THE touch screens Cars are becoming increasingly important, whether for controlling navigation, music or other vehicle functions, and many manufacturers have removed all or almost all buttons to simplify the cabin. However, this raises many doubts regarding securitybecause using a screen while driving requires you to take your eyes off the road.
By 2026, Euro NCAP has already announced the technological requirements of vehicles to enhance safety and screens will be affected. Furthermore, in this context, the University of Washington and the Toyota Research Institute carried out a study specific study on the influence of these screens on driving.
To check if its use can really be so dangerous, the study carried out a simulator test in which 16 pilots participatedwho had to drive in a virtual environment while using the car’s touchscreen. But not only that, they also had to carry out a series of mental exercises designed to simulate the effort involved in real traffic like making decisions or reacting to unexpected things.
Furthermore, for calculate the mental load linked to screen use While driving, the following aspects were measured:
- How did the car stay in the lane?
- Driver reaction time
- Speed and accuracy at the touch of the screen
- Where are they looking and for how long?
- Hand movements and physical signals related to the level of attention were observed.
Conclusions and results of the study
The study of all these factors revealed that Using the screen clearly makes driving worsecausing cars to deviate more from their lane and drivers to take longer and make more errors when using the screen. By adding additional mental load, their performance decreasedbut many tried to compensate by looking at the screen for less time, even though that wasn’t enough to maintain safety.
Also common behavior was detected Before looking at the screen, drivers moved their hand to its general position and then visually searched for the exact point they wanted to touch. This means that you always have to look at the screen. After that, the researchers tried larger screen elements, but no improvement was seen.
This means that the problem is not the size of the buttons, but having to take your eyes off the road. For this reason, they are not asking to eliminate screens, but rather to improve their design, prioritizing the most important functions with systems that help reduce distractions while driving.
About The Author
