Touchscreens can distract drivers for the length of 4.5 football pitches, new study reveals

New research from the UK’s biggest car scrappage comparison provider Scrap Car Comparison reveals that setting a sat nav destination on a touchscreen control takes a driver’s attention away from the road for long enough to cover 476 metres at motorway speed – the length of four and a half football pitches.

In modern cars, touchscreens have replaced the dials and buttons that drivers once operated by feel alone. This means that tasks that used to take a fraction of a second now involve working through layered on-screen menus, and those extra seconds soon add up fast at speed.

Scrap Car Comparison has converted task-completion times from touchscreen distraction test data into distances travelled at speeds between 30mph and 70mph. The test timed a panel of drivers completing five common in-car touchscreen tasks, including setting a sat nav destination, turning off lane-keep assist and tuning the radio, across 10 leading car brands.

Scrap Car Comparison also surveyed 1,000 UK drivers who own a car with a touchscreen system, to find out how they feel about the technology and how often it causes problems on the road.

Setting a sat nav holds drivers’ attention longest

Of the tasks timed, instructing the sat nav to navigate home takes longest at an average of 15.21 seconds. At 30mph that is enough time to travel 204 metres, or 1.9 football pitches, without full attention on the road.

Turning off lane-keep assist takes almost as long at 12.67 seconds, covering 170 metres at 30mph. That is the equivalent length of roughly 15 Routemaster buses or 10 HGV lorries lined up end to end.

Time taken and distance travelled while distracted by common touchscreen tasks

Rank
Touchscreen task
Average time taken (seconds)
Distance travelled at 30mph (m)
Football pitch equivalent
(105m per pitch)
1
Turn on sat nav and select “home”
15.21
204
1.9
2
Turn off lane-keep assist
12.67
170
1.6
3
Tune the radio to Radio 4
8.50
114
1.1
4
Raise the cabin temperature by 2°C
4.49
60
0.6
5
Turn on heated seats
3.53
47
0.4
Speed changes how much ground drivers cover

The same 15.21 seconds covers very different distances depending on how fast the car is moving. At 30mph it is 204 metres. At motorway speeds (70mph) it is 476 metres, or 42 Routemaster buses parked nose to tail.

Distance travelled while setting a sat nav destination at different speeds

Speed (mph)
Distance travelled (m)
Football pitch equivalent
(105m per pitch)
Routemaster bus equivalent
(11.23m per bus)
HGV equivalent (16.5m per lorry)
30
204
1.9
18.2
12.4
40
272
2.6
24.2
16.5
50
340
3.2
30.3
20.6
60
408
3.9
36.3
24.7
70
476
4.5
42.4
28.8
Genesis owners take longest on touchscreen tasks, Skoda owners the least

Averaged across all five tasks, Genesis owners take their eyes off the road for the longest while using their touchscreens, at 14.04 seconds – at this distance, drivers could cover up to 188 metres at 30mph.Peugeot drivers follow in second (10.96 seconds) and Ford in third (10.50 seconds). Skoda owners take the least time at 5.32 seconds, covering around 71 metres, with Mercedes (7.10 seconds) and Volvo (7.36 seconds) also among the fastest.

The gap ultimately comes down to how each brand designs its menus. Deeper menu structures, smaller touch targets and a lack of physical shortcut buttons all add seconds to a task that should be simple.

Drivers want physical buttons back

More than half of drivers with touchscreens (54%) say the technology makes simple tasks harder to complete quickly than buttons would, and 51% wish manufacturers still fitted physical dials for key functions. Four in 10 (42%) have avoided buying or leasing a car because its main controls are touchscreen-only, while a quarter (25%) have chosen a different model or brand as a result.

London drivers are most likely to have rejected a car over its touchscreen, at 53%, followed by Cardiff at 50%. Bristol (24%) and Edinburgh (25%) based drivers are the most relaxed about it.

Sat nav entry tops the list of tasks drivers find the most distracting to do safely (41%), followed by changing the radio station (29%) and answering a phone call (26%)

One in 10 drivers has been in a serious collision after being distracted by their touchscreen

Almost a quarter of drivers (24%) report having missed a turning or exit because of their touchscreen, while more than a fifth (22%) have had to brake suddenly. A further one in five have swerved to correct their lane position (21%) or clipped a kerb or pavement (18%), while 13% have had a near-miss with another vehicle, cyclist or pedestrian. More seriously, 11% have been in a minor collision, and one in 10 (10%) have been in a serious collision.

Matt Clamp, car scrappage expert at Scrap Car Comparison, says: “Most people assume setting a sat nav is a two-second job, but the data puts it closer to 15 seconds, which means that people could cover almost 500 metres of road while doing so at motorway speed. That’s a long stretch to cover without paying attention to the road. My advice would be, if a touchscreen task can wait until the car is stopped, then it should.

“What people also forget is that this can get worse as a car ages. An older touchscreen is slower to load, less responsive to touch and more likely to lag, so the same task can take longer. If your screen has become sluggish and unreliable, and the rest of the car isn’t far behind, it’s worth asking whether it’s still worth keeping on the road. And if scrapping is the more practical option, that’s where Scrap Car Comparison can help.”