InFocus featuring with Mike Quincy (Distracted Driving Safety)

From the 22 news plus studio This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of in focus. I am your host patrick berry I've had my driver's license for 40 something years. I don't even remember now, but I remember back when I first got my license There were things in the car that distracted you right? So you think back there were no cup holders So you had your soda your beverage your water whatever between your thighs back then it was cassettes So if you were like me You probably had a box of cassettes That you would cycle through to pick out the best tunes to play while you were cruising with your pals or whatever Um, you had to roll down the windows. There was no one touch button But technology in automotive vehicles have come a long way Which is why our good friend, uh, mike quincy is joining me today There's the right button right there. Mike quincy. He is an automotive writer and tester from consumer reports and we're talking about that change that change from what we may remember when we first got our license, uh decades ago to What you get when you walk into a brand new car nowadays, um Were you that were you like me? Oh, yeah, you had the the little I call it the suitcase I mean or not briefcase of cassettes or cds or whatever a hundred percent eight tracks even and and the the best uh, Cassette deck you could get in your car had auto reverse So exactly once the once the one side of the tape the tape is like 45 minutes long once with that it was over It automatically, you know flipped over and played the other side of the tape. You didn't have which was really Pull it out flip it and I thought auto reverse was the greatest invention in in car audio i've ever seen and of course we've moved on from there exactly so how How focused are the auto manufacturers in keeping A driver's attention on the road. Is this like one of their one of their big one of their big things It is an issue for a lot of manufacturers Because they are designing cars to have the latest and greatest technology um, it it really started years ago when when tesla Basically said what we're going to do is we're going to take an ipad and we're going to put it Right in the the center of the dashboard and that's going to control a lot of the stuff that you need in the car Right, and that's when tesla was really on a roll The cars became almost a status symbol and every car manufacturer wanted to be like tesla Now this has brought about a generation of cars that have massively distracted controls And but what it so then the automakers had to come up with other ways to counter all the distraction Such as a direct driver monitoring system It's basically like this camera that's in front of me right now is looking at the driver So it can tell if you're turning your head To the side to look at something and you're not focusing on the road and it will beep at you and it will yell at you direct driver monitor ddm And um some of the the cd systems can be super intrusive because you just look for a second to adjust The the temperature on your climate system and it says keep your eyes there. It just yells at you. Oh my god so This is a work in progress. I think right but So the car makers like created this problem with distracted driving and now they're creating another technology to counter their own Distracted driving controls by direct driver monitors. It's very confusing. So I You know, I got a a new car about a year and a half ago and I find the technology in that car far more distracting than Historically, you know again, I joke I joke about the you know, the beverage between your thighs I remember god, it was the early 90s 90s when I first got a drink holder in a car. But anyway, um but I found that stuff less distracting than I do now in my My modern car right what we that's why consumer reports hires People with their master's degree and their phds phds in human factors Okay, and this is basically the study of how people interact with cars And and they're there to determine which controls are easy to understand easy to manipulate And those that aren't and that's part of the evaluation we do for every test vehicle consumer reports and I I know you and I in the past have had a conversation about I guess Haptic is probably the word. That's the buzzword in the automotive industry haptic meaning Buttons, you can feel touch push right? Right. There's there's some feedback when you're touching a screen or a slider. Okay, so like in my new car My climate control their buttons their their own school hard physical buttons Yeah, you know turn the temperature up turn the temperature down fan on fan up, you know, um But some cars like teslas don't have that it's on the screen, right and not just tesla I mean a whole bunch of manufacturers have taken common everyday controls and put them on the screen which a consumer reports We're not crazy about right and when car makers are coming to us and they're saying why did our vehicles, uh, Have such a low score in your evaluations and we point to their controls and we say Bring back the hard buttons the hard buttons for the climate system the rotary dials for the volume And tuning for your audio system All the physical toggles and thumb wheels bring those back So and some are and some aren't is it safe to say? That my phone's not here here in the studio. It's on my desk But is it is it safe to say that one of those? Is no longer the key issue it's more of The stuff that the auto manufacturers are are giving you. Well, it's it's both Um The phones are distracting Our distraction and the controls are