
Apple CarPlay, Android Auto distract drivers more than pot, alcohol, says study - cglong
https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-campaigns/infotainment#
======
leetcrew
I'm curious how different it would be if you could control Android auto with
physical buttons. I'm not sure why touchscreens are allowed in cars at all.
you can't use them without looking directly at them.

even voice can be distracting when you have to repeat variations of the same
command five times and keep checking whether it actually works.

I hope this kind of thing doesn't get banned entirely. when it works, I find
that having a good navigation system allows me to pay more attention on
actually driving the car.

~~~
mstade
My favorite interaction with CarPlay so far were the Mercedes models that had
the little wheel in the center console that you could use to navigate. All you
had to do was take a quick glance at the screen if you didn't already know how
many clicks you had to turn the wheel, or if you did know you could do it
without looking. In all the newer models I've driven they've replaced the
wheel with a touchpad like thing which is awful.

I'm in the market for a car, and I want something new or new-ish, but I can't
find any cars I like without touchscreens all over the place. I'm now looking
at used cars from around 2012, before all the touchscreen nonsense became
pervasive, but still with most of the modern conveniences I'm in the market
for. I'm not in a rush so I might just wait and see still, but I said that a
couple of years ago as well and the touchscreen craze has just gotten worse I
feel like.

~~~
jordanthoms
Mazda is currently updating all their models with the new infotainment which
removes the touchscreen. Android auto and Car play still work with a rotary
controller. The screen is also closer to the eyeline of the driver so you
don't have to look far away from the road

~~~
sundvor
Had a Mazda 3 with this, although before Android Auto sadly. That input method
is by far the best possible; everything is laid out so nicely in terms of
using muscle memory, and the rotary knob interface just does the job.

Their approach is far better than the all glass, cost saving Tesla one.

~~~
jordanthoms
If you still have it, most 2014+ models can have Android Auto added at the
dealer, plus there is a open source diy version you can install also

~~~
sundvor
Cheers, it was a 2014 Mazda 3 Astina - got rid of it to ride to work instead.
I knew it was coming, but happened after I said goodbye.

------
gnicholas
If I'm understanding the study correctly, it's not that having one of these
systems in your car results in you — at all times — being more distracted than
if you had pot/alcohol in your system. Rather, when you are actively engaged
in a task (eg, play song on Spotify), you are worse at lane centering and
maintaining follow distance.

That is not as bad because you can choose when to start playing a song, so
that you do it when traffic is calm. If you're driving under the influence,
that's affecting you the whole time.

It would be interesting to see how these results look when the driver is
performing tasks on a non-touchscreen setup. I can easily change the radio
station in my car using steering-wheel mounted buttons, but changing the
AC/heat is quite difficult without looking (in my Ford CMAX) because of the
uniformity/location of the buttons. I'd guess the results would be similar to
using a touchscreen setup.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I wish the title can be changed.

The idea that Android Auto or Carplay is worse than drunk driving is dangerous
and disingenuous and complete misinformation.

That's what the title implies. It's not what the study found.

------
anon102010
Does anyone excercise any critical thinking skills with these headlines.

Driving drunk is far far far more distracting and deadly than using carplay.
Every Uber and lyft driver out there are running mapping apps. Every recent
car is shipping with these (my wife's sister listens to her playlist on drive
to work with it and uses the map).

I've seen drunk drivers. Carplay has nothing on booze. In an overseas country
an ex-pat wanted to drive me drunk back to where we were going to be working.
Within 2 minutes I'd taken the keys and started driving myself because he was
all over the road - we had to stop so he could throw up.

~~~
Retric
“A new study says _driver reaction times_ using this tech were worse than
motorists with alcohol or cannabis in their system.” Alcohol impacts more than
reaction times, but a drunk driver can actually be paying attention to the
road. On the the other hand someone looking at a screen at best can use
peripheral vision which may not be enough. Touch screens at the bottom of the
console are sadly common and unusually bad.

~~~
imgabe
There are also varying levels of drunk. At the legal limit in some places,
some people might show very little impairment at all. It's impossible to
compare without saying what level of alcohol or cannabis they're talking about
and for what person with what tolerance. People react differently and consume
different amounts.

