Skeet of the Day

Why the surprising number of collisions involving Teslas might be a problem with its design (source: Declan Hackett, Quora):

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— Alan Baxter ♛ (@alanbixter.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 5:04 PM

Why touch screens suck.

We have 75 years of experience showing that identical controls that do provide tactitile feedback are a disaster, and touch screens provide NO tactile feedback.

For any critical controls, driving mode, environmental controls, turn signals, etc., touch screens are a clear and present danger to the driver, other drivers, and pedestrians.

Just stop. 

This is a Wonderful Takedown

User interface designer Scott Jensen had his first exposure to Tesla's automotive interface, and he is not impressed.

Gee, you have a whole car designed by a ketamine addled idiot, with the automotive chops of Homer Jay Simpson and you are surprised that the user interface is f%$#ed?

Still, it's a wonderful take-down of what the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has created:

I borrowed a friend’s Tesla 3 yesterday. About 5 minutes into the ride, the windshield started fogging up. I couldn’t find the defroster on the large control screen Teslas are so famous for. In desperation, I tapped the CAR icon but that took me to the settings screen which ended up being a dead end. Frustrated, I opened the side windows to clear the windshield. While pushing every button on the steering wheel, I accidentally discovered the voice control and was finally able to get the defroster working. It was such an odd experience I tweeted about how frustrating it was:

Little did I know that Tesla had updated to a new UI just a few days earlier. It’s been more than a bit controversial: A UX designer had just walked into a Tesla bar with a hornets nest on the floor.

The rather severe name calling and ad homimum [sic] attacks I got in response to this tweet are unfortunate but it is really just a day in the life of Twitter. However, I was surprised by the sheer arrogance and Dunning-Kruger on display. These people know literally nothing about human perception or performance. Someone was wrong on the internet! I have no illusions this post will convince the TeslaBros of anything but this is an interesting UX design example for those that want to explore. It’s worth going through the problem in a bit more detail.

He makes it clear, that his issue is with the latest upgrade later in the article, and that the earlier versions were not as much suckage.

Of course, the same could be same could be said for Google, Facebook, and my Bank's website.

I rarely see an improvement in user interface when tech types update the interface.

It's not a big deal in many cases, but as Mr. Jensen notes, it is for cars, "Automotive design is hard. The “move fast and break things” of Tesla is  perfectly fine for Swipe-Right phone apps but in a car with lives at stake, they can’t be so cavalier."

Actually, they can be so cavalier.  In fact, they have been so cavalier, about many things, such as inadequate braking, which they knowingly shipped and figuring to patch later, promoting Easter Eggs in the car user interface, a plethora of claims about their self-driving capabilities, etc.

They don't care, they don't have to.

Mazel Tov!

The European safety study group Euro NCAP will be deducting points from the safety scores from cars that lack physical buttons for their controls.

It's been clear that the whole, "Wake your eye off the road and search for an obscure menu option to turn on the heat," thing has been a human factors and safety disaster:

Some progress in the automotive industry is laudable. Cars are safer than ever and more efficient, too. But there are other changes we'd happily leave by the side of the road. That glossy "piano black" trim that's been overused the last few years, for starters. And the industry's overreliance on touchscreens for functions that used to be discrete controls. Well, the automotive safety organization European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) feels the same way about that last one, and it says the controls ought to change in 2026.

"The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development.

"New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving," he said.

Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features, like the European Union's eCall feature.

Euro NCAP is analogous to the US IIHS, so the change in the ratings sstem it will likely have an impact on sales.

I do think that there should be government regulation of human factors in cars.

Driving a car is literally one of the hardest things that people do, and poor human factors in 3500 pound death machines makes it harder, and more dangerous.

Elon's Fanbois

This Chinese guy made a panel of physical buttons connected to the control unit port in his Tesla. You have buttons for pretty much every major function. This device completely defeats the purpose of minimalism. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/hngjS7Fgq3

— Ray (@ray4tesla) October 19, 2023

You've got to remember that these are just simple fanboi. These are people of the EVs. The common clay of the new Automobile. You know... morons.While his fanbois may be less toxic than he is, which is about the only time I have heard of such an inversion, they are still amazingly toxic.

In China, the owner of a Tesla Model Y added tactile buttons to the bottom of the touch screen, and Musk's stans are butthurt.

Technically, this is pretty easy to do, the Tesla is designed to allow you to control most functions from your smartphone, either wirelessly or through a USB port, so mapping that to tactile buttons:

It's fair to say that Tesla started the minimalist, touchscreen-centrism fad that has inundated the auto industry. But the touchscreen tide is washing out again, and some Tesla owners are riding the ebb. In one case, a Chinese Tesla Model Y owner has installed a button panel to their car, and some of their fellow Tesla owners find the mod deeply offensive.

