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Do Not Distract while driving

  • Posted

Here’s a screen I encounter while driving in Apple Maps, with worrying regularity:

A screenshot of Apple Maps with two routes labelled ('3 min slower', 'Similar ETA') and a third highlighted, and two buttons ('Resume' and 'End Route').
I've deliberately made the image small. Can you guess why?

I’m driving along, using turn-by-turn directions, and suddenly this route picker pops up instead.

This is a pretty dangerous distraction.

There’s lots of information on the screen, which means I have to look away from the road to read and understand it. Ideally I’d pull over (which is how I got this screenshot), but that isn’t always possible. The text is small – less than 2mm high on my iPhone SE – which makes it slower to read. And it’s taken away my instructions, and distracted me from actually driving.

When you’re driving, even a momentary lapse in concentration can be dangerous, even fatal. I’d love to see this screen go away in iOS 12.

(My phone is a few years old, and I think it gets confused about when I’m moving. I wonder if the screen is only meant to appear when you’re stationary, and my phone makes bad guesses about when I’ve stopped.)