Today’s high-tech cars are proving an increasingly distracting danger to motorists, road safety experts have warned.
And it is being fuelled by the growing trend by manufacturers to scrap traditional push-button knobs, switches and dials on car dashboards and replace them with large computer-tablet-style touchscreens.
Designers love it because it clears the dashboard of, as they see it, unnecessary ‘clutter’ to create a clean, minimalist look. Industry bean-counters love it because it cuts costs by removing switches and wiring in favour of an iPad-style dashboard run by downloadable software.
The trend, arguably started by Elon Musk’s pioneering Tesla brand, is now accelerating rapidly among rival mainstream manufacturers all rushing towards all-electric cars.
If you’ve not encountered this issue yet, when it’s time for a newer model, you may be in for a shock.
Dashboard distractions: The march of the touchscreen is said to herald danger
This issue is causing real debate — at a time when merely touching a hand-held mobile phone while driving will land you with six penalty points on your licence and a £200 fine (and if, within two years of passing your test, will cost you your licence).
Arguably touchscreens can be just as distracting, if not more so, than mobiles, and the optional voice control, from experience, far from perfect.
I well remember the frustration of using the finger-activated ‘sliders’ on the seventh generation Volkswagen Golf. Billed as a big technical advance, it drove many of us mad on the official launch.
The revamped 2024 Range Rover also dispenses with most console buttons, provoking much comment and criticism on social media.
Likewise Volvo, long a byword for car safety, has put nearly all major functions on its otherwise brilliant new EX30 on a 12.3in display screen in the centre of the dashboard.
Industry analyst John Griffiths said: ‘Touchscreens and their ever-more excessive and labyrinthine menus make smartphone distraction minor in comparison.’
So worried are leading motoring experts that the issue was raised as a matter of concern by trustees of the AA Charitable Trust for Road Safety. AA President Edmund King said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with having a touch screen.
‘But it should not be for instructions which are essential to the driver – such as setting or adjusting the mirrors or activating the windscreen wipers.
‘Such controls need to be intuitive and not distracting. You should not have to go into a screen menu to find them.’
He added: ‘A driver can adjust controls on a knob or dial with their fingertips without taking their eyes of the road ahead. It’s intuitive. That is not the case with a touch-screen. This is something we will be looking at further.’
And that’s why, in my experience, motorists really do want traditional buttons on their dashboards — with knobs on.
Trust your satnav
On track: Satnav, the modern equivalent of the AA Road Atlas, is now essential
Twice this week the TomTom satnav system on the Citroen C5 X plug-in hybrid I’m driving has got me out of trouble by cleverly diverting me around motorway logjams well before I reached them.
The first was on my way to a Mercedes-Benz event in Milton Keynes when a gridlocked M1 severely delayed other participants while I sailed along in parallel on a free-flowing A-road.
And then again on my return when I was deftly diverted earlier than normal from the M25 to follow all sorts of unfamiliar back roads to avoid trouble further down the track.
Sometimes it’s an act of faith just to ‘let go’ and trust the satnav system to do its thing. On the few occasions I have doubted it, I’ve very quickly run into trouble.
Just think of all the fuel and emissions its re-routing can save. So satnav is now essential. Failing that there’s the trusty AA Road Atlas — which I also carry.
