We need to have cars that WON'T LET US use our outside tech devices when we're in the driver's seat. That kind of design functionality would HELP this problem. Also, in-dash GPS and the like, it's hurting more than it's helping IMO. 10 years ago, no one had this stuff. Look at a map people, or better yet, know where you're going!!!
Absolutely not. These "restrictive" vehicle systems are horrible, for the simple fact that they don't distinguish between driver and passenger. Being in some more modern vehicles which do exactly as you say is infuriating when you have to ask your passenger -- instead of pulling up the GPS turn-by-turn on the large in-dash screen -- to instead pull out the iPhone 5 because the nav won't let you set a waypoint while you're in "drive".
Artificially restricting controls only results in a user bypassing those controls in some way, which could do more harm than good (e.g. forcing you use your phone instead).
I'm not sure that advising someone to look at a map is much better -- a paper map obscures a lot more of the road, and looking at it to figure out not just where the hell you are but also where you are trying to go seems a bit worse than an on-dash GPS that shows the former, and hopefully has been configured with the latter.
The problem with touchscreens and, specifically, touchscreens in vehicles, is that there is no feedback to let your fingers know when you're actually touching a button and when you are not. No feedback means that I have to take my eyes off the road to look to see if I am tapping the correct area of the screen. As you can imagine, I am a huge fan of "old school" knobs and push-buttons in vehicles precisely for that reason, and the recent trends towards touch-everything drive me crazy.
Back on point towards your comment, maybe "touch" timing wouldn't work. But phones have something in-dash systems don't expose to the end-user: accelerometer. If you could detect a tap from the accelerometer instead of relying on touch, you'd be onto something (of course, you would have to filter out road noise, which is not trivial, but probably doable).
It's not about playing a sound on release. It's about feeling where the button is in the first place. When you place your finger on the screen, you can't tell where on the screen your finder landed without looking. It's much easier to feel for and grab a knob and turn it or a physical button and push it, than it is to accurately place your finger on a screen and keep it in the same position for repeat actions (especially on a more bumpy road).
On my car stereo, for example, I have 6 buttons for pre-programmed stations: [1][2][3][4][5][6]
Without looking, I can put my finger just to the left of [1] and select a station by feeling my way across. There is no way to do that with an in-dash touch screen without looking. Maybe you could play a sound to designate which button your finger is currently on, but what if you don't want to press that particular button (i.e. you land on [2] and you want to select [3] instead, but -oops- a bump in the road caused momentary disconnect between your finger and the screen [make no mistake, this sort of thing happens often])? Then you need a way to "confirm" a selection, and we're back to the original problem.
