Are touch-screens making cars more dangerous?

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Ashton is 12 years old and a wizard on his mobile phone. On this ever-ready device, he is able to type out a lengthy message to a friend with such hand-blurring speed that he sometimes responds before getting a reply.

Not knowing there once was a time when mobile phones didn’t actually exist, Ashton constructs his days around the instant and life-enhancing social connections this anything but nascent technology enables.

In doing so, he has also embraced another, now-indispensable new-age technology: the touch-screen.

The omnipresent touch-screen is seen everywhere, from mobile phones to wall ovens, to supermarket cash registers, to supersonic fighters and sub-orbital spacecraft to cars.

Where cars are concerned, there’s a catch. A big catch.

Just as car-makers look for new ways to exploit touch-screens, ostensibly to make things easier for the driver, there’s a growing awareness that they could actually be making the driving environment more dangerous.

Not in terms of system failure, or electric shocks caused by faulty design, but in terms of road safety.

Unlike, say, an airplane pilot using touch-screens – who is often backed up by a co-pilot and rarely needs to respond instantly to a developing situation – a car driver must be constantly alert while at the wheel.

In a continuously changing environment – as practically everybody knows – even a momentary distraction can have disastrous consequences. Things unfold awfully quickly in a moving vehicle, even at low speeds.

The problem is that, to car designers, touch-screens are alluring. Many are falling over themselves to out-do their competitors, to the point that today a car dashboard with any sort of physical button is generally regarded as archaic, unsightly and inefficient.

The tactility of buttons, knobs and levers is overwhelmingly passé.

The question though is whether or not touch-screens in fact ask too much of the driver.

Safe operation of a moving vehicle requires a constant focus on what is developing outside: the movements of other cars, pedestrians, bike riders, traffic light cycles and the multitudinous situations that may require an instant decision or an instant, preventative action.

Just about the last thing a driver needs is the attention demanded by a touch-screen.

In contrast to the advances in technology used to improve safety – such as front and rear autonomous emergency braking, pedestrian avoidance, lane keeping assistance and driver fatigue monitoring – it’s argued by many that touch-screen technology does just the opposite.

Touch-screens are notoriously tricky to use when driving. Trying to land a finger accurately on a jiggling target, even on relatively smooth road surfaces, is a challenge that involves an often inordinate amount of visual concentration.

As authorities continue cracking down heavily on mobile phone use while driving, there’s now a growing realisation that inbuilt touch-screens can be equally, or more, dangerous.

On a touch-screen, even a quick go at changing a radio frequency, or adjusting the cabin temperature takes time, attention and some degree of figuring out by the driver.

In a story published by the ABC in 2018, road safety researcher Professor Michael Regan nailed it when he said: “The trouble with these touch-screen displays is, firstly, they’re not well located, they might be too far away, and once you start interacting with them sometimes you have to go two or three layers deep into a menu to find what you want.”

In fact, it has been suggested the technology may even be responsible for the recent plateauing of road deaths, after years of declining rates, in countries such as the UK.

In a recent study conducted in Britain by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and safety advocate iAM RoadSmart, it was found that drivers using touch-screens for functions such as looking up directions, changing songs on Spotify or responding to text messages were 53 to 57 per cent slower reacting to external stimuli than those without the technology.

Tellingly, this was 45.9 per cent slower than the stimuli response time when answering a hand-held mobile phone.

Even more concerning was the finding that response times were slower than drivers at the UK’s legal alcohol limit – or marijuana users.

Though the results were not as damning, the much-lauded voice control didn’t show up too well either. In the same situations, the study found a 33 per cent delay in driver response times.

According to the TRL, the study “clearly show[s] that touch control infotainment systems are highly distracting to drivers, far more so than voice-activated system”.

“However, even current voice control systems increase drivers’ reaction times and remain a concern for road safety,” the authors concluded.

The TRL also found significant discrepancies between estimated and actual times for performing a particular function.

As an example, touch-screen-using drivers asked to estimate the time taken to change a song on Spotify thought it took about five seconds, where the actual times were measured at more than 14 seconds.

This is a major worry, considering the common – and conservative – understanding that two seconds or more of driver distraction is inherently dangerous.

Although it would be opening a can of worms to suggest those incapable of some degree of multitasking while at the wheel – a conversation with a passenger, resolving or shutting down a dispute between the kids in the back seat, or even responding appropriately to a sudden emergency inside the vehicle – shouldn’t be in charge of a moving vehicle at all, it’s clear that car-makers are presented with the difficult-to-define problem of what’s dangerously distracting and what isn’t.

And what to do about it.

While various car-makers already take the step of disabling some, but not all, of the touch-screen functions when the car is moving, so far there appears to be little serious response or cohesion within the industry.

Hopeful signs can be found though, such as Mazda’s 2019 introduction of its current-generation Mazda3 without any touch-screen capability at all.

Groups in various countries around the world have been expressing concern over the hazards of touch-screens from as far back as 2016 when UK safety advocacy groups sounded an alarm claiming smartphone apps on the car dashboard were “a potential death-trap”.

Other groups, particularly in the US and the UK, are advocating for legislation controlling the design and function of in-car touch-screen controls.

There’s another thing too. Just how attractive is that hyper-clean, stylised dash going to be once the touch-screens are inevitably smeared with the grubby fingerprints of those forced to use them?

No-one has yet found a way to mitigate the unsightly side effects that would surely be the delight of any forensic scientist.

Over to you, captains of the car industry. Ashton will appreciate it.