Figuring out what works well or not while driving isn't a great idea, but using the ones that work well seems fine for most people.
Saying "Hey Siri, text Fred <pause> I'm on my way but stuck in traffic, eta 4 o'clock" or something along those lines nearly always works fine for me and is no more distracting than having a conversation with somebody in the car with me. If Siri gets some of the message wrong I'll either send a new one using clearer speech or wait until I'm not driving to fix it if the mistake isn't important.
Sure, it would be possible to then allow myself to get distracted by focussing too much on some weird aspect of it, but equally it would be possible to get so emotional in a conversation with somebody sat next to you that you stop paying attention to the road. And we (most people at least) don't say "it's not safe to talk at all while driving", we just make sure not to go over that line of getting too distracted by the conversation.
> or something along those lines nearly always works fine for me and is no more distracting than having a conversation with somebody in the car with me.
Until you have several Freds in your contact list. Until you have friends with foreign/uncommon names. As long as you have near-perfect American pronunciation. As long as...
There are too many variables to consider and think of. Sometimes I can't get Siri to reliably understand what music I want (and my Engilsh is pretty darn good), much less anything more advanced.
> As long as you have near-perfect American pronunciation.
There isn’t a such thing as an American accent. Ask anyone who is not a native speaker and either hasn’t been to US that long and tries to understand my natural deep southern accent. I can adjust my accent if needed and if I think about it.
There is an accent that is typically called "standard American" or something along those lines, which is what you'll hear on things like national news programs. I'm not sure how many Americans actually speak with this accent, but it's usually the one that all of these devices target initially.
It's essentially how a homogenized middle+ class of people born/raised in/around metropolitan areas that aren't in the South/Texas speak. (In general, stereotypical accents associated with various cities are mostly more of a working class thing, e.g. Southie in Boston.) The South is the main outlier. Colleagues I work with from and living in North Carolina generally have a distinct southern accent albeit a mostly slight one. But, yeah, historically we'd have called it Midwestern.
> Hey Siri, text Fred <pause> I'm on my way but stuck in traffic, eta 4 o'clock
That only works well if you have an accent it recognizes, if you're speech is clear (not slurred, not lisping etc), if you don't stammer, if you don't have any verbal tics that you don't want to show up in the message, and if "Fred" is actually a simple unambigous name.
Otherwise, at best when you want to send a message to "Ioana" it may end up sending a message to "Anna" that says "I'm, ummm, oh my way! and stalking traffic ate a what was it like 4 like maybe 4 and you know what <pause>" (followed by the "4 o'clock" that will no longer be included).
Google (android auto) was significantly better at this early on than it is now. I used to be able to search random topics by voice while driving, and it would read me excerpts and results. I used it often. Now it's map-specific, messaging, or music-specific and nothing else.
Since the voice assistants are incredibly stupid I find it extremely stressful and distracting to ask them for anything while driving.