C# touchpad movement

Hey

I'm new to game development and need help with my movement script

My setup is:

Player that moves left to right whilst falling this has my player controller script

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 
 [System.Serializable]
 public class Boundary 
 {
     public float xMin, xMax;
 }
 
 public class PlayerController : MonoBehaviour
 {
     public float speed;
     public Boundary boundary;
     public SimpleTouchPad touchPad;
     
     void FixedUpdate ()
     {
         GameControl.dist = (int) Mathf.Abs(transform.position.y);
 
         Vector2 direction = touchPad.GetDirection ();
         Vector2 movement = new Vector3 (direction.x, 0.0f);
         GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = movement * speed;
     }
 }

Then my touchpad is a ui element that covers the screen

using UnityEngine; using UnityEngine.UI; using UnityEngine.EventSystems; using System.Collections;

public class SimpleTouchPad : MonoBehaviour, IPointerDownHandler, IDragHandler, IPointerUpHandler {

 public float smoothing;
 
 private Vector2 origin;
 private Vector2 direction;
 private Vector2 smoothDirection;
 private bool touched;
 private int pointerID;
 
 void Awake () 
 {
     direction = Vector2.zero;
     touched = false;
 }
 
 public void OnPointerDown (PointerEventData data) 
 {
     if (!touched) {
         touched = true;
         pointerID = data.pointerId;
         origin = data.position;
     }
 }
 
 public void OnDrag (PointerEventData data) 
 {
     if (data.pointerId == pointerID) {
         Vector2 currentPosition = data.position;
         Vector2 directionRaw = currentPosition - origin;
         direction = directionRaw.normalized;
     }
 }
 
 public void OnPointerUp (PointerEventData data) 
 {
     if (data.pointerId == pointerID) {
         direction = Vector2.zero;
         touched = false;
     }
 }
 
 public Vector2 GetDirection () 
 {
     smoothDirection = Vector2.MoveTowards (smoothDirection, direction, smoothing);

     return smoothDirection;
 }

}

My problem is that if I swipe left then right (or vice versa) without lifting my finger of the screen it doesn't react straight away. The player keeps moving to the left for a short wile before moving right.

Any ideas?