distraction and I could you know, just read you this this little Uh a bit of of data right now A survey of u.s. Drivers conducted by the insurance institute for highway safety in 2023 Found that over a fifth said they engaged at least one smartphone based distraction such as making video calls Watching videos which blows my mind or using social media on most or all of their trips, right now the smartphone has changed You know business it changed working. You can take your smartphone and travel around the world and still work Almost exclusively. I mean, yeah, you might need a laptop or whatever But if you have your smartphone with you, you can dial into meetings or do whatever Um, that is a blessing and a curse I think absolutely When it comes to driving when your smartphone is hooked up to your car That means that people can still contact you still make phone calls you can you can dial in to a video meeting or whatnot, right and At consumer reports. We think that's doing too much So when you're driving you should be you should be focused on your driving when my kids were getting their license I told them I I said you're you are now operating heavy machinery. Yes It's it's a death trap you've got to focus on everything You don't know a squirrel runs across the road a ball a kid somebody a pedestrian falling off a sidewalk You got to focus all the time and and then the statistics back it up I mean automotive deaths and pedestrian deaths as a result of cars are on the rise, which is very distressing because Mechanically technically the cars have never been safer. We have more safety features on cars But we have more distracting controls and i'm glad you brought up, um, you're you know teaching kids to drive because uh Consumer reports has our own podcast called talking cars, but we talk about a particular maker model and and then we also take questions one of the questions that we got on one of our more recent podcasts was from a father of a young teenage driver and his question, uh was We're looking for a used car for my for my son Who just got his driver's license and we want to get him a car with a manual transmission Because if he's operating the stick shift He his hands won't be as free to mess with his phone now Listen, as you know, i'm a car guy And I love manual transmission cars. We want more of them There's this whole campaign of save the manuals. So yay on you and your son for for embracing manual transmissions However, I think this dad got it wrong really because hold on a second We're gonna we're late for a commercial break. Hold that thought hold that thought. Uh, folks stay with us We're gonna come back to that thought in just a minute This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this edition of in focus. Uh, mike quincy from consumer reports sitting across the desk from me We left it with a cliffhanger Commercial break about a father trying to you know, buying a looking to buy his son a used car A manual transmission car because you know during the break i'm thinking about yeah, you got one hand up here You're shifting gears down here. There's no way you can play on your phone, right? But so yeah, I I to reiterate I I think the father is is getting the whole principle wrong And the reason behind that is it should not matter At all what kind of transmission your son is driving your son None of us should be messing with our phones while we're driving. Absolutely And my wife and I made a very conscious decision when my boys were young to make sure that we never Never touched our phones while we were driving. My boys are in their 20s now So they're past the learning how to drive age But we our thought was, you know, even when they're when they're they're school-aged kids when they're teenagers If they see us fiddle with our phones, they'll think it's okay Exactly, and we told them very specifically when you're learning to drive do not touch your phone Not enough adults do that And in fact it all the time the habit that we got them into was when they started to learn how to drive I said put your phone in the back seat You won't be able to reach it. You won't be able to see it right and any alert that they're getting Can wait it all can wait the thing about about smartphones Is that it just allows us all to be so impulsive and I I love the response that but it's work I I you know, I got I have to make sure i'm available No, you weren't available 20 years ago. And I first cell phone smartphone came out in 2008. Exactly 2006 exactly, um the the The email can wait the text can wait the phone call can wait and if they can't wait Then you you get off the road you find a parking lot you put your car in park and then you deal with it But to say well i've got to deal with it while i'm driving blah blah blah Uh, it's it's it's crazy. It's nonsense. It has um caused a lot of heartache in our country because Of all the the ghastly statistics that I just mentioned before So, um, so so don't you know your parents of young drivers If they see you messing with your phone, they're more than likely to do it, too So it starts at the top it starts with the parents don't play with your phone while you're driving but but it kind of comes back to my earlier conversation or The screens are now way more than the built-in screens in your car Sure way more distracting than my cell phone, right? And and and consumer reports has has taken the manufacturers to task over this for example You shouldn't need to go into the center screen to adjust the climate system, right? So you in in some cars you have to hit the climate menu for the screen to come up and then you have Selections within