Are Touchscreen Controls Making Cars Less Safe?

While once a feature that stood out as a unique selling point for some vehicles, the touchscreen has, in a lot of cases, expanded from its role as a media system to become the focal point of vehicle functions. Need to set the climate control temperature? Access it via the touchscreen. Need to activate seat ventilation? It’s in the touchscreen. In some cars, like the latest Teslas, even the gear selection is via the touchscreen. But in this focus on making things available on touchscreens, are cars becoming unsafe?

Why use a touchscreen for an increasing number of vehicular functions?

One of the major reasons behind these comes down to cost: a touchscreen and all related software is reportedly easier on the finances than sourcing individual switchgear for multiple in-car functions, especially when manufacturing at large scales. The use of a touchscreen also simplifies interior design while allowing carmakers to squeeze in a greater number of features without needing to clutter the cabin. The digitisation has also opened the doors for OTA updates, allowing carmakers to push new features into vehicles via digitised updates, allowing some features to become available in cars post-sales, thus enhancing the customer experience.

Are Touchscreens A Distraction?

As per studies, yes. Simply using Android Auto or Apple CarPlay on the vehicle’s touchscreen can cause a driver’s reaction times to drop. And we are not talking about features tucked away in the menus. As per a study by TRL – a UK-based automotive research firm, published in early 2020, found that driver reaction times reduced by as much as 57 per cent when simply changing songs via the central touchscreen (30 per cent when using voice commands). The study recorded that participating users sometimes used as much as 20 seconds simply to play a song on popular apps such as Spotify on the infotainment.

Other functions, meanwhile, at times get buried within sub-menus, requiring extended time spent looking at the screen to correctly identify and access the functions.

Research conducted years earlier by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in 2017 suggested that simply typing the address into the navigation system on the touchscreen could distract vehicle occupants for more than 40 seconds. This creates a serious case for a distracted road user, with independent studies and tests undertaken by institutes and universities also highlighting cases of distracted drivers losing track of vehicle speeds, placement within lanes and the distance from the vehicle ahead.

So how dangerous is distracted driving in the Indian context? Well, data specific to distracted driving-linked accidents is not listed separately in the MoRTH road accident reports, but the data is included in the head ‘Hit from back’ or rear-ending the vehicle in front. As per the accident report 2024, ‘hit from back’ contributed to over 23 per cent of all accidents reported or over 1.13 lakh incidents.

As per an old National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, USA report, at least 8 per cent of road accident fatalities in the USA in 2021 had occurred due to distracted driving.

Is There A Silver Lining?

Well, the increasing trend of switching features onto the touchscreen looks set to stay in the near term. That said, vehicle safety agencies such as Euro NCAP and Australasia NCAP are changing up their vehicle testing criteria to incentivise manufacturers to offer physical buttons for critical in-car functions.

Euro NCAP’s new regulations call for ‘new assessments of the human–machine interface (HMI)’ that will evaluate the ‘placement, clarity, and ease of use of essential controls — including the availability of physical buttons.’

As for Australasia NCAP, its CEO, Carla Hoorweg, told automotive publication Drive in 2025 that the ANCAP rating system would encourage the presence of dedicated physical buttons or a fixed section on the touchscreen for certain controls to prevent distracted driving. The independent vehicle safety assessment body had previously said that 16 per cent of road fatalities in Australia occurred due to distracted driving.

Additionally, the proliferation of ADAS tech across models does, to some extent, reduce distracted driving incidents. Particularly, technologies such as lane keep assist, forward collision warning and avoidance, adaptive cruise control with a vehicle follow function, and autonomous emergency braking do ensure that some of the consequences of distracted driving are addressed, though the systems are still not encompassing to all vehicles. In India, ADAS systems are typically available only on top variants of some popular mass market vehicles, though a majority of cars in the sub-Rs 15 lakh price bracket do without the tech.