While I’m not sure this is entirely true I would say that “eyes free” could be better. With time and Apple Car we’ll see improvements to that I’m sure.
Imagine comparing with distractions drivers had 30 years ago... read a map, change cassette, fast forward cassette to find the song you want, rewind because you went to far, look at pager, manually roll down windows. There have always been driver distractions. The outcome of this test was obvious before it began.
Point taken in this study. People who drive impaired also use CarPlay and there numbers would be worse. There have always been distractions in the car; at least we are attempting to mitigate it with this technology.
So the worst case scenario for reaction time is 1.57 seconds instead of 1 second?
You say that like it's insignificant. Play with some time/distance/speed calculators to see how much farther you travel with increased reaction time. A smart person would be concerned, especially when it's the difference between hitting and not hitting something or someone.
As a control, they should also have had a passenger in the front seat talking to the driver, both with interacting and not interacting with CarPlay.
I don't agree that most people set a playlist and don't touch the screen again until... Until when, exactly. Maybe a daily commuter might do a set and forget. Otherwise, I imagine interaction takes place much more than that.
Improving voice recognition would go far to reducing interaction with CarPlay or similar. I tell Siri to send a message, and it's a slow process. Putting more Siri functionality on the phone would be a big help.
Touch screens are sub-optimal for use by a driver in a moving vehicle. Nobody pulls over to use it. Restricting access to some functions, particularly scrolling is a good thing. If that confuses somebody then they're too stupid to be driving a car. People who don't see that are stupid as well, and that's seldom fixable.
UIs for cars should be standardized, maybe even to mirror phone operation exactly. Select a UI platform in it's Settings to your phone to reduce the learning curve.
All of the above would help reduce impaired driving and the damage in can cause. Still, it's the driver's responsibility and legal obligation to operate a vehicle responsibly and safely. But we know that many, too many, and one is too many, do not.
As it's the UK, the drivers in the test may be used to flashing their lights, so that may not have affected reaction times. I think having them brake would be a more accurate test of reaction times, because that's a muscle memory action repeated several times during the course of any driving outing. Everybody's pretty familiar with that.
Lawmakers waited far too long to take DWTI / DUIT seriously, just as they did with alcohol impairment. Except for regional and celebratory anomalies, you're far more likely to see a tech impaired driver than a substance impaired driver.
What a bs study. A device or a pelican almost hitting left side mirror can be ignored, or at worst it's over in seconds. Alcohol keeps you impaired for hours and it affects everything. You cant just snap out of it.
But on the other hand, a lot of people are driving and scrolling through their some feeds not looking at road for 5, 10 even 20 seconds. It's "normal" nowadays.
It's funny how you just notice it when you are riding a bike behind or next to a car. And if you politely knock drivers window and signal they should watch the road, they freak out.
Not just Apple CarPlay’s touch-screen but the entire build-in touch-screen based infotainment on every car these days is dangerous to use while driving. It’s actually safer to drive a car in the 80’s with physical buttons with less features than touch-screen. But back then there were always idiots who reached glove compartments looking for cassette tape while eyes are off the road.
It's undoubtedly more of a distraction having a passenger in the seat next to you chattering away for the whole journey (often with you turning your head towards them - just watch any movie)... but you never see them put that in these studies.
Why are these ignoramuses so hell-bent on vilifying technology? Next they'll be outlawing heating controls and indicators (blinkers), as they also detract from your attention on the road. I can honestly say that some road junctions have so much signage that I almost forget where I'm going by the time I'm done reading them all. Who's persecuting the idiots that poorly set up the roads themselves?
What a blatant waste of resources and research time this was... As it stands, self-driving cars are already (at least on average) safer than humans at driving... The focus should be on getting legislation in place, and diverting resources toward improving automated vehicles.
Why does so much time get wasted on reports like this? It really frustrates me (if that wasn't obvious), as there seems to be a total absence of common sense when choosing what (or what not) to include in comparisons such as these. It's almost as if the trolls are instigating these studies to deliberately annoy us (or is it just me?).
I would consider a few issues with the study. For starters, I was struggling to understand what this sentence means: "Additionally, participants would be asked to flash their headlights whenever a red bar appeared on the screen, which measured their reaction time to external events." A red bar appeared on what screen? On the CarPlay device screen? That doesn't make much sense. As is always a good idea when reading a report on a study, I clicked through to look for the actual study, which I'm linking here. To Apple Insider's great credit, I did not find the usual problem with reports written about studies, which is that the study often doesn't say what the report in popular media claims it says. That doesn't appear to be the case here.
So what about the screen with the red bars? Well, the screen is the one in the driving simulator used for this study. We're talking about a stationary vehicle inside what looks like a fairly elaborate wrap-around screen. It's clearly not a fly-by-night operation, but it's also not a real-world test. The red bar flashes up on a wrap-around screen outside the test vehicle. So there's that.
