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Editorial: Technology is a problem for drivers, but it's also a solution

At the risk of sounding like a bunch of technophobes, there is something to be said for so-called idiot lights.

Those yellow or red warning indicators would pop up on your dashboard only in the rare instance when something was going horribly wrong with your car. Back in the age before onboard computers, before cars had video displays the size of your earliest TV set, cars basically told you what gear you were in, how fast you were going, how far you'd gone, roughly how much gas was left in the tank, whether your battery was dying and whether your oil pressure was too low. Just the basics.

Vehicles now are like fighter-jet cockpits. Minivans have tachometers to tell you if you're in danger of redlining that four-banger on the way to soccer practice. You can choose from dozens of presets on AM, FM, HD and satellite radio. You can scroll through your six-CD changer, choose the settings for multiple weather zones within your vehicle and check email and Facebook with a Bluetooth connection to your phone. TV sets are built into head rests and drop down from the ceiling. You can monitor your fuel efficiency with various graphs.

You can watch your average speed, average fuel economy, miles left on a tank of gas. On some higher-end cars, you can control the aromatherapy and adjust the huggability and massage functions of your seat.

Depending on your vehicle's maker, all of this will be illuminated in a sexy blue, green or submarine-in-stealth-mode red.

Yes, it's all very cool, but what sorts of information do you really need to be consumed with while you're driving?

Actually, the most important information you can monitor while driving is all outside of your car. How close are you following the guy ahead of you? Who is coming up on your right? Can you see the motorcyclist and hear the ambulance?

Technology can be a wonderful thing, but in many ways, the accoutrements of modern vehicles make you forget that you are piloting two tons of metal and plastic at high speed.

Automakers feel pressure to make continual technological advancements to maintain their place in the market.

And the sexy stuff is what you can see and play with.

As safety goes, they've come a long way since the advent of the seat belt - most notably with anti-lock brakes and air bags and more controls on steering wheels that you manipulate by touch rather than by looking down or away from the road.

They continue improving safety with backup cameras, electronic stability control, adaptive headlights that help you see around corners, warnings when you veer from your lane and blind zone warnings in your side-view mirrors.

Some have looked at limited displays that appear on your windshield - just like fighter jets - so that you don't have to look away from the road ahead of you. While they continue working on those safety advances and hopefully incorporate them into more modest-priced vehicles, we urge them to focus also on finding ways to make the creature comforts we've come to expect in our vehicles inaccessible in a moving vehicle - or at least to provide ways for us to disable them for ourselves and our kids.

We urge automakers to have our cars talk to us more, ala those old idiot lights, to get our attention without affecting our focus on what's most important.

And that is the other people on the road.

The law

Spot check show rampant texting, driving in suburbs

How we counted

Why hands-free driving isn't risk-free

Editorial: The truth we must still confront about distracted driving

Why do we allow distracted driving?

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