I can't bring myself to disagree with this. I've been a longtime Android Auto user and on many, many occasions I've thought to myself "ok, this is a bad idea," as I find myself fiddling with shit at a stop sign trying to get my music to play or to get my phone to reconnect or whatever.
@nyquildotorg Britain's Institute of Advanced Motorists conducted research into the distractions caused by infotainment screens.
I don't have Android Auto in my 2025 car - I just listen to the "old steam radio" (FM/AM/DAB+) or maybe some music from a USB stick, and mute the lot at certain roundabouts or when roads are unusually busy (England has small narrow roads compared to USA and there is a lot of traffic)
@vfrmedia the issue isn't just with interacting with the screen, though, it's also with trying to interact with the screen and it failing, so you grab your phone instead.
It doesn't surprise me at all that even perfectly functioning infotainment is a problem, but when that doesn't work it gets even more dangerous
@vfrmedia something that happens constantly is a text message will come in, and then you tap the notification to have it read the message to you, but it just plays silence during the duration of when it should be reading the text aloud. So then you ask it to repeat and it does that again and you say fuck it and grab your phone
@vfrmedia Or you'll tap something that google thinks is unsafe, so it displays a long textual message about how you can't do that without stopping first, like reading a paragraph on a fucking screen is any safer than just doing the thing the button should do
@nyquildotorg unless the phone is in a secure holder its a serious traffic violation over here to touch the phone whilst driving, and even if it is in a holder and you commit some other offence thats also a violation - cops actively look out for this, using a variety of methods including covert vehicles (anything from motorbikes to lorries), they also accept tip-offs from dashcams of vehicles nearby (those using their phone handheld at traffic lights have been caught this way)
@vfrmedia It's the same here, and I had no problem with obeying it until the system that was ostensibly meant to prevent it.
The limit of my unsafe actions (while still against the law) is when stopped, several cars back at a traffic signal. But I know I'm in the minority with my risk calculation. I'm just saying that showing someone they have a potentially urgent message and then failing to read it to you almost certainly drives people to break the law in ways where safety is even more compromised than in my occasional "sitting 5 cars back at a stop light" situation.
@nyquildotorg That is definitely bad design. My car /can/ apparently use Android Auto but would need a software and hardware update which costs more than its worth, I'm also very sceptical that the car screen/app won't be abused for adtech purposes (if it isn't already being subtly done by other means)
@vfrmedia that latter part is the main advantage that I think people are perceiving in the casting experience, because they get to use their preferred music service, part of the function of which is recording what they listen to so it can recommend more stuff.
And because the car has no idea what's on your screen, it does cut down on the carmaker's ability to mine that info, but the cars already know how often you drive, where you drive, how fast you drive, whether you stopped at Burger King, etc.
@nyquildotorg the amount of data car manufacturers or app devs can use for marketing purposes is hard limited by GDPR over here (and the reality that most motorists can't afford new cars anyway), but as someone who only started driving late in life, I noticed that young people are conditioned to accept their driving being monitored by a GPS black box (or sometimes an app) as a condition of their insurance (its usually unaffordable without it, until age 21-25)
@nyquildotorg GM says they do that because they do not want to encourage cellphone use when driving. Maybe. But they are also developing systems like OneStar that keeps tracking cars and drivers, and then contracting with Google to install entertainment apps. Feels a lot like "we want to keep all the tracking data for GM, and monetize it ourselves."
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