Study Claims Using CarPlay While Driving is More Dangerous Than Texting

[npmacuser5]

Attended a required company professional driving school for company cars. Done by NASCR drivers. Covered many aspects of driving including skids and distracted driving. The scenarios, cones on a huge parking lot. We drove our cars.

One example of distracted driving. Setup: cellphone, radio, car, cones arranged as a right or left hard turn. The object, complete the right or left turn on a command over the radio. The task, Make the turn. Miss the turn, crash straight into a school bus with kids on it. Not real bus or kids just cones. The point was taken.

Accelerate car to 40 mph, a command would come over the radio, hard right or left. Most successfully passed. Second run. Right before the radio command, cellphone would ring. Instructed to reach for the phone. Then come the hard right or left command. 100% crashes straight through the bus. Very humbling experience for us folks who thought we were hot stuff as drivers.

After 9 hours of the above, no one would reach for their cellphones while driving. Imagine the skid tests with distractions. To this day I let my phone go to voicemail when driving.

Sum it up, drivers only have 2 seconds to start avoiding a collision. Any distraction longer then 2 seconds, luck not skill takes over.

 

[err404]

I’m taking from this that I should smoke more weed. Makes me safer than the rest of y’all.

The issue with alcohol and weed is that you are stuck at the impaired level for the entirety of your trip. Interacting with your entertainment system is momentarily, and hopefully done when you are in low stress conditions.
honestly the take away should be that talking on the phone is a problem.

 

[elliotsen]

IAM Roadsmart needs to get out of the business of doing any studies. It is hard to find more flawed reporting than what they are spewing... And that includes during this coronavirus event.

By the looks of it.. it seems like the research group participants are probably made up of the people who run the business.. lol.

 

[JosephAW]

I found CarPlay very distracting and frustrating. It's alway opening the wrong map app so I have to press the other app, reading aloud private texts I don't want others to hear so I have to press cancel even though I have messages notifications disabled. Can't keep maps open while iPhone shows another app, streaming radio in TuneIn app when paused stops dvr recording until the car is started again and there's a lost song or talk radio.
Even when car is parked and turned off you can't watch a video on the display without jailbreaking.
Junk. Went back to Bluetooth access and it works much better.

My car doesn't have WiFi so CarPlay makes my Qi charger useless. Should also work via Bluetooth.

Carplay Messages requiring audio only response is a hassle. Would be better to have some preset answers to tap.

 

[pweicks]

No wonder people suck at driving and have zero self-awareness when they’re on the road. They should just stop making cars with infotainment systems altogether. I’m sure we’ll see a spike in people on ADD medication

 

[unplugme71]

I should read the study before offering an opinion, but I won't...
You will not convince me that using your voice to control something is more than dangerous than looking down at your lap and texting.

Because people are looking at said object when speaking instead of continuing to look ahead.

 

[Makosuke]

I'm baffled as to how talking to Siri--which is certainly distracting--could possibly be worse than texting. I have seen people texting while driving, and just from their awful driving it's obvious they're drastically more distracted than I am even when Siri is at its worst. I mean, no matter how annoyed I am that Siri isn't understanding a query over road noise, I'm not drifting into the adjacent lane, and my eyes are at least pointed forward. I might suffer a delay in reacting if something appears in my field of view, but I can at least identify a hazard coming up and stop trying to find out when the store closes.

That said, I'm actually more interested in seeing another bar on this graph for "watching TV on the infotainment system".

This seems like complete lunacy to me as a US driver, but in Japan it's apparently technically illegal but incredibly easy to have the dealer enable a TV tuner built into the infotainment system of nearly every car made in the last 20 years. "Just ask and they'll do it for you." is what I've been told by a guy literally driving down a windy road with some variety show playing on the dash screen. It's not some crazy bolt-on, you can change channels via the infotainment interface and everything.