~~~
Retric
That’s a reasonable objection. The best data I could find is a ~2% increase in
reaction time from a 10% increase in BAC. That suggests the range from legally
drunk to unconscious is surprisingly narrow at least in terms of reaction
times.

I did not really dig into it, but these devices might actually be strictly
worse from a reaction standpoint. At least until the driver is loosing
consciousness.

------
lacker
This study is pretty garbage. They tested 20 people, and they didn’t even pick
20 people who used CarPlay. They picked 20 random people who didn’t use
CarPlay, briefly taught them how to use CarPlay, and then found that those
people couldn’t use it well. Imagine testing how distracting texting was for
someone who had never used an iPhone before the test.

~~~
catalogia
How long do you think it might take for a "carplay-novice" to become
sufficiently accustomed to the tech that they're not as dangerous as a drunk
driver? A few days? Weeks? Even if it's only a few hours, is a few hours of
drunk-equivalence justifiable?

> _Imagine testing how distracting texting was for someone who had never used
> an iPhone before the test._

I understand analogies aren't meant to be strict equivalencies, but there is a
large difference in severity here. Failure to operate an iphone correctly
probably wouldn't cause a life threatening situation. Failure to operate a car
correctly is far more concerning.

~~~
dawnerd
I'd say about as quick as it takes someone to get used to a Model 3's off to
the side screen.

Also highly depends on the cars setup. I've had some rental cars where the
screen was terrible and definitely was a distraction. Example being Audi and
their button controls for carplay.

------
tinza123
I found Android Auto dangerous because it works great normally, but when it
stops working I tend to get a little panicking and intuitively try to "Fix" it
while I'm driving. And that happened too often so I quit using it all
together.

------
jagged-chisel
A terrible 'feature' of CarPlay is asking by voice to have an app launched,
and having Siri reply "I'm sorry, I can't do that while you're driving." It's
because the app doesn't have a CarPlay implementation. It's an app that just
needs to be running in the foreground do that I can get into the company
parking garage. Now, I've had to take my eyes off the road (I do this at any
red light that I hit between the interstate and the deck - but it still moves
my focus...) find the app on the phone and tap it.

~~~
Tagbert
Why do you need to lauch that app while you’re driving if you only need it to
get into the parking garage? Can’t you pause at the garage, launch the app and
enter?

~~~
jagged-chisel
For some reason, it can take nearly a minute for the app to get its bluetooth
and GPS bearings all settled. All the while a line is forming behind me..

So sure, I can do that. But it'd be better if the pain was felt by Apple
rather than co-workers.

------
brenden2
Computer screens are incredibly distracting regardless of the make or brand.
It's basically a backlit distraction generator.

As a side note, I'm not a big fan of LCD displays in cars. I prefer analog
gauges/dials/knobs, with minimal illumination for night time. At night, the
less light you have inside the car, the easier you can see outside. Plus your
eyes will be more well adjusted.

~~~
aibara
LCDs around the gauge cluster seem to encourage the display of extraneous
information and eye candy, from making what should be a simple gauge extra
gaudy and shiny, to adding useless images and readings all around (look at
these leaves! Your car is so efficient!).

My friend had an old Saab with the "Black Panel" button, which turned off all
internal lights save the speedometer. If other readings became relevant (e.g.,
running low on gas), that gauge or light would illuminate. I drove a Peugeot
208 a few years ago with a similar function. I wish I could find a vehicle
with something similar, but design is clearly moving in the opposite
direction.

~~~
oceliker
You could have a similar thing in the future if OLED panels in cars become
feasible.

------
GuB-42
A similar study was made for phone calls, with similar results.

The counter argument is that while it is easy to let go of the phone when
things get tricky. You can't sober up at will.

~~~
jjulius
>The counter argument is that while it is easy to let go of the phone when
things get tricky.

And the counter-argument to that is that things can get tricky faster than you
would expect. So tricky that even the time it takes for you to react and put
your phone down or drop it still wouldn't give you enough time to prevent an
accident.

People need to stop paying attention to phones while driving, period.

