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Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

> Turing the wheel unpredictably selects objects on the screen, forcing you to keep your eyes off the road while you keep turning the wheel until the item you need is selected.

You shouldn't need to do anything requiring the wheel while you're driving though. All the controls that you would want to have accessible while you're driving are physical (climate control, basic media/phone controls.) For everything else you should be setting that up while you're parked.

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Yet, it's not what people are doing. The UIs of cars and other objects should take into account how they're going to be used, not how they are designed to be used. It's been proven again and again that you can only marginally educate or tell people how to behave. It's better to make a system that is safe 7/10 in real world usage, instead of one designed for 9/10, but actually getting 5/10.

The solution to "stupid people won't keep their eyes on the road while driving" is not "force everyone else to take their eyes off the road as well."

Both hands staying on the steering wheel is a huge plus. And the inputs are stepwise and therefore less prone to error, so safer.

And then there is Siri which makes all the things that you might want to do while driving, and probably shouldn't (touchscreen or not) far easier and safer.

How is a touchscreen safer?

I've never said a touchscreen is better. FWIW, I like the button controls on my car and don't need a touchscreen.

I'm specifically replying to "anything else you should do at the parking lot", which we know people don't do. I'm ONLY saying that UIs should be designed for how they will be used. If people never pull over and do things on the go - either disable them completely when the car is moving or make sure the user is done as quickly as possible and with the minimum amount of looking inside the car. If that's a touchscreen, buttons, buttons next to a screen, I don't really know - that should be done with proper UI/UX research.

I'd claim things are more nuanced. There are many reasons why UIs in many places, not just cars, suck. In cars, wether warranted or not, there is also pressure from legal to err on the side of building a cludge that is unassailable vs. a smooth user experience that could be grounds for a class action because it doesn't make enough of an effort to discourage dangerous user behavior.

It’s because the incentives are in the wrong place. When the average Joe goes to a car lot a new truck with a touchscreen is “Futuristic” and “Modern”. The only cars that come with buttons are the base models, and are therefore “cheap”.

The car industry isn’t in the business of building great UIs, they’re in the business of selling cars off of the dealer lot, unfortunately.

Usually me an my wife take turns driving. And we have a tacit agreement that the passenger control this kind of stuff. So, if I am driving, I ask my wife to set a destination on the GPS, play some music, change the temperature, and when she is driving I become the navigator/flight-engineer. Having those controls in the wheel would be incredibly annoying for us.

In my Mazda, the climate controls are physical, but in the center console, and easily accessible to both driver and front passenger. The wheel-based controls are things like skip forward/backward, bring up voice input, or end call. That's also about the extent of things I consider the driver should be focusing on. When I was younger, on family trips, even climate control was something relegated to the passenger; Even for the driver side.

I consider putting in a destination on the GPS, or setting up my music playlist to be 'park the car' types of things if simply doing it via voice control doesn't work.

The controls should not be visible to the driver. Move that touch screen over to the navigators seat and make it nice and convient for them to use. A little angle to the driver can't see it at all would be good.

The driver should have limited controls, all physical, and all ergonomicly designed to be easy to find. Even programming your phone GPS while moving should require the navigator to hit accept.

Screens for the driver should be carefully designed to not be something you look at while moving.

Realistically, however, there often is no navigator so reverting vehicle controls for a solo driver to the situation 10 years ago is almost certainly a non-starter. And even that long ago, it just meant people were using a smartphone instead on an in-car infotainment system.

Sure, but now it isn't the automakers fault when someone does something dangerious. Hopefully the police can start enforcing no phone use while driving laws. Google/Apple may in fact be liable as well and forced to check GPS before unlocking a phone (this would be bad for passenger experience, but if drivers can't keep their hands off their phones it might be required to do this)

The thumbwheel buttons on the Tesla wheel are great, and one of them activates listening for voice commands, which work really well. That usually handles all music switching and climate control setting.

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