Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by toyg on Monday June 17, 2019 @10:12AM (#20203131)

The steering wheel is where most of this stuff should be all the time. The second you force me to reposition my hand, security levels drop off a cliff, since you get involuntary movement on the other side (as proven by this post) and likely take your eyes off the road, which is bad even for a split second. I know this for a fact, having crashed a car on a motorway as I was turning down the fan (controlled by an analog button, btw).

The best car interface, imho, is something like a rotary device or arrows buttons on the steering wheel (or back thereof) which can be used to manipulate an overlay projected on (or just below) the windshield. My current VW gets close, but the screen is in the lower half of the dashboard (way too far from actual view of the road), and the system can only be partially controlled by on-wheel buttons (the main control is a touchscreen in the middle of the car).

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by potta_coffee on Monday June 17, 2019 @11:32AM (#20203966)

Have you ever driven a stick shift?

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by Piskvorrr on Monday June 17, 2019 @11:56AM (#20204252)

That's a single control that's located in a highly ergonomical position - you take your hand off the wheel, and the stick is just right there. Contrast to radio/AC with inadequate/zero tactile feedback. "Stop looking at the stick, it's not going anywhere" is literally one of the first things I had drilled into me when learning to drive. (The involuntary movement comes from looking away from the road: you drop out of the feedback loop for a moment.)

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by maccard on Monday June 17, 2019 @12:32PM (#20204632)

I drive manual normally - I don't think ive looked at the stick in probably 10 years. For the first week or two maybe, but since then I haven't needed to.

On the other hand, I still don't know whete my A/C knob is without looking.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by toyg on Monday June 17, 2019 @01:33PM (#20205359)

I'm European, I didn't even know automatic transmission existed before I was 30 :)

The gearstick is one control with a very limited set of never-changing options that you have to use all the time, basically the best you can get as muscle-memory goes. Despite all this, it's not used where hyper-attention on the road is really necessary, i.e. in racing. And where do we get gearshift controls in racing? On the wheel.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by potta_coffee on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @12:34AM (#20209817)

There are plenty of racing cars with stick shifts in them. Or are you thinking of a specific type of racing?

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by toyg on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @04:54AM (#20210768)

Wherever the car is built only for racing, like LeMans or Formula*, it typically doesn’t feature a stick.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by blattimwind on Monday June 17, 2019 @01:21PM (#20205217)

No one looks at the shifter.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by HeWhoLurksLate on Monday June 17, 2019 @10:35AM (#20203384)

What about physical buttons for the more-used stuff (radio, AC, cruise control) and use voice control (along with physical buttons) for everything else?

Obviously, the voice control would need to havr some way to ignore the kids in the backseat, or can ask the driver / parent for permission for this to be a good idea.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by HeyLaughingBoy on Monday June 17, 2019 @12:09PM (#20204416)

It's a bit difficult for people who can't speak: temporarily or permanently; have significant speech impediments; don't speak the language the car is (currently) programmed for, are already talking to a passenger, etc.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by Piskvorrr on Monday June 17, 2019 @12:11PM (#20204433)

The "obvious" problem is harder than it looks. Even searching in the navigation app gets confused by voice prompts from the same app...so you get things like "find closest gas speed station check ahead". And that's before you get various people involved, never mind any impediments.

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Re:Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles by Moru on Monday June 17, 2019 @12:36PM (#20204675)

And speach is not as easy as a button / knobb for muscle memory. In my old car I didn't have to think, just do. A touchscreen just can't compete in a car.

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