OPINION: The more cars beep the more people will ignore them

But perhaps we should have a conversation now about how we receive the information that they provide. Is the current method of bombarding us with sound alerts really the right thing for motorists?

And I’m not just talking about them being distracting, as has been the subject of many a pixel of text over the last few years. In fact, my concern is that they become the opposite. Not just something that is a bit annoying, but so common that we just dismiss them subconsciously.

I bring this up after driving the full length of the country (almost) in a Hyundai Kona Electric. A car the merits of which we’ll leave for a different article. In its Ultimate spec, the Kona is filled with all of the electronic aids that you might expect. From lane keep assist to traffic sign recognition and the latest growing fad: forward attention monitoring.

Each of these systems has its own merit. When Lane Keep Assist works it can be good on a long journey if your attention wanders for a second and you start to edge away from the middle of your lane. Traffic sign recognition’s use is pretty self-explanatory. Forward attention assist is partly a future-thinking exercise about making sure that we monitor what we’re doing when hands-off driving becomes more normal.

But add them all together with various others, and it becomes a litany of unexplained beeps and bongs. All of which distract you briefly, trying to see which one it was that just spoke to you.

Eventually, what happens is that you start to ignore them. I know that the speed limit has changed, it says so on my HUD. I know you just helped me with the lane centring, you moved the wheel; I know the car in front has moved off; I know that I briefly looked away from the dead forward position to see if traffic was coming onto a roundabout. 

Gradually, they become background noise, less interesting to your brain than the radio. You get on with driving. And then when they have something really important to say, like that someone is about to pull out of a side street and you need to slam on the brakes, you’re not taking it in.

It isn’t something that will add more danger to driving, but it will remove some of the usefulness of these features. What good is a speed limit beep if you ignore it? What good is it telling you that you aren’t paying enough attention if your brain doesn’t care?

Do I have the answer to making these more user friendly/useful? No. But then, I’m not a car interface designer. All I know is that there needs to be a rethink about how much information a person can actually take in from their car while driving and especially how they receive that information so that it’s useful.

If not, we’re going to be doomed to a world where we either spend our lives turning those systems off, or just ignore them. And I’m not sure that’s useful for anyone.