~~~
macintux
There's also pressure from phone calls that you don't get when you're talking
to someone in the vehicle: people on the other end can't see the traffic
situation, so they don't know to shut up and let you drive, and there's social
pressure on the driver to not let their surroundings distract them away from
the phone call.

~~~
floatingatoll
I have several times in my life thrown my phone out of reach with no regard
for who's on the call

They understood, later. They weren't necessarily happy but when you explain to
people "do you want me alive or do you want me to talk to you", their self-
interest seems to kick in, at least.

------
psychomugs
The 90's was the pinnacle of in-car UX. No distracting touchscreens, no "eco"
gauges that are more distracting than useful, just nice buttons and dials that
let you do and know what you need and nothing more.

~~~
zzo38computer
I agree, and I just hate touch screens in general. (I don't drive a car, but I
still hate touch screens anyways.) Keyboard is much better. Not just car, but
many other things (including television) have bad UX, too. They try to make a
better UX but make a bad UX instead. I try to work against that writing my own
software, although I cannot change the hardware; I can merely to suggest how
to make a better one. For one thing, you should include a numeric keypad (if
not a full keyboard); it can be useful for implementing many kind of
functions.

------
ken
Everyone is focusing on the touchscreen, because those are easy to point a
finger at (pun intended). In fact, this study confirmed what we already knew
from previous research: even hands-free phone interfaces are terrible for
driving.

The best hands-free reaction time in this study was still more than twice as
bad as the effect from alcohol.

You simply can't operate a motor vehicle and a computing/communications device
at the same time without seriously affecting your competency at both. Humans
aren't built for that kind of multitasking. I don't anticipate any new
technology which might change that.

~~~
sjwright
You probably spend less than a few percent of your driving time navigating a
touchscreen. And most of the time drivers will allot those tasks to reduced
risk moments such as when stationary at a traffic light.

When you’re drunk, you’re drunk every second of the journey. You’re drunk at
every intersection, you’re drunk at every pedestrian crossing, you’re drunk
every meter of motorway.

They’re not comparable.

------
tschellenbach
Android Auto is my favorite buggy product. When it works, it's amazing and I
keep on using it even though it fails in every possible way.

When it's working well it's not distracting at all. When you run into bugs
it's very distracting.

~~~
thedance
The bugs are mostly, in my experience, just cumulative jank resulting from
excessive Android uptimes. Android, being about on-par with Windows 95 in
terms of software quality, needs a daily reboot to keep itself running.

~~~
Marsymars
I once had my mom complain to me that nothing on her phone was working
properly and discovered that it hadn't been restarted in something like ten
months.

------
kirykl
I can ask Siri for directions when driving but then sometimes the phone needs
to see my face to unlock it, which is counterintuitive. There should be an
option for a verbal password

~~~
myrandomcomment
You can unlock yourphone before you plug it in. There is a security feature
that will require the phone be unlocked when connected to a USB device after
not having been unlocked for a period of time.

Change it here:

Settings>Touch ID & Passcode>Allow Access When Locked

------
habosa
I don't know what took me so long but I recently realized how many Bay Area
drivers are driving while using their phones (I don't have a car). Every
single day there are multiple accidents on 101 despite it being a straight
line and traffic rarely going over 30mph at peak hours. How can this be? Easy:
silicon valley professionals reading their email.

I drove around Spain for 2 weeks and didn't see a single car accident of any
kind. More manual cars (occupy your hands) and fewer digital distractions. I
saw 3 accidents on my way back from Oakland airport to my house.

US drivers need to get off their damn phones. It's so dangerous.

------
frankish
Google glass was the best solution to this IMO. Able to look through the
display and still see the road and more focus on voice control.

We need advancements in integrating with computers already so that our brains
can interface with them directly.

~~~
capableweb
Not sure why you're being downvoted, it sounds like an excellent idea on first
glance. Have a pair of glasses (not necessarily Google but something similar)
that you use when driving, that is connected to your car. Now you get
information right where you're looking so you can always look at the road.

