Touchscreens are dangerously distracting

So there is a tinge of sadness, just a few years into my reviewing career, that those buttons, the most tactile of interfaces, are gradually fading into memory. But actually, it isn’t that warm glow of nostalgia that causes my disproving looks at the trend away from physical UX. It’s a matter of pure safety.

There’s no denying a properly-integrated touchscreen can be a great addition to the internal design of a car. Take, for example, the way that Bentley has brought a giant television into the inside of its cars – those 12 inches of screen look very good inside, say, the Flying Spur V8. But if it’s an injection of tech without enough thought, it becomes a real issue.

Tesla started this whole fad for touchscreens taking over control. The Model S arrived with its massively simplified interior in 2012. Almost all functions had been moved to the central screen, and it worked very well when you used it. Then the smaller Model 3 came along and removed even more function from the rest of the interior. Whether you liked the look of Tesla’s interior design or not is down to you, but those big screens were an undeniable revolution. They were, and are, intuitive and nice to look at and have been packed with features, some useful, some total gimmicks.

The spark had been set though, and touchscreens began to spread through the motoring world. Tesla were by no means the only early adopters, but they were the first to really make it work. From then on touchscreens became more than just a fad in the highest-cost luxury cars, they were in everything, even down to a humble Toyota Aygo.

While they have undoubtedly brought much more functionality to the automotive world, questions must now be asked about both how far this can go, and how safe the move is. The systems are becoming more and more intuitive, with JLR’s new PIVI Pro system a great example, but all of the best systems are supplemented by some good old fashioned buttons.

You see, the moment you remove the physical interaction with a button, and put a feature behind a sub-menu, you instantly demanding more attention from the user. If you ask someone to just rotate a single knob to change the temperature on the climate control, they will have the muscle memory to glance down, put their hand on the knob and turn – it takes barely a second to do and the driver has their eyes back on the road in an instant.

Now, take that same scenario, and say your climate control is in the touchscreen. You have either the home screen or the Sat-Nav up, and you want to change from 21 to a more comfortable 19. Even if there is a quick navigate button, you are going to have to locate that button, and then locate the control you need on the screen. Suddenly that quick glance away from the road is an all-out hunt. Even if you know where the right menu is, you’re going to need to guide your hand around. If that search becomes more than two seconds then gone is your reaction time. The average human takes around 0.25 seconds to react to something, say a lorry pulling out, and then two seconds to have fully implemented their reaction. If you’ve spent two seconds looking at a screen then you and that lorry are going to meet.

If you then add in less responsive ‘touch’ buttons, even with haptic feedback, then it becomes even more of a hunt. It became more apparent to me recently when I drove the new Golf GTI. The new GTI is an all-around excellent car, until you try to change a setting. All the buttons are now touch-based, and the screen is absolutely crammed with functions. Try to hit the quick-nav button to go to climate, and if you hit a bump your hand will glance over to “options”. At which point you’re hunting for even longer just to get back to where you started.

This rush to tech everything up and cram it into a screen is in danger of making good cars dangerous. And sure, voice control is helping to sort that, but how many voice controls are perfect? The simple solution is to keep the screens, but allow buttons for the most used functions, the things you do when driving – climate, dynamic car settings etc. It was interesting to see this week that the new Audi e-tron GT has dispensed with the second screen seen in the A6 and A7, and returned some buttons to the dash. Maybe, before governments need to legislate for safety, the OEMs are realising they need to change themselves.

Let’s put it this way: what really is the difference between hunting in a screen for the right menu to change your heater, and getting your phone out to read a text?

Tesla image by David Von Diemar.