...regardless of whether it's a touchscreen or physical actuator, i posit that modal controls are always dangerously distracting while operating a motor vehicle; anything which requires diverting...
...regardless of whether it's a touchscreen or physical actuator, i posit that modal controls are always dangerously distracting while operating a motor vehicle; anything which requires diverting the driver's attention from navigating their immediate environment to navigating a modal UI competes for the same headspace when fractions of a second count...
...it doesn't matter whether you're looking at a screen or listening to a spoken UI, if you have to construct, sustain, and manipulate a mental model to use it, your attention is not focused where it should be: motor vehicle controls must always offer predictably direct and unambiguous functionality...
Hmm, while I agree that modal controls have a greater potential to be distracting than single purpose inputs once you've gotten used to a car's layout, the medium very much does matter. If you've...
...it doesn't matter whether you're looking at a screen or listening to a spoken UI, if you have to construct, sustain, and manipulate a mental model to use it, your attention is not focused where it should be
Hmm, while I agree that modal controls have a greater potential to be distracting than single purpose inputs once you've gotten used to a car's layout, the medium very much does matter. If you've got a physical knob you can identify it's function with a quick look but perform the action of pressing/turning/sliding it via haptic feedback. This is not at all the case with touchscreens. You basically have to look at the screen until the full action has been performed. I've recently tried to blindly hit a static button on a navigation system (i.e. phone affixed to windshield) after quickly glancing at it while driving and failed repeatedly. Meanwhile blindly hitting a button of the airconditioning (in a car I usually do not drive) after identifying its position with a quick glance was no problem whatsoever despite me not knowing where it was before looking at it for a moment.
As for a spoken UI - I'd also argue that it makes a huge difference wether you look at or listen to something in the context of driving. Diverting my gaze from the road ahead can get very disorienting very quickly, and in my experience it takes a moment to reestablish my spatial awareness once I look back. Visual inputs are absolutely essential while driving and looking at something else directly interferes with this. Listening to spoken words occupies a different sense that is much less important in that context.
Also while it's certainly important to keep your attention on the road, I'd argue that mental overload is usually not the main problem when driving. An interruption of visual inputs of one's surroundings can become a lot more dangerous much more quickly.
This is IMO overly reductionist and lacking nuance. Controlling the temperature isn't a nice to have but a necessity to not roast to death. Music as well can have positive impact on focus....
This is IMO overly reductionist and lacking nuance. Controlling the temperature isn't a nice to have but a necessity to not roast to death. Music as well can have positive impact on focus.
Overall, all I mean to say is, there's often a good reason things do the things they do. Card have a bunch of stuff they need to do and the interface is honestly amazingly well refined.
I don’t think /u/myrrh thinks that controls shouldn’t exist, just that they should not be modal. For example, on a touch screen, you might have to hit a climate control button, which takes you to...
I don’t think /u/myrrh thinks that controls shouldn’t exist, just that they should not be modal. For example, on a touch screen, you might have to hit a climate control button, which takes you to a climate control mode and shows you the climate controls. Now, instead of just adjusting the temperature, you have to think about what mode the controls are in. It increases the cognitive power required to operate these controls. In comparison, my car allows me to control the temperature with a single knob. That knob only ever controls the temperature. I don’t need to put it in a climate control mode before I can change the temperature.
I think there is a place for modal controls in cars, but they should not be used for anything that is commonly accessed. Climate, audio volume, windshield wipers, defrosters, and other safety features should never get modal controls. Yet many modern cars put some of these behind modes.
This is just an explanation for why touchscreens are bad in cars. They have modal controls because that is what is necessary to fit everything on the screen in a usable fashion. I would argue...
This is just an explanation for why touchscreens are bad in cars. They have modal controls because that is what is necessary to fit everything on the screen in a usable fashion.
I would argue however that even just having dedicated buttons on the screen that don't pull up menus is still more dangerous than real physical controls. You can't feel them and they don't provide any tactile feedback, so they still require more attention to manipulate than something like a physical knob or button.
My wife uses the touchscreen constantly while driving. Of course it is dangerous. She also looks at me for a full second when talking to me like she's in a movie. God help us.
My wife uses the touchscreen constantly while driving. Of course it is dangerous. She also looks at me for a full second when talking to me like she's in a movie. God help us.
I also get quite angry in real life. One second is a lot of time when you're driving a car at 80 km/h (or 49,7mph according to Google). I just don't know what to do anymore. I mean, she drives our...
