Return of the two-tiered Civic dashboard

I have mentioned the two-tiered dashboard of my 2008 Civic in this blog before, and I wanted to touch on it one last time. I’ve gotten used to the dual-tiered dashboard, though I have complained about it in the past.

However, this research from Summala, Lamble & Laakso (1998) demonstrates that brake light detection is not so good when attention is focused at the speedometer and is better when focused on a display at the lower portion of the windshield. From the article’s abstract:

Perception of the lead car’s braking was measured on-road when subjects of various levels of driving experience were looking at a digital display located at the lower part of the windscreen, at the speedometer level, or in the mid-console. The brake lights of the lead car were either working normally or switched off. The results indicated that the detection of the lead car’s brake lights, in daylight, is substantially impaired when a following driver is looking at the speedometer area and brake lights do not contribute to detection at all when he/she is looking at a target in the mid-console… 

So peripheral vision is not that great for detecting brake lights when you’re looking down at your speedometer. It is pretty good, though, at the level of the lower windshield, which is where my speedometer is. So I must revise my assessment of the two-tiered Civic dashboard and say that it doesn’t seem to hurt driving performance by being digital instead of analog, and it may even assist with brake light detection. I suppose only an analysis of accident rates between the two types of speedometers will really tell which design is better, but for now, I endorse this new design.