9 years ago
6
Car Dashboards that act like Smart Phones Raise Safety Concerns
By Sarah McBride and Paul Lienert SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When it comes to dashboard displays that are more like smart phones, two things are clear: Customers want them, and automakers are intent on supplying them. Text messages pop up on the dashboard, in addition to being read out loud.
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Personally I already feel heavily distracted when switching genre's, stations, etc on a satellite radio in the car with knobs, I've never tried to use Pandora or similar before on a touchscreen dash before, I can see how this is a problem. Especially social media being on them.
I can see this being a tricky thing to deal with. Nowadays with the amount of people I see on their smartphones while driving having a dashboard with some functionality could lessen this, but then you face the problem of people being distracted by the dashboard instead. Things like the article mentioned like the A3 linking to twitter and what not I see as a huge problem. I only use Spotify in my car but luckily I can use the steering wheel buttons to skip/play/pause etc. so I'm not really distracted by my phone whilst driving. I think at most music and mapping features would be ok to navigate without being too big a problem. I can only imagine the chaos of being able to use social media while they drive.
I agree, they should have some regulation about it only being able to use the Radio | Radio Apps and navigation while the car is on the road, but while parked it should be able to open the other apps for use. Hands free phone should also be allowed, but only the voice portion. Of course that is my opinion. My sister uses Pandora and drives and scares the living crap out of me because she likes to type shit in instead of just hitting next. She could benefit from this tech.
Yeah that would be good being able to use whatever when parked up. Jeez that is crazy I couldn't imagine typing something into Spotify to find it, couldn't take my eyes of the road for that long! I drive about 2 1/2 hours a day in my general commute to and from work and it is worrying just how many people you spot on their phones or reading something on them. Another thing is just how little regulation is for this type of stuff at the moment. Doesn't seem to be any real restrictions or guidelines at all, definitely think it needs some good in depth research doing on what should and shouldn't be possible when driving.
Part of the problem in regulations I think is the amount of lobbying power the car and phone industries have in local and federal politics. You don't want to piss off an industry that is showing major growth by regulating it and at the same time you don't want to lose the money they pay your campaign. The NTSB has been asking for restrictions for a while now, at least since 2012, they even want GPS units to be static images except when showing the turns because drivers can be distracted by the moving images.
Here is a quote about what they wanted.
GPS devices are welcome to act as co-pilot on your trip(s) so long as they don't do anything distracting -- like move, for instance. Section V.5.b of the document titled Visual-Manual NHTSA Driver Distraction Guidelines for In-Vehicle Electronic Devices says that "Dynamic, continuously moving maps are not recommended." The section, which deals with photographs or videos, says that static or near-static maps for the purpose of driving directions are acceptable. Near static is defined as being updated every few seconds.
They also took issue with the screens of 2012 that showed tons of text and scrolling text too. Yet, none of their recommendations were ever debated or put up as a law. It's time to stand up and do something though, it's already dangerous out there, without rules on these systems there will be more, if 2000 deaths due to seatbelts not being worn is too many, then 2000 people dead because somebody was playing with their dashboard isn't acceptable.
That's absolutely crazy that they have been going at this for 3 years now, didn't realise that.
That is so much the problem, I'm from the UK so this stuff isn't nearly as big as it in the US although does play a part. I'd hope the UK or EU would be able to set some regulations for if/when these dashboards start cropping up over here, but this type of stuff should be international. You're spot on with the seatbelt point, if this tech ends up in distracted drivers crashing and killing people then it's not acceptable at all.