I also get quite angry in real life. One second is a lot of time when you're driving a car at 80 km/h (or 49,7mph according to Google). I just don't know what to do anymore. I mean, she drives our 2-year-old around. I am actually concerned.
Perhaps there's some kind of visualization or brutally violent way for me to convey that which might be more persuasive than just yelling in traffic.
I recently came across a reaction channel on YouTube which was doing a series on “traffic safety ads” and while some of them were quaint “hey kids, remember to look both ways before crossing the...
I recently came across a reaction channel on YouTube which was doing a series on “traffic safety ads” and while some of them were quaint “hey kids, remember to look both ways before crossing the road” from the 60s and 70s, there were also some incredibly potent, devastating, emotional ones in the mix which might help visualise some of the risks of distracted driving.
I don’t know if there are any recent enough to show the dangers of built-in touchscreens, but in general if you look for ads from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand; they tend to not hold back when it comes to showing you the possible consequences without necessarily being gory.
Honda got rid of a lot of their touch-only stuff in the past 10 years and I couldn’t be happier with it. The alternative is talking with my car to tell it to do stuff which is annoying in its own...
Honda got rid of a lot of their touch-only stuff in the past 10 years and I couldn’t be happier with it. The alternative is talking with my car to tell it to do stuff which is annoying in its own right.
Personally from my experience of driving 5 years in my Tesla Model 3 which only has a giant high-res touchscreen and no physical buttons I would be annoyed to go back to physical controls and a...
Personally from my experience of driving 5 years in my Tesla Model 3 which only has a giant high-res touchscreen and no physical buttons I would be annoyed to go back to physical controls and a crappy small low-res screen and interface. I find Android-Auto useless because the interface is so low-res and feature limiting. My Tesla has a near fully featured Spotify/Tidal/Apple Music ect suite to use right on the screen, it's great. I don't find myself fiddling with the climate controls since I really just set a temp, say 20C and it just deals with that itself, cooling and heating as needed. This is pretty common in new vehicles now.
The fiddling with the music apps or map interface can definitely be distracting but since the Autopilot is commonly the one doing the actual driving and always the one doing the driving on freeways you really don't need to be paying all that much attention to the road ahead. You need to be present in case of something going awry, but only casually. People don't like to hear that but it is the reality of driver assist systems moving forward. The Autopilot drives better than I do and I feel a lot safer with it in control than myself.
It frustrates me greatly that people with your attitudes are allowed to share the road with others. Tesla's "autopilot" is L2 automation, which means it is never doing the actual driving. (This is...
It frustrates me greatly that people with your attitudes are allowed to share the road with others.
the Autopilot is commonly the one doing the actual driving
Tesla's "autopilot" is L2 automation, which means it is never doing the actual driving. (This is true of every system below L4, by the way.) You are responsible for paying attention to what your car is doing, and when your car runs over a pedestrian, you have just committed vehicular manslaughter.
You need to be present in case of something going awry, but only casually.
No, you need to be paying complete attention at all times, exactly to the same degree as if you were operating the steering and throttle yourself. There are two reasons for this:
the vehicle's automation may not recognize that something has gone awry; and
a situation where the automation gives up control may require the driver to react within tenths of a second. A driver who isn't paying attention will take at least multiple seconds to understand the situation, long after their car has decapitated them with a tractor trailer.
Situations in which airplane autopilots (systems which are several orders of magnitude more reliable than anything ever installed in a consumer car) disconnect are a rich source of plane crashes, for precisely this reason.
I don't expect our regulators to do much of anything useful, but I'd love it if we banned these "autopilots" in consumer cars. It's so dangerous to knowingly put in systems that are good enough...
I don't expect our regulators to do much of anything useful, but I'd love it if we banned these "autopilots" in consumer cars. It's so dangerous to knowingly put in systems that are good enough that people stop paying attention without being all the way to the point that people actually don't need to pay attention.
And not only do people just stop paying attention because they've been lucky enough so far, realistically the human intervention will often be dangerously late anyway. Even if you're paying perfect attention as your car approaches a dangerous scenario you're trained to think "the car's probably got it" until it's too late.
Maybe I made it sound worse than it actually is, I always have a hand on the wheel at all times, the car forces this. In the early days things were different, the cars were famous for 'phantom...
