A couple of weeks ago, the AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety released what’s becoming an annual study of car infotainment systems, or, as I like to call it, The “your dashboard display is going to kill you eventually” study. Most of the headlines from the study, conducted with researchers from the University Of Utah, announced that car infotainment systems that work in conjunction with Android Auto or Apple Play are safer than “native” in-dash car tech. This is terrific news, until you dig a little deeper into the results.This year’s study piggybacked onto last year’s alarming results, adding new cars. Infotainment systems that required “very high” demand from drivers include the BMW 430i xDrive convertible, The Buick Enclave Leather (whose sexy name alone is extremely distracting), and the Nissan Rogue SV. But even the cars that did well in the study, like the Chevy Silverado and Kia Sportage, require a moderate amount of demand. In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you can mind-meld Siri into the dash of your Ram 1500 Laramie. Infotainment systems are still not safe.
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