The installation was shown in a video from an unknown Chinese social media platform, which has since spread to Twitter. In it, a Model Y owner installs a plug-and-play button panel beneath the touchscreen, which controls functions such as climate control, door locks, and the trunk release. On top of letting the driver operate these (and other functions) without taking their eyes off the road, the row of buttons fits with the Tesla's design and color scheme, looking like it could've been factory-installed. All in all, a win-win.

………

The poster himself is against the change, proclaiming "this device completely defeats the purpose of minimalism." Minimalism of course isn't a "purpose" in itself but an aesthetic, a form, not a function. This Model Y owner has made his car work better, even if it came at the subjective cost of what some consider to be compromising the car's styling. (Welcome to arguing about car modification on the internet, Tesla owners. Please take a stance on splitter guards in the comments section.)

Remember "Glassholes"?  The folks who wore Google Glasses, those dorky little head up displays in front of the eye.

They could start recording with little or no notice to the people around them, and soon people were demanding that they be removed in many social situations, and the Glassholes were just as adamant about keeping them on.

Musk fanbois, and to a lesser extant Tesla owners more generally, are this time's Glassholes.

Adventures in Skeuomorphic Design

My car is in the shop, and I am renting a car, a Nissan Sentra, because the smaller Toyota Corolla was not available.

I prefer the Toyota to the Nissan, but I got an impressive example of well executed skeuomorphic user interface design as a result.

For the uninitiated, skeuomorphism is the use of real world analogues in an interface, so in a drawing program, you have pens that look like a pencil, or a pen, or a spray can, or an eraser.

I had a pleasant surprise with the Sentra and its lane departure warning (LDW) system.

My car, the one in the shop, is a 2004 Toyota Prius with over 270,000 miles (435,000 km) on it, which is best described as a mid-life crisis car for the most boring mother-f%$#er on the planet, lacks such a system.  (I'm keeping it until it reaches 300,000 miles, because 300,000 miles, thank you very much).

On the Sentra, if you drift too close to a lane marker, it: (Quoting the manual)

The LDWsystem provides a lane departure warning function when the vehicle is driven at speeds of approximately 37 mph (60 km/h) and above and the lane markings are clear. When the vehicle approaches either the left or the right side of the traveling lane, THE STEERING WHEEL WILL VIBRATE and the LDW indicator on the instrument panel will blink to alert the driver.

(emphasis mine)

The indicator on the instrument panel is old school, and that, along with a chime, I have encountered in other rentals that I have used in the past few years.

The wheel vibration though, provides both a tactile and aural indication that is almost identical to the rumble strips that you find on the side of the road.

This is f%$#ing brilliant.  It is a near perfect simulation of an existing sensory input, and I reacted in exactly the same way that I would if I encountered a rumble strip on the road.

Note that I have received no consideration for this opinion, but if either Nissan Corp. or Enterprise Car Rental wishes to pay me,  I am more than willing to take their filthy capitalist lucre.

Unsurprising

The difference will quite literally kill you

It turns out that physical buttons work better than touch screens in cars.

This shocking news surprises absolutely no one, except for automotive marketing departments, the interface designers who are paid to f%$# up user interfaces, and, of course, Elon Musk:

The screens in modern cars keep getting bigger. Design teams at most car manufacturers love to ditch physical buttons and switches, although they are far superior safety-wise.

That is the conclusion when Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare performed a thurough test of the HMI system (Human-Machine Interface) in a total of twelve cars this summer.

Inspiration for the screen-heavy interiors in modern cars comes from smartphones and tablets. Designers want a ”clean” interior with minimal switchgear, and the financial department wants to lower the cost. Instead of developing, manufacturing and keeping physical buttons in stock for years to come, car manufacturers are keen on integrating more functions into a digital screen which can be updated over time.

So in what way have these screens affected safety? Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple tasks, such as changing the radio station or adjusting the climate control. At the same time, the car was driven at 110 km/h (68 mph). We also invited an ”old-school” car without a touchscreen, a 17-year-old Volvo V70, for comparison.

One important aspect of this test is that the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started.

………

The carmakers are keen to point out that many features now can be activated by voice. But the voice control systems are not always easy to use, they can’t control every function and they don’t always work as advertised, which is why the voice control systems were not tested in this experiment.

The results speak for themselves. The worst-performing car needs 1,400 meters to perform the same tasks for which the best-performing car only needs 300 meters.

This is the modern equivalent of tail fins, which at their height were impaling and slicing pedestrians.

Based on my experience with my rental car this week, I had the profound misfortune of being "upgraded" to a Ford Expedition with all the bells and whistles, because they were out of midsize cars. 

It looks, and drives, like the Exxon Valdez, and all of the bells and whistles, whether it's the multi-function screen, or the dial type shifter, make things worse.

I don't like the fact that getting into the vehicle resembles climbing K2, and I dislike the view out of the vehicle, you can literally hide a kindergarten class from the driver, even.