In-car touchscreens are dangerous
I think they&#x27;re an awful addition to driver controls. You simply cannot be distracted while driving for more than a few seconds before you&#x27;re endangering yourself and others and there is no good place to put them that doesn&#x27;t take your eyes off the road.<p>When I use a mapping app for driving I use one I can place on the dashboard and quickly glance at it but I don&#x27;t fiddle with it.<p>Watching videos of those pile ups in Texas this month was just stunning. Everyone who rear ended the car in front of them was an idiot. There is no excuse for driving faster than you can react to the car in front of you coming to a full stop. None at all.<p>I grew up around and working with body men who repaired crashed car and the people who crashed them, custom and race car builders, and race car drivers, and some of those drivers broke world speed records, and some died racing. I also designed and built &quot;zero effort&quot; driving systems for C4-C5 quadriplegics so they could drive while sitting in their wheelchairs. Most of them couldn&#x27;t pick up a sandwich but they could safely drive the vehicles we built for them.<p>Of all the crazy things people have asked me to do to their car, none of it would be more dangerous than a touchscreen for driver controls, and especially one with entertainment features. That&#x27;s the ultimate stupid feature. And I have been asked to do a shit ton of crazy things to cars people drive. Evel Kenival wanted me to build a show car that &quot;exploded the body off&quot;, and I did. And as far as know, no one was ever injured by it. If he&#x27;d asked me to build him a car that he could change the radio station with a touchscreen TV in the center console while driving down the highway I&#x27;d have told him &quot;No. I won&#x27;t do that&quot;.<p>What scares me is people buy and use this stuff now while barreling down the hwy at 70+mph.