Motorists using touchscreens in cars are being distracted

STEP INSIDE most modern cars and instead of all the dials and switches that used to clutter the dashboard you are likely to find it dominated by a touchscreen. Often there is more than one screen, and some are bigger than those on a laptop. But, though touchscreens provide a convenient way to operate a multitude of controls and settings, the latest research shows they can also be dangerous distractions.

To discover how badly touchscreens distract drivers, Neale Kinnear and his colleagues at the Transport Research Laboratory, a former British-government agency now run as an independent test facility, arranged a series of experiments. They recruited two groups of 20 drivers. One consisted of regular users of Google’s Android Auto, a popular “infotainment” app which lets drivers interact with their phone through a car’s touchscreen. The others were partisans of Android Auto’s main rival, Apple CarPlay.

Each participant completed three 15 minute journeys along a set virtual route using the laboratory’s sophisticated driving simulator. On one of these trips they had to carry out tasks using only the touchscreen. These tasks included navigating to a restaurant, playing a particular song on Spotify (a music service), changing radio channels, getting the system to read out a text message, and making a “hands-free” telephone...