~~~
jakear
Plenty of cars project a HUD into the windshield itself. This seems like the
better option.

~~~
capableweb
With glasses you could see warnings about cars passing on the right when
you're looking to the left, so I still would like to see at least a prototype
of the car HUD glasses.

------
rusbus
It's totally possible to make touch screen displays that can be operated in
bumpy environments without looking at them -- Aviation has been using them for
some time. Instead of clicking on buttons, interactions only require touching
entire regions (eg. top and bottom half) of the screen when input is
requested. (See apps like XCSoar, LK8000, etc.)

The problem is that they are either hard to learn to use, or really ugly. It's
always really bugged me that Google Maps on a phone (or in Android Auto) has
tiny buttons that are impossible to click for the most basic tasks.

It doesn't have to be this way.

~~~
aequitas
What's I found even more frustrating about google maps is that one time it
promted me to perform a survey about the app itself. During a trip, whilst
driving. It was not a local guide thing or a play store thing. It redirected
to a page inside the maps app which was just impossible to use whilst driving
(and not much better when not driving also). Needless to say I didn't finish
the survey. I wanted to complain about the fact I even got the survey in-app.
But later there was also no way to get back to it.

------
mindslight
I suspect this goes for all input based on a touch screen. Touch screens are
horrible interfaces, which caught on because they're generic and fully
reconfigurable by each app. But this reconfigurability pushes them into your
low-level OODA loop, using your attention in imperceptible spurts rather than
taking advantage of muscle memory, doubly so when the UI code is laggy.

I'm certainly not condoning the practice, but texting and driving wasn't a
serious public hazard until everyone moved away from T9. T9 was a
deterministic input method, and while sure maybe you would look at the message
before sending, each individual letter required little attention.

Back before smart phones / GPS navigation / etc took off I did a two month
cross country trip using a Garmin 60CSx (handheld GPS with hard buttons) as a
live map. In car-cities, I held the unit in my shifting hand, and checking the
map was effortless as it was always in the state I expected it to be.

Holding the touch screen in your hand, and thus having more predictable
positioning, is a setup up from using a touch screen mounted on the car's
interior, which is moving relative to you from road bumps etc. Even worse are
OEM touchscreens that have poor response. I'd love for more studies to be done
on this subject to create better data, but I also wonder how much it will be
fought by car manufacturers that have gone all-in on touchscreens in the
center console (which seems to be all of them).

------
XzAeRosho
I don't think the technology here is the problem. It's the implementation.

Most screens are placed in the middle of the dashboard, when it should be
close to the gauges or nearly in front of you.

~~~
a012
What I got from cars ads (and also YouTube videos) is the infotainment system
seems like a flashy selling point for the car. And not any system is decent,
even the expensive cars have shitty large touchscreen that's laggy or/and has
too many layers to go through in its user interface. It's the worst car trends
in recent years.

~~~
awinder
I have a CX-5 and think they did a good job with the infotainment even if it
was a bit delayed. The touchscreen is off when car is in motion and there’s
steering wheel buttons + a rotating dial. tbh I just interact with Siri to set
music or waypoints and maybe occasionally glance for gps.

~~~
charles_f
Apparently Mazda recently went through a bunch of studies to make the
infotainment systems less dangerous, the result was that they're switching
back to physical dials and bringing screens into more natural field of vision.
I must say that I am somewhat seduced by the (at least seamingly) data driven
process.

Source [https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
pur...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-
touchscreens-from-its-vehicles)

------
karlding
On a similar note, what happened to cars that would lock you out of
interacting with the infotainment system whenever you were driving faster than
parking lot speeds? I assume this was some regulatory/safety requirement.

I remember cars used to either implement that feature, or outright prevented
you from even pairing a new Bluetooth device when your car was in Drive. But
then all of a sudden it seemed like automotive companies stopped and
touchscreens became acceptable. Does anyone know what changed?

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Nothing, they still lock out those features. They have never locked out basic
controls like changing inputs or start/stop/play, or some deep menu
navigation. They do lock out things like typing a GPS destination, but not
selecting a pre-set.

The NHTSA guidelines are here:
[https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/distraction_...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/distraction_npfg-02162012.pdf)

------
DailyHN
I refuse to connect android auto. Now, whenever I charge my phone in the car,
multiple prompts continuously pop-up to enable android auto.

It's become unnecessarily dangerous if I'm using GPS for directions because
now I have to continuously press "decline" and "not now" so I can see my
directions. This has happened multiple times in a minute. Very dangerous -
merely ceasing to ask after the tenth decline would probably save lives.

