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Smart Cars: Too Distracting?
Taco Cowboy writes "The vehicles we drive are getting smarter and smarter, as more and more gadgets are being crammed into them. But as those devices creep into the driving experience, they offer the driver an increasing number of displays to monitor. Thus, drivers are more distracted than ever. At the recent 'Connected Car Expo,' which was held in Los Angeles, panelists discussed how these smart car features can impair driving ability. For example, researchers led by Bruce Mehler at MIT revealed that drivers using voice command interfaces to control in-car navigation systems or USB-connected music devices can end up spending longer with their eyes off the road than those using conventional systems. You'd think being able to operate it by voice alone would be beneficial compared to older radio systems. (Tuning an older radio was used as a baseline task in these tests.) But according to Mehler, problems arise when the system needs clarification of what the driver wants, which often happens while they're trying to feed an address into a navigation system."
One thing auto makers can do is bring back old-school dashboards with tactile buttons laid out in a distinct, logical way. My last two cars (a Peugeot and a Toyota) had this. Once you knew the layout of the dashboard, you could operate anything by feeling your way around, without ever taking your eyes off the road. My current car (a Volvo) has tactile buttons, but they are laid out in a grid, so it's harder to figure out what function it's for. The rental car I had the other day had a touch screen with the crappiest menu structure ever, operating anything on that required close attention and taking your eyes off the road. Not good.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Self driving car like Google's?
No. See, when I was testing one, it kept taking me to places where it thought I would be interested in - places that paid Google for ads.
So, instead to my destination, the Google car took me to McDonald's, then to Penny's and lastly to HomeDepot for their big sale.
The really scary part was when it got on the Interstate to take me to Amazon because they have some online Christmas thing going on. That would have been a long drive since I'm on the East Coast.
There were also these black SUVs that always seemed to know where I was going, too.
Yeah, adding the ``I'm feeling lucky'' button perhaps wasn't the best idea - we'll fix it in the next release of our car!
Regards,
Automotive Engineering Team
Google Inc.