Originally Posted by
JoeyBike
Believe it or not, auto manufacturers are using larger touch screens to try to get drivers off their phones tiny screens. But the auto engineers suck a it. And drivers must LOOK at the screen all the way until their finger touches the thing unlike physical buttons that drivers can easily memorize and operate without looking away from the road. Some things I didn't know, others are common sense.
NPR -
LINK
Everything in my car is a push button. 2003 Camry. Some buttons even have a little "braille" raised bump on them to locate the most common buttons by feel alone. I do have a small digital readout screen very top of the dash that reports fuel information (mileage, average per gallon, how many miles I can go with remaining fuel, time, temp, etc) all controlled by buttons on my steering wheel. And glancing at that display keeps my eyes at the very top of the dashboard, level with my hood. Fidgeting with the sound system would require me to look deeper down the dash slightly. Climate control a bit further down but has a thermostat so it pretty much works without me thinking about it.
The rush to add large touch screens to replace knobs and switches on dashboards reminds me of a throwaway comment the late Jobst Brandt once made concerning questionable design decisions for new racing bike frames and components. He was talking about structural changes, but the principle is the same:
"A recurring theme is making a part lighter until the death toll becomes prohibitive, then adding a little material where the breakage occurs."
Given how much cheaper touch screens have become to manufacture than mechanisms that use knobs and switches (and how much more expensive it would be to alter, move, add to, or replace those knobs and switches in subsequent models), the death toll is going to get quite high before the danger that touch screens represent is recognized and addressed. And since we've all become screen addicts, maybe people will never accept going back to physical controls.