~~~
techdevangelist
Have you tried a charge only cable that lacks the data pins being hooked up?

~~~
DailyHN
No, that is definitely something I need to try. Thanks!

------
tylerl
The study is fundamentally flawed and the article (headline claim in
particular) is nonsensical.

The study is flawed in that it lacks a control group and is missing
information about relevance. You say people don't see the road when you tell
them to look at a screen. Wow, color me shocked. But if you're going to demand
change, you need to be able to put that fact into context. Like, what are the
measurements when asked to perform the same action in the built-in head unit?
And is this a contrived example, or does it represent typical use.

The headline has a similar problem. We already know that driver reaction time
is effectively infinitely high for distracted driving. If the driver doesn't
see the obstacle then they aren't just _slow_ to react, they don't react to it
at all... because why would they react to something that they don't realize
exists? So you're comparing that fact to delays caused my chemical impairment?
How? A driver with phone integration will have no impairment at all if he's
not looking at the display at precisely the time of the incident, but
intoxication has a persistent effect.

------
pfarnsworth
The worst is the Tesla interface. It's great to look at and if you're sitting
in the car parked, but if you're trying to drive it is terrible. To be honest,
stuff like this should be legislated away, it's too dangerous.

Even something as mundane as turning on the fan requires several seconds of
concentration because it's al. It's not like a regular car with buttons and
knobs that you don't have to think about. You have to actively look for it as
you drive which makes it very dangerous to use.

As for Apple Carplay, I have as well, and it feels like the designers don't
actually use it for driving. Some decisions are absurd. For example, a lot of
the buttons you need to press are on the opposite side of the display (at
least for cars with drivers on the left side). It's totally dumb that they are
on the opposite side that needs to be hunted for.

In terms of safety, big knobs and buttons are best.

~~~
xedeon
Voice commands with Natural Language Processing (which Tesla cars now support)
is far superior than any knobs or buttons because you keep your eyes on the
road and hand on the steering wheel.

I can pretty much toggle or set any media and climate settings(even open the
glove box) after a software update last December.

------
saagarjha
This is one place where voice assistants could help. They can’t right now
because they’re not good enough to rely on: I for one don’t trust Siri to do
what I tell it, or even know how, without taking my eyes off the road to make
sure. So the CarPlay system ends up underutilized because I can’t afford doing
that.

~~~
ashleyn
There is also the privacy issue. Using Google voice in the car requires I turn
on its always-listening functionality. Nope!

