Touchscreens should be banned in cars. Here’s why.
The touchscreen on your centre console. If you bought a new car in the last decade, you almost certainly have first-hand experience using one of these. I include myself here.
Like many others, you’ve likely fallen into one of two camps. The yeas or the nays.
I’m firmly against touchscreens in vehicles — at least when they can be used while the car is in motion. In fact, I can’t fathom how they’re otherwise legal!
This article explains why I feel so strongly about this and what should be done about it.
Distractions caused by touchscreens in cars
In the olden days, cars had switches, buttons and knobs — and that was it (because that’s as far as technology had come). Touchscreens were a thing of science fiction or, later on, luxury vehicles only.
Physical buttons and switches allow the driver to feel what they’re pressing. Once someone is familiar with a vehicle’s interior, there’s really no need to divert the gaze at all.
It doesn’t take an expert survey to realise how potentially deadly touchscreens are. Unlike the controls you manually push, pull or turn, a touchscreen demands the driver’s attention. The screen changes every time you tap it, and there’s no way to ‘feel’ your way through the menus.
No. You have to deliberately take your eyes off the road and look at the screen until you’ve made your selection.
To me, this action is almost inexcusable. A modern driver is responsible for around two tons of advanced equipment travelling at speeds of 70 mph (113 kph) and more, producing the same momentum as firing a fully grown adult out of a high-powered rifle. (That’s true, although the metaphor is impossible in real life!)
How can changing the music or sending a voice message be worth risking that control?
Stats to prove the point
Unfortunately, the statistics are few and far between. I suspect the main reason for this is that most car designers and manufacturers want to use touchscreens, and any studies would immediately prove them less effective.
Regardless, here’s the best thing I could find. It’s not exactly a professional control group study with masses of data, but the results are pretty much what I’d expect.
Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare put several vehicles to the test two years ago. Some had complex touchscreens, such as the BMW iX; others had more user-friendly touchscreens, like the Volvo C40. These all competed against a good old 2005 Volvo V70 — a touchscreen-less grandad on the road but an ever-present vehicle well respected for its slow-and-steady refusal to die.
Drivers were to complete four tasks in their cabin while driving at highway speeds (in a controlled environment, of course). The longer these tasks took, the more we might infer the driver would have been distracted on the road. The tasks included routine things like resetting the trip meter and increasing the backlighting. Oh, and all the drivers had time to get familiar with their cars and learn how to complete the functions.
Unsurprisingly, the touchscreen-less Volvo V70 blew the competition out of the water. It took its driver just 10 seconds to complete the tasks.
On the other end of the scale, the MG Marvel R driver took 45 seconds to complete the same task. Almost all other cars, all of which came with touchscreens, had times between 20 and 30 seconds.
The exceptions were the Volvo C40 and Dacia Sandero. Their drivers completed the tasks in 13.7 and 13.5 seconds, respectively, despite operating touchscreens. Vi Bilägare credits these manufacturers’ far simpler user interfaces for these results.
Why are we so obsessed with touchscreens in cars?
I have an untested and unproven theory which I believe would hold true. We’re obsessed with touchscreens in cars because we’re obsessed with touchscreens on our smartphones. (Please let me know if you agree in the comments section.)
As we all know, almost all consumers wouldn’t even consider buying a car unless it came with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. In other words, for most drivers, this is the most critical aspect of vehicle purchasing — not performance, safety, price point, or warranty — but how well it integrates with the little computer in their pocket.
Perhaps we could go down several rabbit holes about the undeniable ill effects of smartphone addiction in our societies, but I’ll leave that for another article.
Regardless, this obsession led to a war of words between the major players. Apple demanded a much higher stake in the automotive world. Some refused, slowly breaking free of the smartphone industry’s vice-like grip (take GM, for example, although they’ve sold their soul to Google instead).
But most have no choice. If car developers want to maximise demand and sales, they must incorporate CarPlay or Android Auto.
In short, we have touchscreens because that’s how these two pieces of software work — they literally mirror your phone in what’s claimed to be a ‘driver-friendly’ way (I’m not sure if I agree) — and these are vital considerations for the modern driver.
Also, as one final point, touchscreens allow a car’s interior and dashboard to appear ‘cleaner’ and ‘smoother’ instead of cluttering them with buttons. I understand these feelings. However, just as designers work around wing mirrors and drag coefficients, asking a highly skilled team to develop a beautiful cabin — complete with buttons — surely isn’t too much of an ask.
Alternative solutions
Recently, I’ve noticed more cars — except for EVs — moving away from touchscreens, or at least offering far more physical buttons. We’ve seen a few potential solutions over the years, and I’ll delve into a couple here.