Maybe I made it sound worse than it actually is, I always have a hand on the wheel at all times, the car forces this. In the early days things were different, the cars were famous for 'phantom braking' which was admittedly very dangerous, you had to pay attention. Things have improved greatly and you can really just let the car handle things on the freeway for the most part.
I have not had a single incident in Autopilot while on the freeway in years. Freeway driving is 90% of my daily commute and I use it everyday, I have a huge amount of experience with it. It is honestly extremely good, it even does very well in the rain. I'm still watching out the window, but definitely not in high focus mode as if I was driving myself. I feel much safer with it on, it can see and react to slowdowns ahead much faster than I can.
If using it on city streets with pedestrians and signals you absolutely must be paying attention and be on high alert, you aren't even supposed to use it that way. I have experienced it doing strange things in the city for sure, and the base version, which is all I have does not stop for red lights or stop signs. I really only turn it on in the city if I'm in traffic or on very narrow lanes where the lane keeping is better than me.
Simple autopilots (on a small plane) just maintain a heading and altitude. They’re nowhere near as sophisticated as self-driving cars. I suspect you might mean the more sophisticated systems used...
Simple autopilots (on a small plane) just maintain a heading and altitude. They’re nowhere near as sophisticated as self-driving cars. I suspect you might mean the more sophisticated systems used for landing airliners?
I’ve been wondering why, near exclusively, Teslas try to run me over while cycling around the city. Now I know not to blame the driver; they’re probably just fiddling with their phones. It’s the...
I’ve been wondering why, near exclusively, Teslas try to run me over while cycling around the city. Now I know not to blame the driver; they’re probably just fiddling with their phones. It’s the Autopilot I should be annoyed at!
Does it typically try to stay in the center of the lane (thereby crowding you)? When I drive by bicyclists I usually will ride the left side of the lane. If it’s tight then maybe I’ll just go a...
Does it typically try to stay in the center of the lane (thereby crowding you)?
When I drive by bicyclists I usually will ride the left side of the lane. If it’s tight then maybe I’ll just go a tad over the line and let opposing traffic observe the situation and make room for us; I admit it’s a small pleasure when humans coordinate for each other.
I have wondered about how good tesla/waymo are about opting to break laws when it’s the human thing to do.
Yup. Our streets can get a bit narrow too, and the Teslas seem to crowd me off the road more (although I’m likely just biased to them overall). That’s a good call out; and yeah, plenty of...
Does it typically try to stay in the center of the lane (thereby crowding you)?
Yup. Our streets can get a bit narrow too, and the Teslas seem to crowd me off the road more (although I’m likely just biased to them overall).
I have wondered about how good tesla/waymo are about opting to break laws when it’s the human thing to do.
That’s a good call out; and yeah, plenty of motorists have kindly stepped over the line — when it’s safe to do so — to give me some more leeway. I try to return the courtesy and give priority to cars when travelling down alleyways; I can tuck in between obstructions better than they can.
I want physical transport controls, volume knobs, and climate controls, full stop. These will always be easier to use without looking at them than any kind of touch panel. I also don't trust any...
I want physical transport controls, volume knobs, and climate controls, full stop. These will always be easier to use without looking at them than any kind of touch panel.
I also don't trust any car manufacturer with software. It may be flashy and up to date today, but there is no guarantee that it will still be good 5 years from now. This is why I think every infotainment system should just act as a dumb terminal for our smartphones. By outsourcing the "software" to my phone, I don't have to worry about whether my car will get some cool software feature I want. I installed iOS 26 this morning, and the infotainment system in my car just got upgraded "for free" without any input from the manufacturer, because it's just CarPlay.
I 100% agree with this, I just really wish there were open options that didn't rely on Google or Apple. I also don't trust vehicle manufacturers with software development. I really wish it was...
I 100% agree with this, I just really wish there were open options that didn't rely on Google or Apple. I also don't trust vehicle manufacturers with software development. I really wish it was possible to go back to the days when the only software the vehicle itself handled was related to the necessary functions of the vehicle. The upcoming Slate looks promising, but I don't think I'll be looking for a new car for a long while. I hope they do well and the idea catches on.
whew, quite the controversial comment you’ve constructed here lol. I see your point about the temperature control. What about the defroster? that’s probably a button I would miss if I have to...
whew, quite the controversial comment you’ve constructed here lol.
I see your point about the temperature control. What about the defroster? that’s probably a button I would miss if I have to navigate at all; it’s one i have to press quickly on the go amidst worsening visibility usually, and if I have to stab at it on a touchscreen I might get irritated. I assume there’s physical control on the steering wheel for volume at least.
