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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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Personally I think that the following car functions should be mandatory physical controls - wipers, indicators, hazards, side/headlights, door locks, defogger / defroster, electronic parking brake. forward/reverse/neutral/park. And they should be controls that have fixed position in the car (i.e. not on the wheel) with positive and negative feedback.
And fuck Tesla or any other manufacturer that wants to cheap out on a couple of bucks by removing them. Removing physical controls has obvious safety implications to drivers who are distracted trying to find icons on a tablet.
Don't forget heating and cooling too. There's a ton of things that are necessary to operate while the vehicle is in motion and should never be delegated to a touchscreen.
I'm fine with touchscreens for in car entertainment for the back seats and maybe a passenger one with the appropriate shutter technology to block the driver's view. None of those things are important for vehicle safety... but if there is a speaker that the passengers can control there needs to be a mute button for the driver to turn that shit off too :)
Any controls that aren't multimedia need to be separate from the infotainment system.
I want to be able to change the radio unit without losing my air conditioner. I don't want a cracked touchscreen to prevent me from turning on traction control.
Radio???
I assume steering too, right?
i.e. a "If you brick your car's firmware, at least you can keep driving without unreasonable levels of difficulty or distraction" situation.
That's impossible for a large portion of safety critical systems. Engines don't run without a controller, they literally control the fuel injection valves (and have done so for decades). Brake systems have physical failsafes for when the electronics die (I.e. basic hydraulics without the booster), but you should not be able to move a vehicle without a working brake system after it stopped.
The shitton of software running modern cars is there for good reason (at least large chunks of it), lots of which is safety, especially in the drivetrain.
It's completely different for infotainment, which I agree the vehicle should be able to function without (although the dashboard must work)
Do the ECU and the cabin equipment run on the same computer? Can you tune the vehicle from the driver's seat?
I don't really think that physical buttons on the dashboard are any less distracting. I still have take my eyes off the road to make sure I press the correct button. At least I can press right scroll wheel and give voice commands.
You can just feel your way around. If all the buttons have the same shape, sure, you can't, but they don't have the same shape. For example, if one button has a little raised nub, like the F key in keyboards, you know immediately which button your finger is on.
This. I don't need braille to know which button, it becomes muscle memory. A touch screen UI changes dynamically, so having muscle memory like for a physical momentary switch is impossible. And the tactile feedback is important too.
You don't have to take your eyes off the road to operate a control. You might need to learn where some are in a new car, but then you instinctively reach for and operate the ones you use all the time. It's muscle memory.
This is not the case in a touch screen where controls may or may not be visible at any given time and you have no chance of operating them unless you physically look at the screen to control where you touch it. Maybe this arrangement is fine for some non-critical functions, but it absolutely isn't for critical ones.
What is worse is that cars from Tesla are even getting rid of indicator stalks which is fantasically dangerous. Maybe it's not a big deal in the US where roundabouts are uncommon but they are all over the place in Europe and the rest of the world and lack of indicators will cause crashes and fatalities. Just so Elon Musk could save a few bucks on a stalk. And if that results in a lower EuroNCAP score then boohoo for him. I can imagine the raging and legal threats that he'll engage in if that happens.