However, with all the politics, bureaucracy and the extended vehicle development timeline, this article is unlikely to make it into the hands of the CEOs of General Motors or Volkswagen. As fun as that would be.
There’s a far more effective solution that all of us can take right now: mentally disconnecting from our smartphones when driving.
We don’t need to be connected to them all the time. Sure, they’re useful and provide incredible opportunities for communication and media. But driving is not the time for that. It’s time to focus on the road, enjoying your connection to the vehicle while concentrating on keeping yourself, everyone in your car, and all other road users safe.
Without that pining for our smartphones, the appeal of touchscreens vastly diminishes. For example, even if I turn off Apple CarPlay, my 2020 Santa Fe still plays music and allows me to answer the occasional phone call through physical buttons and voice control.
Speaking of which, here are a few of the solutions I expect the car industry to implement:
- A return to physical buttons — the ‘screen’ part of the touchscreen is probably here to stay. Whether the sat-nav is built into the car or your phone, most of us are utterly dependent on them (myself included). I can’t see that part going away. But the way we interact with that screen? Yes, I think that will return to a much stronger focus on buttons, switches and knobs.
- Voice control — an interesting consideration, because most car companies claim to have already implemented voice control. And they have. The thing is, a manufacturer’s attempt at voice control almost always falls far short of, say, Siri. I’ve found them much less likely to correctly understand what you say, and only a few (usually unimportant) functions are compatible. I hope voice control gets much better and more expansive.
- Gesture control — like voice control, gesture control has been around for a few years now. However, it comes with the same problems. It’s challenging to use; the driver might accidentally make the wrong movements (and get confused), and sometimes it just plain doesn’t work. I would love to see gesture control used more effectively with touchpads (like Mercedes’ setup).
- Self-locking touchscreens — a few newer cars have come with self-locking touchscreens. They don’t work while the vehicle is moving. I know some will disagree with me, but I love this feature. It’s a brilliant way to make it actively impossible to play around with a touchscreen while someone is driving. Manufacturers have hit a tricky junction, though, as this feature may contribute to pushing consumers away (see my earlier point about smartphones).
The need for immediate action
According to Forbes (based on NHTSA statistics), between 8% and 9% of fatalities on America’s roads occur due to distracted driving. That equates to around 3,000 people or approximately eight deaths per day. Around one-fifth (587) of these are pedestrians or cyclists. In total, in 2020, 324,652 were injured thanks to car accidents involving distracted driving.
These figures are terrible.
Now, distracted driving is by no means limited to using a car’s built-in touchscreen. ‘Distracted driving’ could include any manner of thing that takes someone’s attention away from the road, from phone use to accident rubbernecking, bickering with a passenger to reading an advertisement board, eating, or even daydreaming.
However, I have no doubt that the use of touchscreens — on a phone or in a car — must have contributed to these figures at some level. I know how distracting they are. I can feel it when I’m driving and when someone else is driving me.
The fact that so many were injured but relatively few killed in distracted driving incidents is a testament to the safety of the modern car. Other hazards may be more damaging (such as impaired driving). For example, the CDC found that 11,654 people lost their lives in crashes involving impaired driving in 2020. The same studies showed that 54% of 4,243 drivers seriously injured (enough to go to a trauma centre) in a crash had alcohol or drugs in their system.
Nevertheless, 3,000 Americans (these statistics are only the US!) losing their lives per year is 3,000 too many.
Do you agree?
Let me finish by making the case that I prefer a well-designed cabin filled with physical controls over a touchscreen.
Yes, the plastic-y cabins we usually see are no fun, I’ll give you that. But faux wood or leather or even a nice fabric, paired with matching buttons, overhead switches and knobs, allows an abundance of design opportunities. I especially love those aeroplane-inspired overhead switches!
Mmmm. Nice.
Touchscreens aren’t going anywhere — not yet, at least. EVs especially (for some reason!) seem to be increasing our dependence on them.
However, in thirty, fifty, one hundred years, people will look back at this time, and I wonder if they’ll mock us for our love of touchscreens despite acknowledging how dangerous they are in moving vehicles?
For example, from the 1500s to the 1700s, lead makeup became very fashionable. People knew it was bad for them, and it often obviously irritated the skin, never mind its toxicity. Still, fashion demanded they wear it — so they did.
It sounds ridiculous today… but are we any different?
Touchscreens aren’t toxic like lead (well, again, that’s a whole tangent of its own). But we are universally addicted to them. Making our cars and driving habits safer starts not with changing the tech but with changing our mindsets.
