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MIT Researchers Show Dash Font Choice Affects Distraction

Posted by Unknown on from the grotesque-fonts-lead-to-grotesque-crashes dept.

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.

4 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Just use Comic Sans by CodeheadUK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everyone loves Comic Sans.

    Then all drivers will be happy, smiley and give way to old ladies.

  2. I feel lied to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Did anybody else think this post was going to be about hyphens?

  3. Nothing to do with (sans)serif by A+Friendly+Troll · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Funny story... by JimmyVolatile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This has been "tested" around 2002 in Norway. A car registration plate font redesign was conducted to make all plates issued from that moment look more modern and stylish and a font similar to Eurostile were implemented. All in the name of creating a mono-space font which would make all plates equal width. ("IL 111111" would be just as wide as "MW 123456")
    Result: Numbers 3, 6, 8 and 9 went from being easily distinguishable at 80m+ to be undreadable by speed and toll cameras. You could pass speed cameras with little risk of getting fined and drive on any toll road for free. Sombody else would end up with the bill due to the misreading of the license plates.

    Scroll down to see examples here:
    http://www.typografi.org/bilskilt/bilskilt.html

    In 2004 they decided to go for Myriad with variable white-spacing instead. This has not yet been implemented :)