Drivers are increasingly finding common ground with iPad babies.
The phrase—whether used pejoratively for children whose gaze always seems to be searching for screens, or with (sometimes grudging) respect for precocious young people who intuitively absorb new technology—came to mind as I was reading reviews of the 2024 Chevy Colorado.
You can only turn the headlights on or off via touchscreen, by scrolling and tapping through minimally labelled menus in the corner of the display. A reviewer at Jalopnik said it “screams of cost-cutting.”
He’s not the only one who has noticed that putting hyperscreens and buttons where vehicles used to have levers, switches and knobs requires you to take your eyes off the road instead of using muscle memory to feel for the volume, air conditioning or gearshift. It means more functions have one central “point of failure,” going offline when the display breaks.
Mike Ramsey, a vice-president and automotive tech analyst at Gartner, said in an interview that screens can add a huge number of functions to vehicles, like displaying the weather, and let automakers make improvements over the life of the vehicle. He’s also skeptical that the move toward screens is driven purely by cost-cutting—while the supply chain for buttons and knobs does add complexity for car makers, screens are expensive too, he said.
We may not be far from a future where voice-activated AI can do these tasks, Ramsey said, though he can’t see many people saying “turn on the air conditioning” aloud to themselves if they could press a button instead.
In the meantime, however, “we certainly have seen this tension for quite a number of years and it’s continuing to escalate,” said Kristin Kolodge, vice-president of auto benchmarking and mobility development at J.D. Power. She was describing drivers who are dissatisfied with core features like windshield wiper control, garage-door opening and even the lock for the glove compartment being embedded somewhere within a car’s infotainment system. Even after drivers have had several years to adjust to the change, many still complain to J.D. Power, she said.
Larger screens do mean drivers don’t have to squint to see navigation apps or the feed from their rearview camera, and automakers can stop them from accessing distracting apps while the vehicle is in “drive.” (An option I wish was available when I had an Uber driver who watched TikTok on his phone at the wheel.)
But University of Alberta professor Anthony Singhal, who studies human performance, isn’t convinced. His work found that even visual clutter like seeing emotional words on billboards can factor into driver performance. While it might seem that automated driving technology would free up drivers’ mental workload, it poses its own risks if it makes bored drivers inattentive, he said.
It only takes a two-second glance away from the road to double the risk of a crash. It takes drivers 30 to 40 seconds to enter navigation information into an infotainment system, said Kristine D’Arbelles, senior director of public affairs at the Canadian Automobile Association.
That’s why Anne Marie Thomas, director of consumer and industry relations at the Insurance Bureau of Canada, said drivers have a responsibility not just to pre-program as much as possible while parked, but also to practise developing new muscle memory for their vehicle’s home screen, so they can operate it the same way they can identify an app on their phone at a glance.
You know—like an iPad baby.
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