The fact that these cars pass safety certification, makes me question certifiers. It's illegal to look at your phone while driving, for good reason, but it's legal to fiddle with a damn computer screen, because it's part of the car.
I predict it's a matter of time before we'll see a correlation between number of crashes, and cars with touchscreens.
The fact that my touch screen will often display a distracting message that reminds me that it's unsafe to take my eyes off the road while driving and require someone to touch the "ok" button to dismiss it is the epitome of dangerous stupidity...
Yes, it is the most useless thing ever. I think my truck displays it maybe once per day? It isn't every drive, which ends up making it worse because I look to tap on the radio and I have to first reach across the entire display to hit OK, then wait for it to load, then tap the radio...If it was every drive I could just be programmed to tap the button without looking at it, which of course defeats the purpose of it in the first place.
At least my Corolla doesn't persist the screen--and it's instantly dismissed if I go into reverse and the backup camera activates. The driver assist stuff is fairly mild which is good because it's prone to errors. It routinely gets confused about what constitutes a lane, beeping about my not following something that isn't actually a lane. Usually something on the road but I've been scolded for not respecting the shadow of an electric wire. It also thinks I'm not holding the wheel when I'm in a very gentle high speed turn--there's a spot where the expressway gently curves that's very prone to triggering it.
The adaptive cruise is pretty good, it's been fooled once by two cars moving in front of me at the same time and it appears to have no understanding of cars with huge speed differences. (Bozos that enter the road at half the speed limit.) It also refuses to operate below 28 mph which I dislike because cruise control is good for using the engine to hold your speed down on hills--and there's a certain 25 mph mountain road I sometimes drive. Yeah, maybe the adaptive stuff can't work but at least give me basic control so I don't need to use my brakes!
> but it's legal to fiddle with a damn computer screen, because it's part of the car.
In Germany it is only legal to operate a touch screen while driving for essential functions with only a brief glance. For example, a judgement was handed down against a Tesla driver who tried to switch up the interval of the windscreen wiper via touchscreen and ran off the road in the process.
And risk having to go to court over whether it really is unfit? That's not something they should decide, that's something that regulators should have stopped before the car was even put on the market in the first place.
My ex (one of my best friends), born and raised in Seattle, used to give me serious grief anytime I mention rain in Boston or NYC. She had no belief in what I would describe.
Work finally ships her out to (NYC). She calls me up to say she just ran ~2meters from the hotel to the taxi and is soaking wet.
Many years ago we had a guy working for us who was sent over from our company's parent company in Southern Cali. He was not keen on going out in the rain at all, and was absolutely terrified that we still drove at 60mph when it was raining. "But what if you skid? It's raining!" he'd wail.
He'd never driven in rain. He just did not take well to a Scottish January, especially the bit where you get 140mph winds for a couple of weeks.
When it rains after being dry for some time an oil layer forms on top of the water. This is why he is afraid of skidding. In Southern California, where it is very dry there can be very substantial oil buildup.
There's a map here that shows that most of the eastern US gets more rain than Seattle, but Seattle is very high on the number of days of measurable precipitation.
my 2003 Honda Accord allows you to change wiper interval the same way you enable/disable it -- moving the right-hand stick a notch.
setting it to a high speed will fuck up the wipers when there is little rain, a /low/ speed will be useless when there is appreciable rain, and when driving you often move from one to another.
I can't help but feel like we've made a mistake by concentrating so many of the people who design our standard software UX patterns in California. From Tesla designing car interfaces that don't understand how wipers need to work to Apple designing weather apps that don't clearly communicate wind chill to smartphones that require use of the touchscreen to answer a phone call rendering it impossible to answer while wearing gloves. It's like they only understand the concept of weather from TV shows set in New York.
Why wouldn't the safe thing be to reach out from the steering wheel with one of the fingers of your right hand, and move the little slider thing on the wiper switch to increase the wipe speed?
You know, like on my appallingly primitive 1998 Range Rover, or pretty much anything from the same era?
They meet crash standards, yes. But the interior design of them encourages unsafe driving. Between putting almost everything inside a touch screen and pushing autopilot (which encourages drivers to pay attention less), they are creating more distractions from controlling their 2-ton metal boxes.
Drivers are licensed operators of heavy machinery that travels at high speed. Let's not encourage systems that turn us into more dangerous operators.