that menu to adjust the airflow the temperature the fan speed or whatnot And and that isn't in that screen is not Illuminated the whole time you have to bring it up. The car that I drove to 22 new studios today is a bmw 228 A very nice car and it has adaptive cruise control, which I love and I use all the time Now this car is one of the few cars that consumer reports has tested That they don't have the gap adjustment on the steering wheel so the steering wheel hub has the the on the left side the the The the cruise control adjustments for engagement and speed going up and down But you have to go into the center screen of this bmw to adjust the gap distance So sometimes you don't want it to to to travel behind a car Uh really closely maybe you want a little bit more distance So you have to go into a screen hit driving adjustments and then hit cruise control and then hit the gap adjustment and tap the screen To adjust the and it's like one of the only cars My new car has that but it's on the it's on the steering wheel of almost every single car We've tested has it on the steering wheel the but the geniuses of bmw is like, oh, let's put it in the center screen Buried in a couple different menus, right? It's stuff like that that drives consumer reports crazy And it's the things that we're fighting against and we're always trying to encourage the manufacturers to make um the the controls easier so do manufacturers Take your recommendations or do they just say? Oh, thanks cr. We love that. That's a fantastic idea and then they walk away or Hang up the phone. It's like those guys don't know what they're talking about. Yes, and no no and yes, um, the thing is Cars take might take four five six years in development so while the trend Yeah, it takes a long time to take either like a new car with a clean sheet design or a redesigned model From concept to production. It takes years and years and years And a lot can change in that time, right? It's one of the reasons that that smartphones Uh with their navigation systems are much better than usually the built-in navigation systems in the cars So I I have an android I use android auto all the time A lot of people use apple carplay and and use those built-in maps or they use ways or something like that So these are tech companies that are always studying tech and updating their tech Oh, you think about how frequently your cell phone gets an update? So car companies are not tech companies and they have a built-in navigate a lot of them have a built-in navigation system But by the time that car goes into production the tech in that nav system is really old I mean it still will probably get you to where you want to go But it's not constantly being updated like you're like this up on your phone. I remember I had a car Probably 10 years ago eight years ago where if I wanted to update the maps I had to get a cd, right? And it cost you a lot of money Or you know you get it you get another like a little sim card to put in or something like that I don't know. I'm not a tech expert But but but so so all of this technology and all these advancements Uh are very nice in some ways. I'm not whipping out, you know paper maps to go places anymore So I really like android auto like I do but but it but it isn't without some downside, right? aside from that aspect you have Warnings, you know, you've got your side mirrors that light up blind spot warning you cross a lane, you know bells and whistles go off um But those are sort of you know rear view cameras sometimes front view cameras or side cameras, but those are the things You there's there's safety features just help you from distracted driving, but you need to get to know those things, right? Right. I mean you got to take It's not where you just okay I just bought this car off the lot and off you go You got to sit in your driveway in front of your house or whatever and get get familiar with these cars 100 percent Uh, if you are buying a new car Even if you consider yourself Smart even if you consider yourself tech savvy, right? um Spend time at the dealer with your salesperson going over the car. It's Even if you think you know it all right There's going to be tips and little hacks and and and and tricks that you might not know You might not be instinctive to you. So you you sit at the lot in the dealer start the car You make sure you go through the efforts of you know Pairing your phone make sure that all works and then get all the safety features explained Get get explanations of how to adjust the climate system where the defrosters are where the um, the hazard You know the emergency flasher switches because sometimes those aren't intuitive either and you need to know where those are in an emergency How do you adjust the audio system? How do you adjust the volume? How do you adjust your seat if your seat has a memory system? How do you you know set the memory for that? Um, it's it's the salesperson's job they're trained on all the nuances of new cars So it is in your best interest to take a lot of time And make sure that you know how to operate it might even take you 45 minutes, but it's worth it It's worth every second and then do it again when you get home Yeah, exactly multiple times and and you know, lo and behold there's this this thing called an owner's manual Or you can even google stuff. You can find videos of how to operate a car Um, but but don't go into it blind and don't go Just don't leave the dealership right after you sign the papers and try to make all the adjustments while you're driving Exactly. We are up on our second commercial break plenty more to talk about when it comes to car