My friend has a tesla and I like that there’s karaoke mode for music. I am guilty of enjoying lyrics occasionally for my karaoke playlist in the apple music app (on my dash-mounted phone). Apple left the feature out of their CarPlay app for safety reasons presumably (and that’s reasonable enough). It’s the only thing I really miss from CarPlay and I don’t think I would need any other “features”— just music and maps. CarPlay and Android Auto have google maps and waze; iirc tesla doesn’t have those and that might be a dealbreaker for me.
As for the autopilot, what is its behavior in the left lane? Does it left lane lurk? I swear we have an issue in the greater seattle area with teslas sitting in the left lane.
I have a similar amount of time driving a Tesla under my belt and I don't believe the touchscreen is that big of a deal. I rarely interact with it while driving, maybe to move the map around a...
I have a similar amount of time driving a Tesla under my belt and I don't believe the touchscreen is that big of a deal. I rarely interact with it while driving, maybe to move the map around a little to see traffic way ahead when on the highway, or to turn the temps up or down a degree (or turn up seat warmers/vents). The click wheels on the the steering wheel are fantastic, intuitive, and I really wish every car had them. Left one controls media; up/down is volume, left and right are next or back (or 15 seconds forward or back in podcasts/audiobooks), and pressing in is play/pause. I use it all of the time. It's great! But I get a rental and sit in a modern car and am overwhelmed at the sheer amount of buttons or shitty dial screen thing interface most cars have. They are terrible.
This is just another argument for physical tactile controls. The fact that they are secondary controls to the main interface (the touch screen) is irrelevant - you have found a more convenient and...
The click wheels on the the steering wheel are fantastic, intuitive, and I really wish every car had them.
This is just another argument for physical tactile controls. The fact that they are secondary controls to the main interface (the touch screen) is irrelevant - you have found a more convenient and safer way to control your car, and those are still physical.
...regardless of whether it's a touchscreen or physical actuator, i posit that modal controls are always dangerously distracting while operating a motor vehicle; anything which requires diverting the driver's attention from navigating their immediate environment to navigating a modal UI competes for the same headspace when fractions of a second count...
...it doesn't matter whether you're looking at a screen or listening to a spoken UI, if you have to construct, sustain, and manipulate a mental model to use it, your attention is not focused where it should be: motor vehicle controls must always offer predictably direct and unambiguous functionality...
Hmm, while I agree that modal controls have a greater potential to be distracting than single purpose inputs once you've gotten used to a car's layout, the medium very much does matter. If you've got a physical knob you can identify it's function with a quick look but perform the action of pressing/turning/sliding it via haptic feedback. This is not at all the case with touchscreens. You basically have to look at the screen until the full action has been performed. I've recently tried to blindly hit a static button on a navigation system (i.e. phone affixed to windshield) after quickly glancing at it while driving and failed repeatedly. Meanwhile blindly hitting a button of the airconditioning (in a car I usually do not drive) after identifying its position with a quick glance was no problem whatsoever despite me not knowing where it was before looking at it for a moment.
As for a spoken UI - I'd also argue that it makes a huge difference wether you look at or listen to something in the context of driving. Diverting my gaze from the road ahead can get very disorienting very quickly, and in my experience it takes a moment to reestablish my spatial awareness once I look back. Visual inputs are absolutely essential while driving and looking at something else directly interferes with this. Listening to spoken words occupies a different sense that is much less important in that context.
Also while it's certainly important to keep your attention on the road, I'd argue that mental overload is usually not the main problem when driving. An interruption of visual inputs of one's surroundings can become a lot more dangerous much more quickly.
This is IMO overly reductionist and lacking nuance. Controlling the temperature isn't a nice to have but a necessity to not roast to death. Music as well can have positive impact on focus.
Overall, all I mean to say is, there's often a good reason things do the things they do. Card have a bunch of stuff they need to do and the interface is honestly amazingly well refined.
Not touchscreens, of course.
I don’t think /u/myrrh thinks that controls shouldn’t exist, just that they should not be modal. For example, on a touch screen, you might have to hit a climate control button, which takes you to a climate control mode and shows you the climate controls. Now, instead of just adjusting the temperature, you have to think about what mode the controls are in. It increases the cognitive power required to operate these controls. In comparison, my car allows me to control the temperature with a single knob. That knob only ever controls the temperature. I don’t need to put it in a climate control mode before I can change the temperature.
