In my experience(English as a second language) it's actualy useless and recognizes maybe 30% of what I say. In my native tongue it's even worse than that, but that's a moot point as if I try to mix and say "[in my native tongue] navigate to [in English]Queen Victoria's Hospital" it will just never work. That combination has actual 0% success rate but it's unavoidable living in the UK. As does trying to call anyone with a non-English name, trying to do say "call Jędrzej Kazimierzowski" just leads to either it dialing someone completely unrelated or just saying "Sorry, I don't recognize that".
By the_sleaze_ 2025-09-2021:382 reply I don't mean this in any derogatory way what so ever, but I am curious about this in general. Does being misunderstood inspire a feeling that you should improve your accent?
By gambiting 2025-09-2021:51 No, it inspires a feeling of deep hatred towards this stupid system that cannot understand simple commands that any English person would understand without any issue whatsoever.
(and I do actually genuienly blame whatever voice recognition algorithm they are using - I use the interactive voice chat feature of ChatGPT daily and it has 100% success rate, no problems understanding my English whatsoever).
By scarface_74 2025-09-2021:59 I am a native English speaker who practices my spanish pronunciation using Apple Translate and Siri (I think they use separate models), no matter how hard i try, neither can understand some words with my speaking Spanish with a southern US English accent.
On a professional level, one of my specialties is designing Amazon Connect call centers, its gotten better over the years. But the NLU for English still struggles with my southern accent.
On the other hand, ChatGPT never struggles with my English or Spanish.
