Dear Toyota: How about easing up a bit on the touchscreen lockout?

Late last summer I got a ‘10 Prius, and I love it. It handles great, is fun to drive, and getting 42 mpg kicks the shit out of the 17 that my eight year-old truck managed to eke out.

It also has a healthy dose of tech, which suits me fine (and is in sharp contrast to the truck, too). A lot of that functionality is routed through the touchscreen in the middle of the dash.

There’s just one problem; Toyota really doesn’t want you playing with it while driving. Most onscreen controls are disabled while the car is in motion.

I was struck by the pointlessness of this “safety” feature while making a call to an automated system today (which is done by voice, saying the name of the contact which was wirelessly imported from my phone, which is awesome) and I had to push a number on the phone.

Here’s how this would work if the touchscreen wasn’t locked out:

1. Push the onscreen “0-9” button that calls up the number pad.
2. Push the onscreen “0” button.

Clearly, too distracting. Here’s how it actually works:

1. Push the onscreen “0-9” button (which for some reason is still active while the car is in motion) that calls up the number pad.
2. Number pad is displayed, but all buttons are grayed out and inactive.
3. Push the “voice” button on the steering wheel.
4. Push it a second time to interrupt it reading a helpful paragraph of instructions.
5. Say “send tones” *
6. Push the “voice” button on the steering wheel to interrupt it reading another set of helpful instructions.
7. Say “zero”.
8. Push the “voice” button on the steering wheel (this may not be necessary, but I was in a rhythm).
9. Notice the active “send” button onscreen, press it.
10. Hope that the automated system on the other end of the call hasn’t timed out on you.

Safety!

I like how the voice solution to pressing a button on the screen is to push a button on the wheel four times, give two voice commands, and then PUSH A BUTTON ON THE SCREEN. This is a system that would have benefitted by a bit more thought.

* I didn’t know that there was a voice option for this. I pushed the voice button out of frustration, and it showed a list of available options onscreen that can be read, and “send tones” was one of them.