Some Text on Car Dashboards Distracts More than Others

Text size and type font used in dashboard displays may be overlooked culprits in distracted driving.

Changing the typefaces on displays reduced the amount of time male drivers looked away from the road by nearly 11% in two experiments, according to the study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and the New England University Transportation Center.

That difference in "glance time" represents about 50 feet in distance traveling at highway speed, says David Gould of Monotype Imaging, which sponsored the study. Women showed little difference in their ability to read different styles, the researchers said.

Despite increasing use of voice-activated controls in cars, "We know that text in cars is here to stay," says Bryan Reimer, one of the study's authors and a research scientist at MIT's AgeLab, whose studies include the impact of vehicle technologies on driver behavior. "Given this reality, text needs to be as easy to read as possible."

Of the nearly 900,000 crashes involving distracted driving reported to police in 2010, 26,000 involved adjusting devices or controls in a car, says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. About 3,000 people were killed in distracted-driving crashes last year, the agency says.

Reimer says cellphone makers need to address font size and type as well, especially now that cars can increasingly project smartphone features onto dash displays.

Chevrolet's 2013 Sonic and Spark small cars have a GoGo app that can show smartphones' navigation systems on the cars' touch-screens. Starting next year, Mercedes-Benz says it will integrate some smartphones -- including those by Nokia, HTC and Samsung -- into its cars.

NHTSA's proposed guidelines require all dashboard functions to be possible with one or more two-second glances away from the road.

Some luxury-car makers let drivers read snippets of e-mails, texts and social media on dashboard displays. That's raised concerns among some safety experts, although...