New guidelines for 2026 on vehicle design have been released by NCAP, which show how the car industry may have to restrict its use of touchscreens inside modern cars. The regulations need to catch up with reality, where drivers are fined if they touch their phone, but encourage to interact with a screen, scrolling various menus to find the heated seats choices.
The trend started with Tesla of course, but other car-makers are also fitting huge PC sized screens, which could be used to sell streaming services to drivers in the future. But most in-depth research on accidents shows that distraction is one of the big causes of incidents on the road, so anything which can be done to reduce the risk of distracted driving has be a good move. This includes tech like eye-tracking, which can monitor how many seconds a driver’s gaze drifts away from the road, or track micro-sleeping problems for example.
NCAP stress that touchscreens should be replaced with buttons in some cases, as regards essential safety functions whilst driving;
“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,” explained Matthew Avery, director of strategic development at Euro NCAP.
“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.”
Changes cannot come soon enough for IE, as it’s obvious that huge 12 inch wide screens are a massive distraction at any speed.
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