~~~
saagarjha
Is there no “press a button to listen” or “wait until you hear a wakeword”
option?

~~~
ashleyn
There is in my car, but Google at least forces users to accept the "OK Google"
functionality when they agree to the voice activation disclaimer. So once you
enable that, the phone is always listening for "OK Google".

------
dang
We merged comments hither from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22646564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22646564),
which points to a cnet.com article about this study and was originally the
thread on the front page. We kept its title.

------
bhauer
This seems to be an argument in favor of Tesla's full-stack approach of
pairing high-capability infotainment with advanced driver assistance features.
Tesla's data on collisions suggests the driver assistance works to reduce
incidents.

Using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to add higher-capability infotainment to
an otherwise unassisted vehicle does seem obviously risky and the data from
the linked study appear to confirm that. My own anecdotal experience is that I
am very distracted by Apple CarPlay in rental cars (my own vehicle is too old
to be compatible). This is especially because the user interface is slow, with
too much emphasis on animation rather than immediacy, and with too many
behaviors that require waiting, such as resetting the map back to full-size.

------
ape4
What happened to those screens with dynamic 3D buttons (like bubble wrap). I
guess it didn't pan out.

Edit: Found a video from 2014.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tcawBX41VU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tcawBX41VU)

------
heavymark
CarPlay obviously isn’t meant to be safer than not using tech in a car, it’s
suppose to be safer than using a cell phone while driving which is most
everyone at one time or another. So what masters is how safer it is using the
system vs a handheld phone.

------
carlmr
The touch screen aspect is just one thing. At least in my car (2018 Seat Leon,
i.e. VW group) the connection is very unstable, it doesn't retry on it's own,
then sometimes there's no sound, sometimes there's no picture, then sometimes
it reboots. All with a good USB cable. Starting the connection almost always
takes 2-3 attempts. I'm guessing bad timeouts in the software.

It's highly distracting when you have bad UX and bad programming. And good
software quality can't be legislated, in my experience at least the more
regulation there is the worse the SW gets, because it gets written by
bureaucrats, not software minded people.

------
appleshore
One of the most absurd consequences of CarPlay is the USB car ports are often
1 amp. So my phone dies faster. Combined with Apple forcing you to use Apple
Maps, makes me cynical of basic technology. This is partly what makes it more
distracting.

~~~
zwily
You can use Google Maps on CarPlay now, I believe.

~~~
rgovostes
Yes, third-party navigation has been supported for two years now.

------
ulkesh
Was this peer-reviewed? How does it compare with normal radio head units?

Anecdotally, I find CarPlay to not be distracting at all, mainly because I
don’t fiddle with it while driving. I set up things ahead of time or I have a
front seat passenger to help.

------
rkagerer
Doesn't surprise me. Used Android Auto for a while, in my opinion it's a
terribly designed interface for the purpose.

I miss tactile buttons and knobs that you could develop muscle memory around.

------
dep_b
I've driven a BMW that featured a HUD for the driver and I think that would be
a great way to display a lot more information that CarPlay and co do now on
the console.

------
mouzogu
This argument keeps recurring and I find it quite annoying. How is CarPlay or
AA anymore distracting than having a tiny phone screen on your dashboard?
Also, I think its more likely that the notifications for certain apps are
distracting as opposed to the software in general which is incredibly useful
(Maps, Spotify etc).

I don't understand the motivation behind these studies. Is there some
financial gain to be made from this. Or perhaps I'm being too cynical.

~~~
Marsymars
> How is CarPlay or AA anymore distracting than having a tiny phone screen on
> your dashboard?

I don't think anyone is making that argument.

The argument is that you shouldn't be using your phone via _any_ interface
while driving, because it isn't safe.

~~~
mrweasel
If it wasn’t going to cause problems for people in trains or busses, I would
suggest a law requirering phones to turn off/hibernate if they detect that
they are moving faster fast than 10km/h.

~~~
Marsymars
I'd be satisfied with simply stepping up police manpower for enforcement, and
then much stronger punishment. e.g. for first-time violators, license
revocation for a year, after which the individual is allowed to re-apply as a
new driver, with all of the testing/license restriction/insurance implications
of being an entirely new driver.

------
chrstphrhrt
Surprised to see cannabis reaction times slower than alcohol for driving. I
wonder how they controlled for it, and whether the test accounted for high
people driving slower and taking fewer risky moves like lane changes, turning
corners without looking for pedestrians or speeding through yellow lights.
Reaction time alone can be mitigated through adaptive behaviour, but not if
you're not even looking at the road.

------
jchw
I fully agree. But: I believe in many cases this is because, with both Android
Auto and Apple CarPlay as I have used both for extended periods, they are
simply buggy as hell.

Some car vendors have better implementations than others, but I frequently see
things happen like the connection suddenly cuts or audio playback becomes
choppy or sometimes the dash crashes entirely.

I suspect if it was less buggy it would be a lot less distracting, personally.