I think there is a place for modal controls in cars, but they should not be used for anything that is commonly accessed. Climate, audio volume, windshield wipers, defrosters, and other safety features should never get modal controls. Yet many modern cars put some of these behind modes.
This is just an explanation for why touchscreens are bad in cars. They have modal controls because that is what is necessary to fit everything on the screen in a usable fashion.
I would argue however that even just having dedicated buttons on the screen that don't pull up menus is still more dangerous than real physical controls. You can't feel them and they don't provide any tactile feedback, so they still require more attention to manipulate than something like a physical knob or button.
My wife uses the touchscreen constantly while driving. Of course it is dangerous. She also looks at me for a full second when talking to me like she's in a movie. God help us.
My blood pressure goes through the roof when that happens in movies/shows. I'd probably immediately dissociate in real life.
I also get quite angry in real life. One second is a lot of time when you're driving a car at 80 km/h (or 49,7mph according to Google). I just don't know what to do anymore. I mean, she drives our 2-year-old around. I am actually concerned.
Perhaps there's some kind of visualization or brutally violent way for me to convey that which might be more persuasive than just yelling in traffic.
I recently came across a reaction channel on YouTube which was doing a series on “traffic safety ads” and while some of them were quaint “hey kids, remember to look both ways before crossing the road” from the 60s and 70s, there were also some incredibly potent, devastating, emotional ones in the mix which might help visualise some of the risks of distracted driving.
I don’t know if there are any recent enough to show the dangers of built-in touchscreens, but in general if you look for ads from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand; they tend to not hold back when it comes to showing you the possible consequences without necessarily being gory.
Any studio lightning fallen out of the sky recently? With the radio claiming it's "from an airplane"?
Honda got rid of a lot of their touch-only stuff in the past 10 years and I couldn’t be happier with it. The alternative is talking with my car to tell it to do stuff which is annoying in its own right.
Personally from my experience of driving 5 years in my Tesla Model 3 which only has a giant high-res touchscreen and no physical buttons I would be annoyed to go back to physical controls and a crappy small low-res screen and interface. I find Android-Auto useless because the interface is so low-res and feature limiting. My Tesla has a near fully featured Spotify/Tidal/Apple Music ect suite to use right on the screen, it's great. I don't find myself fiddling with the climate controls since I really just set a temp, say 20C and it just deals with that itself, cooling and heating as needed. This is pretty common in new vehicles now.
The fiddling with the music apps or map interface can definitely be distracting but since the Autopilot is commonly the one doing the actual driving and always the one doing the driving on freeways you really don't need to be paying all that much attention to the road ahead. You need to be present in case of something going awry, but only casually. People don't like to hear that but it is the reality of driver assist systems moving forward. The Autopilot drives better than I do and I feel a lot safer with it in control than myself.
It frustrates me greatly that people with your attitudes are allowed to share the road with others.
Tesla's "autopilot" is L2 automation, which means it is never doing the actual driving. (This is true of every system below L4, by the way.) You are responsible for paying attention to what your car is doing, and when your car runs over a pedestrian, you have just committed vehicular manslaughter.
No, you need to be paying complete attention at all times, exactly to the same degree as if you were operating the steering and throttle yourself. There are two reasons for this:
Situations in which airplane autopilots (systems which are several orders of magnitude more reliable than anything ever installed in a consumer car) disconnect are a rich source of plane crashes, for precisely this reason.
I don't expect our regulators to do much of anything useful, but I'd love it if we banned these "autopilots" in consumer cars. It's so dangerous to knowingly put in systems that are good enough that people stop paying attention without being all the way to the point that people actually don't need to pay attention.
And not only do people just stop paying attention because they've been lucky enough so far, realistically the human intervention will often be dangerously late anyway. Even if you're paying perfect attention as your car approaches a dangerous scenario you're trained to think "the car's probably got it" until it's too late.
Maybe I made it sound worse than it actually is, I always have a hand on the wheel at all times, the car forces this. In the early days things were different, the cars were famous for 'phantom braking' which was admittedly very dangerous, you had to pay attention. Things have improved greatly and you can really just let the car handle things on the freeway for the most part.
I have not had a single incident in Autopilot while on the freeway in years. Freeway driving is 90% of my daily commute and I use it everyday, I have a huge amount of experience with it. It is honestly extremely good, it even does very well in the rain. I'm still watching out the window, but definitely not in high focus mode as if I was driving myself. I feel much safer with it on, it can see and react to slowdowns ahead much faster than I can.
