Was that something their touchscreen? Phone and makeup does not translate to touchscreen. Hell, knowing where everything is on mine, I rarely have to even look at it to use it. And unlike all of you, I lack a commander knob.
But hey..."big brother" knows better for us plebs, right?
Without getting too deep into it, touchscreens can be just as distracting as makeup, phone use, eating, and whatever else you can think of. The severity of the distraction can also depend on a lot of other factors, like screen orientation (the lower it is in the dash, the more distracting). And yes, I would argue that searching for an artist or inputting a new destination is right up there with texting while driving or putting makeup on, regardless of whether the screen is right in your FOV or not. It's very different from switching radio stations or audio sources, which I'm sure you can do quite easily.
"Big brother" tech exists because a problem was identified. Autonomous tech (auto-braking, lane keep, lane centering, cross-traffic alerts, door/cyclist alerts, rear seat alerts, etc.) is simply trying to catch up with today's distracted driver. To me, the disabled touchscreen while driving is a way of mitigating the distraction of "hunting and pecking" at the touchscreen.
To be clear, I think Mazda has put the screen in a place where even if you did have to hunt and peck, you can still see most of the road, which is great. I would just like to see lane centering implemented
before they enable the touchscreen, because people
will wander while distracted, regardless of how well you think you drive or how aware you think you are. And I'm sure you think you can drive just fine while being distracted, but you, as one single driver, are not representative of all drivers. Further, drunk drivers also share the same mentality i.e. I can drive perfectly fine while drunk. I know it's not really the same thing, but.. it kind of is.
YMMV.
Lane keep assist is plenty to get my attention. Not sure if I want anything more aggressive/intrusive.
See above. I'm sure you'd be able to turn it off or adjust the sensitivity if it wasn't to your liking. The point is that the masses want a screen that you can play with while driving. I would personally like to see lane centering implemented to mitigate the wandering and drifting that is going to, or is already, occurring as a result. Nothing wrong with that logic, IMO of course.