If they were "death traps" the stats would have them as the most dangerous cars on the road rather than one of the safest (in terms of deaths per mile). The grandparent was speaking absolute nonsense.
It's a critical function--high speed in light rain will cause problems from the rubber moving across basically dry glass, low/intermittent speed in heavy rain won't clear your view properly.
I didn't believe it could be that nad, but I looked up the video at Tesla and you really have to go to the touchscreen to speed up the wiper. That should absolutely be illegal. Does it have some autosense feature so that you usually don't have to ise it?
I'm sure it's the type of thing in an Elon meeting he would say "Surely we can think of a solution better than relying on drivers to provide meaningful input to the desired outcome?"
Yes, in theory it would be best to have the perfect speed without intervention but there isn't one perfect speed for the conditions.
The speed the driver wants changes from driver to driver and might depend not just on how much rain is coming down but on the amount of traffic on the road, proximity to pedestrians, eye sight and time of day and any number of other factors.
It's always going to be better to have an automatic system that can be tweaked by the driver because everyone is different. The more easily the driver can do that without thinking the better.
Does changing the speed using the wheel require either knowing a menu layout or looking at a screen to know what the wheel control is actually controlling at the moment?
If you know ahead of time how to do it. If you are in a new car, discovering which of 12 different switches, knobs, and dials adjusts the wiper speed is somewhat baffling. I always spend 5 minutes in a new rental car trying to memorize how to do this, but if it's been a couple days since I rented the car and I'm trying to do it for the first time, it is not something that I try to attempt to adjust while still on the road.
Sure. But for physical controls it's generally easy to discover as well. Indeed it only takes a few minutes in an unfamiliar car, after which it's easy to use the controls with at most a passing glance.
This obviously depends on the jurisdiction. Here in the UK:
There is a specific ban on using phones while driving.
There is an obligation to drive with "due care and attention" so taking your eyes and attention off the road to spend time fiddling with a computer screen can be an offence as well.
In practice the bar for "due care and attention" is low (ie. you have had to be really, really careless or really, really inattentive to be convicted). The courts in the UK hold drivers only to a pretty low standard in general. That's why they had to pass a separate law to ban handheld use of mobile phones.
An example of how oblivious drivers on phones are is this:
I parked (where I could not be seen by the van) to warn oncoming drivers of mobile speed van 50 metres ahead over brow of hill.
While nearly all made eye contact with me and speeders instantly slammed the brakes, two drivers on phones (both women with kids), despite me flashing my headlamps AND putting my hand out of my car and waving at them, they still did not look at me or put down the phone.
This was after the penalty was doubled to 6 points.
(And yes I know its not legal for me to warn drivers of speed traps like this)
This can be a fixed penalty (no court involved unless driver does not accept penalty). So I think it really depends on what the driver was actually doing (especially impact on driving), how the driver responds to being stopped by police, and whether police is having a bad day.
The way that the separations of powers work in the US, basically all driving laws are set by the states. The rules for driving can and do change when you cross state lines in the US, sometimes significantly. It really doesn't make any sense to talk about specific driving laws in the US as a monolith.
Same here in Australia. I actually think we have developed the technology (and the matching legislation) that allows pole mounted cameras to detect this while driving at 110kmh down the expressway. I know many people that have been "busted" and even though I use a handsfree holder, just placing (when you forgot to do so before you drive off) is just as illegal here.
I did laugh when of course sometimes they would pickup someone holding a chocolate bar while driving. While not necessarily the best thing to do with the one hand, not illegal all the same.
I wish them all the best here in NC, but the auto dealer’s association is easily one of the most influential lobbying groups in the state, which is why Tesla can’t even sell their own cars here.
Do auto insurance rates on touch screen cars show this to be the case? Cars with touch screens have been around long enough that they should have data, and consequently be charging more for insurance on those cars if they are is that is indeed the case.
Auto insurance models like many other insurance models are often not that smart. The insurance company will charge more of there is more claims payout, but they also want to attract certain client segments and compete with competitors.
Also, claim rates have all kind of confounding factors. Maybe a car is safer but more prone to theft, or more dangerous but easier to repair, or has better controls but is driven by inexperienced drivers etc.
They need to make a profit over their whole insured client population, not necessarily over any given segment or car model, so I wouldn't use insurance rates as data points in determining car safety without a lot of caveats.
I predict it's a matter of time before we'll see a correlation between number of crashes, and cars with touchscreens.