safety. We're back in just a minute This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Welcome back everyone to this edition of in focus I'm your host patrick berry sitting across the desk for me today from consumer reports is mike quincy He is an automotive writer automotive tester. We're talking about part Safety from distracted driving. I guess if you've boiled it boiled it down. Um, you know and I I jokingly said earlier that the phone your cell phone your your smartphone is was the big fear Years ago of distracted driving but now with the modern technology of cars The phone like you said you pair it with your car. So the actual interaction with your phone really isn't the distraction much anymore It can't be it can't oh, it can't be right but most of this the distracted driving now is Because of the modern technology in the car. It's it's it's a little bit of both. Um from from to you know To to go with your argument Um, there are some mercedes-benz models that have a touch sensitive slider On the steering wheel hub to adjust the volume So again We're back to talking about the things that you see every day in your car And may on one side of your steering wheel is the cruise control functions and the other side Is usually the audio controls, right? You can either go to the next track or you can adjust the volume So some mercedes-benz is the consumer reports have tested in the last couple years There is a touch sensitive slider on the steering wheel hub So like to increase the volume you have to put your finger on the slider And like move it to the on the up arrow as it's going on your phone. Okay Um, but this requires a lot of precision and it's not taking into account you're going over bumps, you know And and the slider itself is even when you're in park. It's really set. It doesn't really work I want to hear this song. I want to get the song louder and and nothing's happening And then all of a sudden the volume jumps to 60 and at that point You freak out and you look and you're like what what just happened you're trying to change it and you're on the road so that's an example of a commonly used control that is just Needlessly complicated and most most steering wheels will have a physical toggle a button that you make thumb up and down or a thumb Wheel that moves up and down. It's a physical thing to adjust the volume, which is doesn't require precision It doesn't require you take your eyes off the road and you just do it instinctively But mercedes is like nope. Let's take something common and make it complicated when my mother was still alive and um My mother-in-law is still alive when they were each individually buying new cars My mother-in-law is almost 90 years old my and still driving and doing great My mother when she was still alive was still driving obviously in her um in her early 80s They were overwhelmed this stuff. Sure. And I remember saying to the dealer. What is the most basic? Vehicle and you know, can you shut off the rear camera? Can you shut these and they're like absolutely not Yeah, some things you can't shut off because of the law I mean, you know, you're legally not Legally, you're not gonna have a a workaround for something that that is required to be there like a rear view camera right and and and and stability control and whatnot, but um, No, you're right. And if and if you know for the for the 22 news audience Out there that hasn't bought a new car in 10 years 15 years Um, it is going to be quite a wake-up call when you go to the dealer to buy a new car And some people their workaround is to buy an older used car, which is fine, too But I can't emphasize enough take time at the dealer with your salesperson to learn how the car works In your travels is technology in vehicles like the Dashboard stuff and the half of the controls. Is it getting worse or but you or is it getting better? With the caveat caveat that you said earlier. It takes, you know, it's a four-year production cycle. So Who knows what life is going to be like in 2030, right? It's it's tough if you're a product planner I'll give you that because you don't know what is going to be trendy You don't know what the laws are going to be like you don't know What is going to wow people in the showroom because that's half the reason these cars Have these little dog and pony shows is to get a customer This is like oh, wow, it could do that. That's cool. I didn't know I needed to do that Um, so but to answer your question some many it depends on the manufacturer some manufacturers are getting back to basics They're scrapping some of the more complicated controls And and and reintroducing like a rotary volume knob I see that a lot of hondas a lot of toyotas um other manufacturers like mazda mazda just uh, released the new cx-5 a small sgv And they mazda was very much against touch screen controls For years because they had the center rotary knob for a lot of the stuff that you're familiar with Well, the new cx-5 has a has a has a center screen with that's all touch The problem is that all the climate controls are in the screen and they're tiny little chiclets I mean, they're they call them, you know buttons or or or widgets, right? Um, and they're it's abysmal Again, you're you're doing stuff as you're driving. I'm hot. I want to make it cooler Where do I I lower the temperature and and some manufacturers just make it very very difficult Well on that note we need to wrap up because our time is due mike quincy as always, uh, wonderful conversations I love uh car talk with you. Good seeing you my friend. Thanks for having me on This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry