It's obvious that using your smartphone while driving is a bad idea, but your passengers might be feeling queasy as they scroll through their devices during the trip.
According to Apple's research, motion sickness often happens when what you see doesn't match what you feel. This sensory mismatch between your eyes and your body can cause discomfort.
Reports suggest that electric vehicles can worsen car sickness because they lack clear speed cues and have abrupt braking.
Apple's investigation into car sickness led to a new iOS feature called Vehicle Motion Cues.
“With Vehicle Motion Cues, animated dots on the edges of the screen represent changes in vehicle motion to help reduce sensory conflict without interfering with the main content,” says Apple. “Using sensors built into iPhone and iPad, Vehicle Motion Cues recognises when a user is in a moving vehicle and responds accordingly. The feature can be set to show automatically on iPhone, or can be turned on and off in Control Centre.”
Vehicle Motion Cues will debut with iOS 18 in September, alongside an updated CarPlay version that prioritises voice control to keep drivers focused on the road.
It's nice to see Apple tackling these issues, but it's ironic that smartphones contribute to the problem they're trying to solve. The simplest solution? Turn off your phone and concentrate on driving.