Renewable Revolution

CleanTechnica

December 11, 2021 By Steve Hanley




Should touchscreens in cars offer entertainment options while driving? Some think doing so makes cars more dangerous, not less.

SNIPPET:

A warning does appear on the touchscreen before the game starts that says, “Solitaire is a game for everyone, but playing while the car is in motion is only for passengers.” A button asks for confirmation that the player is a passenger, but the driver can play simply by touching that button. NHTSA has issued guidelines telling automakers that any in-vehicle entertainment devices should be designed so the driver cannot use them “to perform inherently distracting secondary tasks while driving.”

Four years ago, after investigating a fatal Autopilot crash, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended Tesla add an infrared camera to improve driver monitoring, but the company has not done so. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” says Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB. “We’re trying to warn the public and tell Tesla, ‘Hey, you need to put some safeguards in.’ But they haven’t.” In light of Tesla’s constant insistence that it is doing everything possible to make its cars as safe as possible, it’s behavior in the real world calls into question whether this is all about Elon Musk being pig headed. It certainly seems that way to outsiders.


Driver inattention is officially cited as the cause of about 10 percent of traffic deaths, say Steve Kiefer, a senior General Motors executive who is also the head of a foundation dedicated to combating distracted driving. He and other safety experts believe the actual figure is much higher because crash investigations often overlook distraction while naming other causes such as reckless driving. “I think the number’s closer to 50 percent,” Mr. Kiefer said. The Kiefer Foundation is dedicated to his son, Mitchel, who was killed in 2016 when a distracted driver rear-ended his car on a highway in Michigan.

Preventing such inattentive driving is one of the primary reasons why semi-autonomous automatic driver assistance systems (ADAS) are appearing on more and more cars. Writing for Autoblog, Byron Hurd says, “Advanced driver-assistance systems ostensibly give us fewer things to actively monitor, effectively freeing up our attention. But for what?

“Human behavior is the weakest link in automotive safety,” he writes. “Yet automakers are training their semi-autonomous systems to behave more [like human drivers]. We’re told one line but sold another. It seems weird that effort is being put into making cars drive more like they’re being controlled by humans if humans are the weak link to begin with.” Then he gets down to the meat of his argument:

Full article:
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/11/tesla-video-games-mercedes-tv-are-touchscreens-making-driving-more-dangerous/

Dan
A good friend of mine lost his 21 year old daughter because she was texting while driving. She was on the highway and drove right under the semi trailer.

I have been worried this was comming from the first time I saw a car that replaced the instrument cluster with a flat screen. I figured it was only a matter of time before someone used that screen for an entertainment system. When screens where first introduced to cars they where only allowed in the back seats out of the view of the drivers.
Distracted driving is every bit as deadly as drunk driving. A screen in view of the driver shouldn't be allowed to display anything not directly related to the task of driving the car period. Navigation and vehicle status. The drive can only be distracted by games movies and the likes.

Agelbert COMMENT:
Excellent article! It was high time somebody talked about this.

The issue here is how a person in charge of driving a vehicle should divide his attention. It is clear to anyone with a lick of sense that paying enough attention to what the vehicle is headed towards is sine qua non to avoiding a tragic accident.

As a former commercial pilot, I remember the importance of NOT fixating on a single instrument when "on the gages" (i.e. in the zero visibility weather soup). When pilots trained for this, we had to develop the skill of doing a proper crosscheck. A proper crosscheck forces your brain to update the overall picture of the power settings, pitch attitude, bank angle, heading and engine instruments. Of course the artificial horizon temps you to just look at that, which can lead to problems from not monitoring fuel flow or engine oil pressure and temperature.

On top of all this, pilots are quite used to using an autopilot, something Tesla drivers now are increasingly relying on. Pilots were NOT supposed to stop their crosscheck just because the autopilot was on.

Now some reading this may think this autopilot business is irrelevant to touchscreen distractions. No, it isn't. It all goes back to the crosscheck.

A Tesla driver MUST cultivate the habit of a proper crosscheck, regardless of how "boring and repetitious" it may seem.

A crosscheck is the habit of willing your eyes to MOVE 👀, every two or three seconds at most after viewing the previous position, from there to there to there to there and back to the first "there", over and over again as long as you are in the driver's seat of your car.

THAT HABIT will keep you out of accidents caused by touchscreen distractions and/or overreliance on the "autopilot".

THAT HABIT forces your brain to update the overall picture of everything you need to know to react quickly and decisively if, or when, the situation warrants it.

If you a "have to" look away from the road to a touchscreen for more than 3 seconds, for ANY reason, including tuning another station or looking up some stat on your energy use (If you value your life and that of the passengers, FORGET viewing someone or something on your cellphone or playing some stupid video game), you need to GET OFF THE ROAD and STOP, PERIOD.