This strikes me as beyond crazy, and if I were in charge I would permanently take away the license of everyone who ever asked for this.

But I'm also curious just how bad this really is in terms of distraction versus other things.

Two other bars that would be neat to see on that graph: Listening to music and listening to talk radio.

I'm willing to bet that talk radio in particular results in a significant decrease in reaction time.

 

[Analog Kid]

It's also not clear how familiar the participants were with the CarPlay interface before beginning the test or whether they had used it prior to the testing, but IAM RoadSmart says there was a "comprehensive familiarization process."

This was my question. I've only used it in rentals and it takes a long time for me to get comfortable with it. For the first drive, I won't touch it while moving, then as I start to get used to the music controls I can do more. I never use it for more than navigation and music control, I can't imagine a new user trying to interact with apps.

It's hard to beat fixed buttons and knobs for muscle memory. Touch screens are a pretty lousy interface for any car system.

This study took place in the UK, where drivers use their left hand to interact with CarPlay screens. That may be their non-dominant hand and an extra challenge for their brain. I wonder if the findings are different in countries where people use their right hand instead.

Interesting observation!

 

[317342]

TBH, I'm not surprised. I've always felt it was one of Apple's most overhyped features.

 

[allenvanhellen]

I haven’t. I pulled over like a responsible person who doesn’t want to cause an expensive or deadly accident.

I think trying to read a paper map while driving is the most dangerous of all - and we've been doing that for decades

 

[0134168]

My ass.

 

[SteveJUAE]

Trash this article as much as you like, but if their objective is to raise awareness and it saves just one of us from a serious accident then they have succeeded.

I only wished they included smart watches whilst driving

There are many things to distract a driver and adding more to the list because of trends in connectivity and media etc only increases the distractions

Its irrelevant who's app of device is top of the list, they are all distractions left or right hand use are not mitigation's

 

[Martinpa]

I don't have CarPlay in my car, but I have my iPhone connected via bluetooth (don't know if Siri is that much different from one to the other) and I'm always surprised to hear how hard of a time people are having with Siri. Sure it's not perfect... but even though I'm not using Siri in my native language, I rarely have a hard time with it. When I do, it's mostly because I stumble or draw a blank when stating the artist or the title of an album, or when I say I want to send a text to someone who has a distinctively French name (while my Siri is in English)/play a song with a French title. The way I use Siri might be different than others though; texts, music, phone calls, very occasional calendar event or reminder. I usually start navigation before leaving home, and if I ever ask for direction, it is 95% of the time to a location set in my favorites (home or work, or someone's address)

 

[sidewinder3000]

I don’t know anything about the organization that conducted the study, but I have used CarPlay and I have always found it to be less distracting than just using my iPhone. Most of the time, I just press the voice button on the steering wheel and utter verbal commands using Siri. I am also very surprised that the results for CarPlay slightly worse than for android auto. I have seen the android auto interface, and it to me seems less simple, and more confusing. Has anybody use both systems, and have an explanation? Or are the statistical differences within the margin of error?

 

[threesixty360]

This isn’t really about car play / android auto and more about touch screen operation on cars full stop (Hello Telsa!).
Its kind of crazy to be forced to use a touch screen operate any thing thats necessary when driving (air con / temperature or radio etc..). Its just distracting, I’ve been saying it for years now since I had one in a Golf.

However, the way the report lines up driving at alchohol limit etc.. with the other things like voice activation and touch is a bit silly. Rather its best to compare them with what was there previously before the touch screen. Is it harder to fiddle with a digital radio rather than a voice control? Or a tom tom sat NaviGuide Vs saying “take me to etc..” on Siri?

They have purposely conflated things here. Car Play is in response to previous car dash boards that were manual / digital combinations. Some of which were very distracting (how many crashes haven’t their been with people tuning in a new radio station or changing a cassette tape back in the day?).