If using it on city streets with pedestrians and signals you absolutely must be paying attention and be on high alert, you aren't even supposed to use it that way. I have experienced it doing strange things in the city for sure, and the base version, which is all I have does not stop for red lights or stop signs. I really only turn it on in the city if I'm in traffic or on very narrow lanes where the lane keeping is better than me.
Simple autopilots (on a small plane) just maintain a heading and altitude. They’re nowhere near as sophisticated as self-driving cars. I suspect you might mean the more sophisticated systems used for landing airliners?
I’ve been wondering why, near exclusively, Teslas try to run me over while cycling around the city. Now I know not to blame the driver; they’re probably just fiddling with their phones. It’s the Autopilot I should be annoyed at!
Does it typically try to stay in the center of the lane (thereby crowding you)?
When I drive by bicyclists I usually will ride the left side of the lane. If it’s tight then maybe I’ll just go a tad over the line and let opposing traffic observe the situation and make room for us; I admit it’s a small pleasure when humans coordinate for each other.
I have wondered about how good tesla/waymo are about opting to break laws when it’s the human thing to do.
Yup. Our streets can get a bit narrow too, and the Teslas seem to crowd me off the road more (although I’m likely just biased to them overall).
That’s a good call out; and yeah, plenty of motorists have kindly stepped over the line — when it’s safe to do so — to give me some more leeway. I try to return the courtesy and give priority to cars when travelling down alleyways; I can tuck in between obstructions better than they can.
I want physical transport controls, volume knobs, and climate controls, full stop. These will always be easier to use without looking at them than any kind of touch panel.
I also don't trust any car manufacturer with software. It may be flashy and up to date today, but there is no guarantee that it will still be good 5 years from now. This is why I think every infotainment system should just act as a dumb terminal for our smartphones. By outsourcing the "software" to my phone, I don't have to worry about whether my car will get some cool software feature I want. I installed iOS 26 this morning, and the infotainment system in my car just got upgraded "for free" without any input from the manufacturer, because it's just CarPlay.
I 100% agree with this, I just really wish there were open options that didn't rely on Google or Apple. I also don't trust vehicle manufacturers with software development. I really wish it was possible to go back to the days when the only software the vehicle itself handled was related to the necessary functions of the vehicle. The upcoming Slate looks promising, but I don't think I'll be looking for a new car for a long while. I hope they do well and the idea catches on.
whew, quite the controversial comment you’ve constructed here lol.
I see your point about the temperature control. What about the defroster? that’s probably a button I would miss if I have to navigate at all; it’s one i have to press quickly on the go amidst worsening visibility usually, and if I have to stab at it on a touchscreen I might get irritated. I assume there’s physical control on the steering wheel for volume at least.
My friend has a tesla and I like that there’s karaoke mode for music. I am guilty of enjoying lyrics occasionally for my karaoke playlist in the apple music app (on my dash-mounted phone). Apple left the feature out of their CarPlay app for safety reasons presumably (and that’s reasonable enough). It’s the only thing I really miss from CarPlay and I don’t think I would need any other “features”— just music and maps. CarPlay and Android Auto have google maps and waze; iirc tesla doesn’t have those and that might be a dealbreaker for me.
As for the autopilot, what is its behavior in the left lane? Does it left lane lurk? I swear we have an issue in the greater seattle area with teslas sitting in the left lane.
I only have the base version of Autopilot, no lane changes, that has to be done manually.
I have a similar amount of time driving a Tesla under my belt and I don't believe the touchscreen is that big of a deal. I rarely interact with it while driving, maybe to move the map around a little to see traffic way ahead when on the highway, or to turn the temps up or down a degree (or turn up seat warmers/vents). The click wheels on the the steering wheel are fantastic, intuitive, and I really wish every car had them. Left one controls media; up/down is volume, left and right are next or back (or 15 seconds forward or back in podcasts/audiobooks), and pressing in is play/pause. I use it all of the time. It's great! But I get a rental and sit in a modern car and am overwhelmed at the sheer amount of buttons or shitty dial screen thing interface most cars have. They are terrible.
This is just another argument for physical tactile controls. The fact that they are secondary controls to the main interface (the touch screen) is irrelevant - you have found a more convenient and safer way to control your car, and those are still physical.
Mirror: https://archive.is/u1OqX