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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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It amuses me to no end how here on Lemmy, with our concentration of computer nerd types, absolutely HATES touch screens in cars.
But to be fair, I think everybody who reviews cars says they hate them too.
Enjoying tech is one thing, wanting touchscreens everywhere is another. If they were so cool as an input device, all the cool kids would have ditched their mechanical keyboards from their desks.
Maybe the ubiquity of smart phones and all the functionality packed in to them has created a “touch screen == high tech” association in the general public.
But those of us who work with tech rather than just consuming it know the difference between functionality and UI. And we use nice physical interfaces like mouse + kb to interact with various tech all day, even if we use our phones too.
I have a love/hate relationship with phone touch screens. On the one hand it enables us to have controls that would be impossible on a phone, like selecting a point on a map, infinite variety of button controls, etc. On the other hand I can't tell you how many times I've barely brushed the screen by accident and the damn thing is off doing something I didn't want. "NO! DON'T SHUT OFF THE APP YOU....sigh"
I believe this thinking is what the car companies are banking on too, assuming people see 3-4 screens means it's more premium when I just screams the opposite to me and those I know.
Yep, physical input devices all the way. I literally just upgraded my computer from an Aya neo (touch screen only), to a GPD Win 4 specifically to have more physical inputs. While the Win 4 is also a handheld gaming pc (that is even smaller than the Aya), it has a slide out keyboard and an optical mouse sensor, which has honestly made so much of a difference in being able to use the device. Even just simple things like scrolling through Steam has become easier, never mind situations that involve any sort of typing.
I still love my Aya though, things a tank.
I would happily buy an iPhone with a physical keyboard under a slider. Much faster and more accurate than using Swype.
It's not the first time someone comes up with the next great thing that ends up being a user interface disaster. Light pens (w/ link for the younger crowd) come to mind.
Ooof. I remeber using light pens in the 80s at a dumb terminal at my local library to find books. It was painful...
Anyone remembers dumb terminals?
Dumb terminals were extremely prevelant throughout the 80s and into the early-mid 90s. Most people just didn't know that they were "dumb terminals" and either just thought they were early desktop computers or just heard them referred to as a "terminal". That same library didn't update their dumb terminals to actual computers until the mid 90s, but they did however remove the light pen in favor of a keyboard at some point well before then.
This is Lenny. Most users probably do. Good percentage still have a few. A few of us make new ones now and then.
(Technically not dumb ones, though. And completely excluding terminal emulators, which are of course ubiquitous.)
Oh boy, forgot about those. Every school library used one to read a barcode.
You're probably thinking of something else. You can't read anything with those
They're thinking of optical pens
https://www.datalogic.com/eng/media-center/news/the-first-optical-pen-nd2-8116.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/ja6mc0/does_anybody_remember_these_barcode_readers_at/
I never thought of it this way, but it make sense.
I never thought it would bother me, until I actually sat in a car where everything was dependent on software the first time.
At first I thought I was just getting old. But it dawned on me that relying on software to fucking roll down the windows or starting the car doesn't feel too good.
(It was also an extreme jump in technology for me because the last car I drove before that was an old Corsa around the year ~2005.)
To be fair you probably already had software in engine before 2000.
Quite likely even power windows were driven by microcontrollers close to 2000 and used bus messaging between buttons and (non driver window) controller. Mercedes, certainly.
Because they are stupidly dangerous. The reason physical controls work is because you can memorize where they are and touch them without looking. With the touch screen you have to loo EVERY TIME you want to do anything, and that's an opportunity to not notice something on the road and end up in an accident.
As an IT guy I have a case of "familiarity breeds contempt" when it comes to tech. A lot of it feels unnecessary and overcomplicates things and increases the chance of a failure.
In IT the failures are the reason there is an industry - to some degree - and a feature of systems, so they require large numbers of staff to deploy and maintain. Quite similar to the ICE automobile historically in that regard. So the cars impact is now not just manufacture of parts , local mechanics for repair, but also buildings of software engineers, IT professionals, the cloud engineers, the cloud infrastructure itself and so on. Of course that isn't necessarily exclusive to EVs, or even to just the auto industry.
Another question why we need all that cloud infrastructure in first place
There are so many things that can go wrong with software where in mission critical situations like cars electricity is the preference
Also tracking comes with that software.. nerd types (like me) hate that type of stuff. I think tracking data like that should be banned and is the reason why I won't buy a new car until that happens
There is no discernible difference to me between using a builtin touchscreen and a phone. If one is distracted driving, then so should the other. You have to take your eyes off the road to use both, and with physical controls, I might glance it it but most of the operation of them is done by braille. If I pressed a button, I know I pressed a button and I pressed the right one, I don't have to look back at it to know that. And if I have to follow it up with another action, my hand already knows where that control is relative to the one I just pressed.
The only thing I could live with on touchscreen is music or diagnostics since neither are particularly necessary when you're in the act of driving.
The difference for me is that my phone is sitting in a holder stuck to the windscreen and looking at it means I'm only slightly looking away from the road, so I will still see movement in my peripheral vision.
By contrast, a large touchscreen in the middle of the dash necessarily means taking my eyes entirely off the road and probably also adjusting to the brightness of the display.
Neither are great, but one is worse than the other
Apart from being dangerous in a car they are also super annoying. I got a Walkman a couple of years ago just so I could pause and skip tracks by pressing a button in my pocket.
I've hated touchscreens on everything since forever, and have been shouting into the darkness about how stupid they are in cars since the idea was first introduced. I think most nerds have been doing the same for a long time. Touchscreen are only good for mindless tapping on unimportant things, everything else needs dedicated controls.
Time and place. Do I want everything on a touchscreen at home? More compact and allows more options. Yes.
While I'm trying to fumble for a control when I'm driving a 2000 lb deathtrap at 55 MPH? No.
Agreed, but what the heck car do you drive that's as light as 2000 pounds??
I am doing car shopping right now, anything that doesnt have physical controls is out of the question no matter how good a deal it is or how cool the car otherwise is