------
product50
These types of studies look so biased as they will only get covered in news
channel if the results are anti-tech. There is no mention of how much
distraction would "changing a radio station" or "adjusting car heating" will
cause - and benchmarking against those. Good that this came out during the
current COVID-19 outbreak as the political brass is distracted enough to even
consider this.

------
danaris
First of all, I saw this on another site (I have forgotten where,
unfortunately) that actually showed the comparisons of CarPlay/Android Auto
usage vs some other situations. However, it seems like a significant oversight
that things like "changing the radio station" and "adjusting the climate
control" were not in the comparison. I'd really like to see what that looks
like.

Second of all, it's horribly misleading to compare the degree to which using
these systems impairs your driving to the degree to which being under the
influence of alcohol or drugs does so. I have CarPlay, and while I fully
recognize that paying attention to it to change things pulls my focus away
from the road, I'm typically doing so for no longer than 2-5 seconds. Being
drunk or high lasts much longer than that, and there's no way to just turn it
off. Hell, even texting or a phone call takes orders of magnitude longer than
that.

I don't know if there's a particularly scientific way to do this, but my gut
feel is that a more useful number would be something like the integral of
distractedness over time—so find the length of time of a typical phone call,
and multiply the phone call amount of distractedness by that, and assign some
reasonable length to the total car journey, and multiply the drunk/high
distractedness by that. Then compare that to the CarPlay/Android Auto
distractedness multiplied by 2-5s times some typical number of times people
adjust it during a trip of the designated length.

~~~
leetcrew
it's definitely important to distinguish between perfect, typical, and worst
case usage scenarios. when I use android auto, I typically set up navigation
and a playlist while the vehicle is stationary. (unfortunately I can't usually
do this while parked nose-in, because using the backup camera crashes android
auto four out of five times in my car.) I have to imagine this is way safer
than any kind of intoxicated driving. on the other hand, I'd bet someone
dragging google maps around to see the next turn on the highway is just as bad
as driving with a BAC around 0.1. it's definitely a flaw in the study that
they gave specific instructions to the drivers instead of just observing their
natural behavior.

------
sumoboy
What if you don't have CarPlay, trying to use Apple Music is a total joke with
the worst UX. Even not driving it's a PIA to use.

------
easytiger
Been driving hire cars with huge touch screen UIs. Utterly awful and feels way
way more dangerous than talking on the phone.

Look down, interact, wait to see if you hit the right spot, try again, wait to
see visual confirmation of successful input. Often all the above fleeting
between road and panel.

Voice interaction is pure UI cancer in a number of ways and doesn't help

------
specialist
I recently tried CarPlay in a rental (for a long road trip). I gave up. Way
too frustrating to use. Very distracting.

For instance, one stretch thru Dallas, my phone and CarPlay, which were
connected, were giving me different turn-by-turn instructions.

Cliche: person with two watches doesn't know what time it is.

So I disabled CarPlay and just used aux-in for the audio from my phone.

~~~
Tagbert
That’s an odd result. CarPlay is just a way to mirror your phone’s screen and
audio to the car’s screen. If you have one map app showing maps and giving
directions then it would be the same on both screens and only one audio
stream. Perhaps if you had two map apps running at the same time you might get
different directions.

------
globular-toast
I've recently upgraded to 2010 model car with a multi-function display after
driving a 2005 Honda for the past 5 years. I've never been more distracted
behind the wheel. The novelty has worn off a bit now so I don't look so much,
but I can only imagine how distracting a full smartphone being there would be.

------
different_sort
I think the carploy interface via controls on the wheel is good on my '17
subaru, but I absoloutely agree it is NOT for use by the driver when in
motion. It requires a lot of focus, and if I can't get siri to do something
for me on it then I wait until my next stop.

------
awinter-py
woof touchscreens (though the chart makes it seem like voice is a problem too)

the US navy is removing some screen-based controls after an accident -- this
is less about distraction and more about the complexity of the interface, but
still

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-
john...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john-s-
mccain-crash-ntsb-report-touchscreen-mechanical-controls)

mazda the car company made a similar move last year

[https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
pur...](https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-
touchscreens-from-its-vehicles)

------
lvturner
To me the biggest issue with all this is that it uses the center console
screen for almost all data display - I much prefer using a phone mount and
putting things just to the side of my steering wheel so I don't have to take
my eyes off the road.