The study also discusses how subjects are given time to familiarize themselves with the simulator vehicle, a process which seems to be measured in minutes: "A standard familiarisation route was used, and participants drove it for at least five minutes, or until they were judged to be fully comfortable with the simulator and the driving task." For me, at least, it takes more than five minutes to get fully oriented with all the controls in a new rental car.
The comparison of reaction times with chemically impaired drivers is particularly tenuous. For alcohol, the benchmark was from previous studies in the same simulator using drivers who had consumed the legal limit of alcohol. So the comparison is not to drunk drivers, but to drivers who have had the one drink or so in an hour. Finally, as others have pointed out, chemical impairment doesn't resolve itself as soon as the driver puts the bottle down. Ceasing to tap on the CarPlay device results in a quick recovery to fully attentive driving.
This brings us to what would seem to be the central problem with the study. It specifically directs drivers to interact with the CarPlay device at times when they should not be interacting with the CarPlay device. A decent driver isn't going to be tapping away at Spotify while driving a figure eight, or while maneuvring through congested city traffic, yet this is exactly what the test subjects are asked to do. So in effect, the study is representing the reaction times of idiots. In the end, it is unsurprising that idiots tapping away on a touch screen while driving in city traffic are worse drivers than people who had a pint with dinner, but are paying attention to the road while driving.
Comments
As a control, they should also have had a passenger in the front seat talking to the driver, both with interacting and not interacting with CarPlay.
I don't agree that most people set a playlist and don't touch the screen again until... Until when, exactly. Maybe a daily commuter might do a set and forget. Otherwise, I imagine interaction takes place much more than that.
Improving voice recognition would go far to reducing interaction with CarPlay or similar. I tell Siri to send a message, and it's a slow process. Putting more Siri functionality on the phone would be a big help.
Touch screens are sub-optimal for use by a driver in a moving vehicle. Nobody pulls over to use it. Restricting access to some functions, particularly scrolling is a good thing. If that confuses somebody then they're too stupid to be driving a car. People who don't see that are stupid as well, and that's seldom fixable.
UIs for cars should be standardized, maybe even to mirror phone operation exactly. Select a UI platform in it's Settings to your phone to reduce the learning curve.
All of the above would help reduce impaired driving and the damage in can cause. Still, it's the driver's responsibility and legal obligation to operate a vehicle responsibly and safely. But we know that many, too many, and one is too many, do not.
As it's the UK, the drivers in the test may be used to flashing their lights, so that may not have affected reaction times. I think having them brake would be a more accurate test of reaction times, because that's a muscle memory action repeated several times during the course of any driving outing. Everybody's pretty familiar with that.
Lawmakers waited far too long to take DWTI / DUIT seriously, just as they did with alcohol impairment. Except for regional and celebratory anomalies, you're far more likely to see a tech impaired driver than a substance impaired driver.
It's funny how you just notice it when you are riding a bike behind or next to a car. And if you politely knock drivers window and signal they should watch the road, they freak out.
Why are these ignoramuses so hell-bent on vilifying technology? Next they'll be outlawing heating controls and indicators (blinkers), as they also detract from your attention on the road. I can honestly say that some road junctions have so much signage that I almost forget where I'm going by the time I'm done reading them all. Who's persecuting the idiots that poorly set up the roads themselves?
What a blatant waste of resources and research time this was... As it stands, self-driving cars are already (at least on average) safer than humans at driving... The focus should be on getting legislation in place, and diverting resources toward improving automated vehicles.
So what about the screen with the red bars? Well, the screen is the one in the driving simulator used for this study. We're talking about a stationary vehicle inside what looks like a fairly elaborate wrap-around screen. It's clearly not a fly-by-night operation, but it's also not a real-world test. The red bar flashes up on a wrap-around screen outside the test vehicle. So there's that.
The study also discusses how subjects are given time to familiarize themselves with the simulator vehicle, a process which seems to be measured in minutes: "A standard familiarisation route was used, and participants drove it for at least five minutes, or until they were judged to be fully comfortable with the simulator and the driving task." For me, at least, it takes more than five minutes to get fully oriented with all the controls in a new rental car.
The comparison of reaction times with chemically impaired drivers is particularly tenuous. For alcohol, the benchmark was from previous studies in the same simulator using drivers who had consumed the legal limit of alcohol. So the comparison is not to drunk drivers, but to drivers who have had the one drink or so in an hour. Finally, as others have pointed out, chemical impairment doesn't resolve itself as soon as the driver puts the bottle down. Ceasing to tap on the CarPlay device results in a quick recovery to fully attentive driving.
This brings us to what would seem to be the central problem with the study. It specifically directs drivers to interact with the CarPlay device at times when they should not be interacting with the CarPlay device. A decent driver isn't going to be tapping away at Spotify while driving a figure eight, or while maneuvring through congested city traffic, yet this is exactly what the test subjects are asked to do. So in effect, the study is representing the reaction times of idiots. In the end, it is unsurprising that idiots tapping away on a touch screen while driving in city traffic are worse drivers than people who had a pint with dinner, but are paying attention to the road while driving.