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If you think it is okay to talk to your car infotainment system or smartphone while driving or even when stopped at a red light, think again. It takes up to 27 seconds to regain full attention after issuing voice commands, University of Utah researchers found in a pair of new studies for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
One of the studies showed that it is highly distracting to use hands-free voice commands to dial phone numbers, call contacts, change music and send texts with Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri and Google Now smartphone personal assistants, though Google Now was a bit less distracting than the others.
The other study examined voice-dialing, voice-contact calling and music selection using in-vehicle information or "infotainment" systems in 10 model-year 2015 vehicles. Three were rated as moderately distracting, six as highly distracting and the system in the 2015 Mazda 6 as very highly distracting.
"Just because these systems are in the car doesn't mean it's a good idea to use them while you are driving," says University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer, senior author of the two new studies. "They are very distracting, very error prone and very frustrating to use. Far too many people are dying because of distraction on the roadway, and putting another source of distraction at the fingertips of drivers is not a good idea. It's better not to use them when you are driving."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 26 2015, @11:58AM
Most of the discussion has been assuming the UI is not the problem. However they universally suck.
The other study examined voice-dialing, voice-contact calling and music selection using in-vehicle information or "infotainment" systems
All the 2014 model year offerings were steaming turds. At least in five minute intro at various dealerships. So I bought a dumbcar and my car's participation is as a gasoline powered bluetooth speaker and I couldn't be happier. Even that UI kinda sucks, but its harder to F up a simple system than a "does it all really badly" system. As you'd expect, companies focused on making four wheels turn are really bad at consumer entertainment electronics, so all the built in systems are at the level of TV infomercial gadget performance. At best they compete solely on trying to look cool for buyers and not on actual use. Much like modern desktop UIs like gnome / kde / legacy windows / osx, those all look cool and sell well and actually work like total shit.
Meanwhile we're all assuming 27 seconds to pay attention to the road means "transaction begins" - "transaction completes" - wait 27 seconds - wake up and smell the diesel fumes. The reality is voice UI sucks unimaginably so its more like the average transaction takes 26.9 seconds and then upon close of transaction it takes 0.1 seconds to pay attention to the road again. Its faster and WAY less frustrating to simply pull over to the side of the road and use the GUI than to try and use a crappy gadget of a voice UI to do anything. Those things are worthless and I can see it averaging half a minute to CORRECTLY send a simple text message or change music or audiobook. Worthless gimmicks are and always will be worthless gimmicks. I'd also categorize very poor phone coverage on the road as another problem, if it takes 5 minutes and 3 calls to verify a destination address because the connection is too poor to use.
There are also psychological issues. I am alpha (or whatever) enough that I control my life at least while I'm driving. I don't have to react (possibly killing people on the road) to someone else texting or calling or WTFing. Maybe I do need to, in reality, but F them I'm too alpha to react like that. I'm just not passive and submissive enough to be controlled by my phone. If it was important enough to contact me, they'll wait for me to finish driving or at least at a very safe part of the drive (stopped at a red light, etc) If you really want to save lives you need an automated test when an app starts up that won't let wimps play with their phone while in a car, because they're going to "have to" tweet back to some loser and end up killing themselves or others. Maybe people need to grow a pair (or the lady equivalent, whatever that is) before they're permitted to have a phone in their car. The world won't stop revolving around you if you stop tweeting for 30 minutes, so Fing stop. Meanwhile there's no problem with people who've grown a pair being "allowed" to use a phone in a car. I start up, wait for BT pair, start my audiobook or sometimes music, drive somewhere, shut it down. Sometimes if I'm at a red light I'll do whatever with the phone. Obviously the cognitive load of the map app is lower than legacy paper maps, so its bad to drive around kinda lost, but safer to use the phone than paper maps, although a copilot is better of course. Using a phone when you're kinda alpha seems safe enough, just not when you're hyper-submissive. Its an uncomfortable too much information truth that the people who whine about how "no one" can resist being controlled by their phones are extreme subs in the BSDM realm and are therefore extremely dangerous on the road, and the people who can resist being dominated by their phone tend toward the dom part of the BSDM spectrum and therefore are perfectly safe on the road, but nobody needs that much information in public.