Now, there is a growing call from experts to ditch the unnecessary tech and return to a traditional dashboard with physical buttons. When road safety experts talk about distraction, they break it down into three distinct categories: visual, manual, or cognitive. Dr Haghani says that touchscreen interfaces are particularly dangerous because they have 'all three elements of a distracting stimulus together'. Just like texting while driving, touchscreens are dangerous because they create a physical, visual, and mental distraction. In some cases, these differences were just as significant, if not larger, than the impacts of texting while driving.

Source: Daily Mail January 14, 2026 14:53 UTC