European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

European safety testers plan to dock ratings for cars that lack physical controls for critical functions like turn signals, wipers, horn, and hazard lights, intensifying scrutiny of touchscreen‑heavy dashboards. Commenters argue that touch and voice interfaces are slower, less reliable, and demand more visual attention than knobs and stalks, especially in bad weather or emergencies, and often age poorly compared to simple hardware. While many acknowledge touchscreens are cheaper and easier to update, the dominant view is that core driving and visibility functions should remain tactile and standardized to reduce distraction and improve safety.

Physical vs. touchscreen controls

  • Strong consensus that core driving functions (signals, wipers, horn, hazards, HVAC defrost, basic climate and volume) should have fixed, tactile controls you can operate without looking.
  • Touchscreens are seen as distracting, unreliable on bumpy roads, slow in cold weather, and aging worse than physical hardware.
  • Many argue that moving routine controls to glass is equivalent to legalizing “using a phone while driving” but built into the car.

Voice control debate

  • Some see voice as a useful additional modality, not a primary one: poor discoverability, latency, misrecognition, accents, noise, and privacy are recurring complaints.
  • Edge cases: people who can’t speak, temporary loss of voice, sleeping passengers, loud cabins, windows down.
  • A few report good experiences with specific systems (CarPlay, some German brands), but most describe current in-car voice UIs as frustrating and distracting.

Tesla and extreme minimalism

  • Tesla widely cited as the “worst offender”: removal of stalks, capacitive turn-signal and horn buttons on the wheel/yoke, screen-based gear selection, camera-only auto wipers.
  • Owners are split: some love the UI and say common actions are efficient; others say changes are dangerous (especially horn, wipers, fog lights, turn signals mid‑turn).
  • UI updates that move virtual controls around are viewed as especially bad: muscle memory breaks over time.

Cost, manufacturing, and business incentives

  • Multiple comments tie touch adoption to:
    • BOM and assembly savings (one generic screen vs many knobs, jigs, wiring looms).
    • Easier parallel interior design and late software changes.
    • Platforming for subscriptions, feature gating, and OTA upsell (and soft “planned obsolescence”).

Safety, evidence, and regulation

  • Many feel it’s “obviously” less safe, but acknowledge hard crash data linking touchscreen interaction to accidents is limited or hard to attribute.
  • References to other domains:
    • US Navy destroyer collision and F‑35 pilots mis-tapping touchscreens as cautionary tales.
  • Euro NCAP is clarified as a ratings body, not a regulator, but its scoring still influences manufacturers and can signal future regulation.

Examples of better/worse UX

  • Praised: Mazda’s commander knob with non-touch CarPlay/Android Auto; recent Toyotas with big climate knobs; some BMW/Mercedes layouts with clear physical defrost and volume controls.
  • Criticized: VW ID-series capacitive steering-wheel controls and window toggles, climate on deep touch menus, auto-wipers that are unreliable, and any design where critical controls move or lack tactile boundaries.

Drive‑by‑wire and related tech

  • Steering/brake/drive‑by‑wire provoke mixed reactions:
    • Some see redundancy and monitoring as potentially safer long-term (analogy to fly‑by‑wire).
    • Others distrust software and shared buses for life‑critical functions, citing past automotive software quality issues.
  • Concern that mechanical feedback (steering, throttle, brake feel) is being lost, making grip and vehicle state harder to judge.