Touchscreens are pulling Kiwi drivers' eyes off the road, a new poll suggests, with 93% of motorists who have one in their car admitting it has distracted them while driving.
The poll of 476 New Zealanders, run by fleet safety company AutoSense, found almost a quarter of drivers with touchscreens were distracted frequently and close to half occasionally.
Drivers once wound down windows, twisted radio dials and pulled a choke. Now many new cars route those jobs through a screen, and AA motoring services technical advisor Allister Wade said the swap came at a cost.
"We've taken screen time away from children – and given it to us."
Wade said drivers had been taught to keep both hands on the wheel.
"That's how we've evolved, and now we're telling you to follow technology and take your hands off the wheel."
The poll found 49% of respondents rated knobs and buttons as the easiest controls to use while driving. Just 6% picked touchscreens, and one in five wanted both.
Wade said he also favoured a mix, with buttons for anything urgent.
"A quick reference button – something you need in an emergency and you don't have to think twice – like the hazards or the demister or temperature control. Some of those key things that you don't want to overthink – you just want an action."
Overseas tests have found touchscreen menus can take up to 45 seconds to navigate, compared with 10 seconds for physical buttons. European safety rating body Euro NCAP's 2026 protocols now check whether cars have physical buttons for commonly used functions.
Short glances add up
AutoSense chief executive Charles Dawson said the problem went beyond the car's own controls. Commercial drivers could be juggling navigation, dispatch systems, work tablets and job alerts at once.
In a statement, Dawson said small glances at a screen built up over a trip.
"The driver may never look away long enough to recognise it as a major distraction, but their attention is still being divided."
Dawson said the short, repeated glances AutoSense recorded far outnumbered the traditional long look away from the road.
His company monitors commercial drivers with Guardian Generation 3, a camera system from Australian company Seeing Machines that tracks where a driver is looking. It sounds an alert when a driver's eyes leave the road for a total of 10 seconds in any 30-second window, and sends footage to AutoSense's 24/7 centre for staff to check.
"The great thing with the technology is that it identifies when you are doing that habit and it alerts you so that you can start to amend that behaviour," Dawson said.
Some New Zealand fleet operators have changed the timing of dispatch messages and job notifications after the data showed those alerts kept pulling drivers' eyes from the road, according to AutoSense.
"It isn't always a case of blaming the driver. If the way work is being delivered is repeatedly pulling a driver's eyes from the road, the operator has an opportunity and a responsibility to redesign that process," Dawson said.
The AA advises motorists to learn where everything is in their car before they turn the key.
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