In Daniel McGehee’s Opinion informed, it’s simply too late to put the genie back in the jar. People drive an average of 29 miles a day in the US. They have phones. They will want to use their phone while driving. The question is, how can they do it safely, without the distractions of distractions in their pockets?
For more than a decade, the answer from automakers has been to equip their cars with colorful and sometimes complex infotainment systems mounted on giant touchscreens. spread across the dashboard — in the case of a Mercedes-Benz model, more than 4.5 feet across. McGehee, director of the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa, says that while using those while driving is “not necessarily optimal,” it has the potential to beat the alternative of those while driving. People peck at small objects on mobile phone screens while driving.
Because these manufacturers have historically struggled to build functional software, tech giants like Apple and Google have offered their own in-car integrations, CarPlay and Android Auto. So, McGehee believes this principle could also apply to the recently announced Apple The next generation of CarPlayan infotainment escalation will infiltrate the entire console. There will be widgets. There will be options for how the instrument cluster is arranged. More than simply mirroring an iPhone, CarPlay will allow drivers to change radio stations and also display vehicle data such as fuel level and speed. The company says it will begin announcing partnerships with automakers later next year.
The inclusion of an in-car infotainment system provoked an understandable backlash. For years, safety researchers and advocates have warned that systems designed by both automakers and technology companies cannot keep drivers focused on the road. David Strayer, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Utah who studies how the brain multitasks, said: “The state of the infotainment system is that there’s too much going on within the driver’s reach. “They create a distraction garden for the driver.”
But it’s also difficult to determine to what extent technology like phones and in-car infotainment systems contribute to unsafe driving. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 3,000 people died in distraction-related accidents in 2020, accounting for 8.1 percent of all vehicle-related deaths that year. Young driver more likely injured or killed in distraction-related accidents. But data on the causes of crashes are generally “pretty rough,” said William Horrey, technical director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Accurate distracting field reports tend to focus on mobile phones rather than in-car systems. And because so many automakers have different infotainment systems, with changes in menus, font sizes and button positions, even studies that connect participants’ cars to sensors. and the camera also had trouble gathering enough data to draw any firm conclusions about how often distracting screen involvement results in injury or death.
However, researchers widely agree on some of the worst design mistakes: Requires drivers to scroll or navigate through long menus. Doesn’t make the font in the screen big enough, so the driver has to spend more time looking at it. Design buttons that are too small, especially those that aren’t close to the wheel. (The farther the button is, the bigger the target.) Allows the vehicle to update the dashboard on its own, helping the driver get lost on the next trip.