Also, voice is no more distracting than talking to a passenger in the back seat (in fact less as there is no temptation to turn around to see them). Banning car play type devices on these safety tests would mean you should ban in car radio and any physical dash components because they are distracting by definition. It would also mean banning talking to anyone who is in the car as well. Totally unfeasible really.

 

[44267547]

Because people are looking at said object when speaking instead of continuing to look ahead.

Which goes to show you, the brain can’t actually multitask. Even though we sometimes believe we can do ‘two things’ at once, it’s fundamentally impossible, because technically Our brain only allows us to focus on one task at a time, where we might be able to do something secondary, but we’re only primarily focusing on the main objective, which would be driving, and anything else that we are manipulating with inside our vehicle is actually secondary and requires more focus, which creates a distraction.

 

[Ted13]

But looking at this is no issue..

The car is clearly stopped, (doors open, etc.). I am guessing that the "Model S Deliveries Begin" thing would not appear if the Tesla was in motion. So - show us something from a car actually on the road which you would consider distracting.
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I know this will upset some fragile, nerdy egos, but you can add all Tesla’s with their stupid, giant touchscreen which is required for all functions, including the most basic. Terrible, terrible human interface design in a 2 tonne killing machine.

Sounds very dangerous - I wonder why Teslas have a much lower accident rate than any other car according to the NHTSA? See:

In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.10 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.64 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles.

The point is, most people do drive with the active safety features turned on - and the result is far fewer accidents.

 

[CouponPages]

It's a flawed study. They only used 20 participants? No mention of whether they were already familiar with the tech?

1. If they're trying to prove the level of distraction, they left out quite a few critical controls such as drivers WITHOUT CarPlay / Android Auto who were using the car's built-in dash controls.

2. Did they actually get this group drunk and high on cannabis? I doubt it. They probably used published response times from another study somebody else did with a much larger group and better controls. For this study to be meaningful with this tiny group, they need to study the same group under each condition.

3. The tasks they used were unrealistic and nothing like a real world situation.

Since it's unlikely that everyone in the group was already familiar with both platforms, and they clearly didn't get them drunk or high the entire thing is flawed.

 

[Ted13]

I wonder if this study also indicates how dangerous touch interfaces are in the car. How about those touch only Tesla monitors?

Compared to other cars, lowest accident rate per mile driven for Tesla?

 

[NufSaid]

20 people!?!?!
Change the headline. This is a quick survey.

call me back when you have a scientific study.

 

[robertcoogan]

Wow. CarPlay more distracting than cannabis?

 

[MarkAtl]

Wow. CarPlay more distracting than cannabis?

For the 10 seconds you’re looking at it, probably. But your buzz will last a lot longer.

 

[iLilana]

Targeted study meant to damage apple's stock price further. Most likely by short sellers.

 

[I7guy]

What this study again shows is the danger of distracted driving. Whether android auto is “safer” than CarPlay is like saying driving after 6 drinks is “safer” than driving after 7 drinks.
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When I use Siri in the car, I find myself cursing at Siri more than anything else...

I don’t have issues using Siri: in the car, HomePod or phone. But then I don’t ask unanswerable questions.
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...Sounds very dangerous - I wonder why Teslas have a much lower accident rate than any other car according to the NHTSA? See:
The point is, most people do drive with the active safety features turned on - and the result is far fewer accidents.

Could the low accident rate reflect the total number of Tesla’s vs the total number of cars on the road?

 

[MikeX]

Humans adapt. That's what the test is missing. if a feature is not working as intended, alternatives are used instead.

Most of the navigation I do is based on recents or favourites. That's more than 80% of the cases. that's a simple tap.

Small portion where I need assistant help, siri doesn't find any addresses using voice therefore I use BMW's built-in voice system. or I type the address before starting the car.

as for changing songs, there is a next song button on the steering wheel. one the playlist is selected, i don't really use the carplay interface.

the carplay is a huge advancement, which is improving all the time, same is true for android auto.