------
princevegeta89
I hate how the new Android Auto update is so unintuitive. In the past, the "Ok
Google" was one blind click away in my car (Acura). Now, it is the last option
in the screen where you will have to first navigate and click. What a
bummer...

------
antidaily
One of the tasks was finding a song on Spotify. Siri is pretty good at this
with the right command (ex Play ‘KV Crimes’ by Kurt Vile on Spotify). But
trying to find that via Spotify UI is nearly impossible while driving.

------
tibbydudeza
I could never get it work with my VW Polo headunit. Was just plain confusing
and that was on a Samsung A70 while my daughter's iPhone worked out of box.

------
branon
Is it just me, or does this source seem very unreliable?

------
m3kw9
I would say navigating a menu system takes more concentration than reading and
tapping a msg with auto correct. Thus this study makes sense

------
aganame
The only way my car will have a big screen on the dashboard is if it's an
option to 100% ignore oit while driving.

------
alasdair_
In what dosage? Can I get 30mg of CarPlay? Can we get 300ml of Android Auto?

Without comparable dosage this is meaningless.

------
trickledown
Distracting by design. All these devices are designed to get your attention.
That is how they make money.

------
megablast
It is insane that car companies can add whatever they want to make cars ever
more dangerous.

------
Fudgel
This may be naive, but I wonder if switching the display to e-ink would help?

------
oblib
I really can't envision how anyone could think these toys would do anything
other than distract drivers.

Truth is driving requires one's full attention and any distraction is going to
reduce safety, even in a self driving car.

I don't really find it remarkable that it's worse than pot, or alcohol within
the legal limit though. They didn't offer much info on the weed thing and that
surely depends on how "high" one gets, but if they kept it within the same
range as the legal limit of alcohol (a small toke or two) that's no surprise
at all.

I worked for years designing and building custom cars. Honestly, that giant
screen in a Tesla is the craziest thing I've ever seen in a car, and I've
helped build some pretty crazy cars.

~~~
capableweb
> Honestly, that giant screen in a Tesla is the craziest thing I've ever seen
> in a car

Same here. I cannot understand how people are fine with it. I once had to
drive a car who had it's GPS display further down (where the AC controls
usually is, basically) so you had to glance down towards the shifting stick to
be able to see where you are going. That feels like a similarly crazy idea.
I'm lucky my car has a display that is as far up it can be without blocking
the view out of the windshield.

~~~
xedeon
You should actually test drive one. I've yet to meet an owner ask for more
buttons or knobs. In fact, it's the opposite. With the new NLP voice commands,
eyes and hands stand where they need to be.

~~~
capableweb
I have and I find it absolutely bewildering how someone is fine with a
touchscreen on any car, I'm of the opinion it should be illegal, and seems the
industry/regulation is catching up with that now. It's impossible to learn
where to press because there is no physical buttons to learn by.

Meanwhile, my car has physical buttons for everything and it took me about a
week before I could control and navigate everything without looking. I could
never do that with a touchscreen. I've had a smartphone since 2010 and still I
cannot even type without looking, been practicing that for 10 years!

~~~
xedeon
> my car has physical buttons for everything and it took me about a week
> before I could control and navigate everything without looking.

> It's impossible to learn where to press because there is no physical buttons
> to learn by.

You just pointed out glaring disadvantages with buttons/knobs. Situational
Touchscreen Controls + Natural Language Processing voice commands is far
superior. It's also more intuitive.

I can literally tell it "Turn on driver seat heaters to 3 bacons" and it will
set the seat heater to the max setting (1-3).

[https://youtu.be/mV8h2doorrc?t=58](https://youtu.be/mV8h2doorrc?t=58)

If you're telling be voice commands (that actually work) are inferior when it
comes to buttons, I don't know what to tell you.

