MIT Researchers Show Dash Font Choice Affects Distraction

bdking writes "A typeface family commonly found on the devices installed in many modern cars is more likely to cause drivers to spend more time looking away from the road than an alternative typeface tested in two studies, according to new research from MIT's AgeLab." It seems that the closed letter forms of Grotesque type faces require slightly more time to read than open letter forms of Humanist type faces, just enough that it could be problematic at highway speeds.

Comments

Nothing to do with (sans)serif

[A Friendly Troll]

Read the PDF, people, damn it, before jumping to conclusions.

The fonts used in the experiment were Eurostile as the grotesque and Frutiger as the humanist. Both of those are sans serif.

This is about shapes, form and spacing.