Using a car's touchscreen infotainment system to set the sat nav can take the driver's eyes off the road for well over a minute, according to new testing from What Car? in the UK.
It found that inadequate voice control systems are also cause for driver distraction, with the simple task of changing a radio station taking up to 80 seconds. The best voice control systems can take less than two seconds to complete the same task, What Car? said.
What Car? said that its findings confirm that good-quality in-car voice control systems are vital safety features, which should be adopted more widely as in-car technology becomes ever more complex.
To determine how distracting it can be to use a touchscreen infotainment system or a poor quality voice control system, What Car? performed four common tasks in 21 different new cars, including inputting a sat-nav destination and changing a radio station.
The driver wore a pair of special glasses incorporating a series of cameras to record the time taken, and to gather information on the level of distraction required.
It said the Honda H-RV was the model with the most distracting voice control for its sat nav. What Car?’s tester spent 80 seconds trying to set a destination before giving up. In contrast, doing the same task via the voice control in a Volkswagen T-Roc took just 1.9 seconds.
What Car? said some cars also proved highly distracting to try to set a sat-nav destination using the touchscreen. The tester spent 74 seconds looking at the screen while trying to do this in a Toyota C-HR.
By What Car?'s reckoning, the Renault 4 E-Tech electric has the best overall voice control system, as the same task took just three seconds to complete.
A recent What Car? survey of 1,157 UK drivers found that controlling the radio and programming the sat nav are the two most frequently used infotainment system functions, at 71 per cent and 70 per cent respectively.
It said that only 27 per cent of those surveyed rely on their car’s voice control system to do common tasks, as these systems have not proved reliable in the past.
The What Car? survey also highlighted that 85 per cent of drivers think cars should have more physical buttons, while only seven per cent think more functions should be in the touchscreen.
