I find it fascinating that in 2002, the US NHTSA blamed 66% of the 43,000 fatal car crashes on “Playing with the radio or CD.” While the radio seems a minimal interference these days, I can easily imagine (cough) someone being distracted replacing a CD (or fumbling for a different play list or tune on the iPod). #ddtb
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When the Car Radio Was Introduced, People Freaked Out – Mental Floss
When the Car Radio Was Introduced, People Freaked Out
Is texting while driving total insanity or just one more inevitable tide of modern life? (Spoiler alert: It's total insanity.) But …
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(Operating) the radio shown is no threat at all to driver attention. It is simple and has big controls with great tactile feedback. Each button corresponds to a favorite preset and setting the preset was pig-simple (Listening to the station you like? Pull out the button and push it back in). Fancy ones had FM too, and one of my old VW’s had shortwave. On which I had a preset for BBC.
What were we talking about again?
Right – attention. I want to find – and slap – designers and marketing creatures who thought it was ever OK to put a touch screen on a dashboard. Complex, changeable, no tactile feedback. The damn things should go black when the car is in motion.
@George (1) – True. The 60s-70s style radio shown is simple, even elegant, in what it could do. I suspect early car radios were a lot fussier and less easy to use.
Of course, even pre-touch-screen (a fine point there), radios had spiraled out of control with a ton of little buttons. Not to mention (as I did) juggling CD changing and/or a iPod.
Now if we could just get a good voice control system …
I don’t know. There have been times when I glanced at the radio to hit a preset only to find that traffic had come to a complete stop and I had to panic-stop.
:/
Did that happen with one of those old-timey radios like in the picture? Or a modern radio with tiny buttons and a menu and a display? Just curious.
The old radios had 5 buttons, and they were huge. Never a need to take your eyes off the road.
It happens with my modern radio. I don’t recall whether I had any close calls in cars with mechanical preset buttons. Hmm…
I thought drunk driving has always been the major cause of car accidents and never thought that browsing for songs/radio channels while driving is dangerous. But this will never likely to happen anymore since Ipod and other devices now has a voice activated control features, you don’t have to glance on your player just to pick the song you want to listen.
@Greg – Well, as soon as everyone has iPods, and iPods are the primary means of dealing with music in cars, and the only think people are listening to (and fiddling with) in cars is music and other stored content from iPods. Yes, at that point the voice controls will solve that problem.