A fancy touchscreen in your new car might seem like the height of luxury, but experts warn that it could be putting you in serious danger.
Tapping on your in-car entertainment system to change the music or adjust the heating can be even more risky than using your phone at the wheel.
Studies show that drivers’ reaction times worsen by over 50 per cent while fiddling with their touchscreen interface.
That is an even bigger impact on your safety than texting or taking a call on your mobile, which increase the time it takes to react by 35 per cent and 46 per cent respectively.
Now, there is a growing call from experts to ditch the unnecessary tech and return to a traditional dashboard with physical buttons.
The issue is that touchscreen interfaces require drivers to look away from the road for unacceptably long periods of time to control basic functions.
While that might be fine for features like reversing cameras and navigation, this becomes a real problem when you need to click through a menu to turn on the windscreen wipers.
Dr Milad Haghani, a safety expert from the University of Melbourne, told the Daily Mail: ‘This is the dangerous combination and a recipe for significant levels of distraction.’
Scientists say that the touchscreen interface in your car might be just as dangerous as texting while driving, as experts call for a return to traditional manual buttons
Car safety requirements have historically focused on making vehicles safer in the event of a crash, rather than promoting safe driving practices in the first place.
However, simple human error still plays a significant role in the vast majority of crashes, and this human error is more likely if the car is a distracting environment.
There is now a growing concern that large, complex touchscreen interfaces, such as the one found in a Tesla Model Y, could be distracting drivers from the road.
When road safety experts talk about distraction, they break it down into three distinct categories: visual, manual, or cognitive.
Essentially, a driver might take their eyes off the road, their hands off the wheel, their mind off the task of driving, or some combination of the three.
Dr Haghani says that touchscreen interfaces are particularly dangerous because they have ‘all three elements of a distracting stimulus together’.
You have to look at the screen to read the menu, use your hands to tap the right options, and think about how to navigate to the right menu.
This is the same reason that texting is considered such a dangerous distraction for drivers.
Just like texting while driving, touchscreens are dangerous because they create a physical, visual, and mental distraction. Studies have shown that they can reduce reaction times by as much as using your phone
Importantly, touch screen interfaces also require ‘glance durations’ – the amount of time looking away from the road – that are ‘often well beyond the safe and acceptable levels’.
In a 2020 study conducted by TRL, an independent transport company, drivers were put through simulated motorways while performing common in-car tasks.
One group did this using a touchscreen system, such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, while the others used an audio-controlled option.
The researchers found that the drivers using touch screens had markedly increased reaction times compared to the baseline or audio-control group.
At motorway speeds, these differences would have meant the drivers travelled several extra car lengths before stopping.
Lane keeping and overall driving performance also declined as the drivers used their touchscreens.
In some cases, these differences were just as significant, if not larger, than the impacts of texting while driving.
Manual buttons, on the other hand, are significantly less distracting because they are much simpler to operate.
Traditional manual switches and knobs can be operated by muscle memory without looking away from the road, which makes them much less distracting (stock image)
Large in-car entertainment systems, such as the one in the Tesla Model Y (pictured), are acceptable for features like navigation and reversing cameras. However, essential features should be manually operated, experts argue
Dr Haghani says: ‘They only demand the manual distraction element, they take your hand off the wheel, but they let you keep an eye on the road, and they don’t require a long and sustained glance duration.
‘Drivers can quickly learn the muscle memory that is required to interact with those buttons and knobs and then they can manipulate them and execute the tasks by relying solely on that muscle memory and haptic feedback.
‘Screens deprive the driver of that useful muscle memory use.’
In Australia and New Zealand, the car safety assessment program ANCAP Safety has announced that it will ask manufacturers to ‘bring back buttons’ from 2026.
While Dr Haghani says that screens are still useful for features that don’t need adjusting during the drive, such as navigation, essential features must have physical buttons.
Controls for the temperature, the windscreen wipers, or the stereo volume that are constantly adjusted while driving need to be accessible without taking the driver’s eyes from the road.
‘At least drivers must have the option to access them via easily manipulated buttons or knobs, even if they are included in touchscreen functions too – drivers must be given options,’ says Dr Haghani.
Tesla has been approached for comment.
