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- cross-posted to:
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European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) — an independent and well-regarded safety body for the automotive industry — is set to introduce new rules in January 2026 that require the vehicles it assesses to have physical controls to receive a full five-star safety rating.
While Euro NCAP testing is voluntary, it is widely backed by several EU governments with companies like Tesla, Volvo, VW, and BMW using their five-star scores to boast about the safety of their vehicles to potential buyers.
“The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes,” said Matthew Avery, director of strategic development at Euro NCAP, to the Times. To be eligible for the maximum safety rating after the new testing guidelines go into effect, cars will need to use buttons, dials, or stalks for hazard warning lights, indicators, windscreen wipers, SOS calls, and the horn.
The Euro NCAP’s safety guidelines aren’t a legal requirement, however, car makers take safety ratings pretty seriously, so any risk of points being docked during such assessments is likely to be taken into consideration.
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Drove a new pickup the other day, upper trim model. Felt like I was driving a luxury car. Even had hands-free driving in some areas. Those parts were amazing.
Absolutely hated the infotainment and other automatic systems. A giant clusterfk of poorly designed, non-intuitive, frustrating systems that did unexpected things or took too much time to set up. The nice tech was completely overshadowed by the over-engineered junk.
Ya know what? Lets get a mulligan. Lets go back to the begining. Let’s start from the begining with vehicles again. From now on, the only vehicle allowed to be produced is the Ford model T that came out in like 1914. Every car is now that car.
No screens. No gimmicks. No seatbelts. Not even a heater or an enclosed surface. If you crash, your ass is getting thrown from the car onto the pavement! HEADS UP ASSHOLE!!! PAY ATTENTION TO THE GOD DAMNED ROAD YOU CELL PHONE DRIVING DISTRACTED FUCKCLOWN!!!
Let’s just get back to basics, ya know?
sounds like europe is really sending a very loud, deafining FUCK YOU to elon and tesla.
and I am absolutely here for it.
While this does fuck him, it’s also sound safety science. Touch screens have made cars less safe. It just so happens that Musk’s company makes shitty unsafe cars which got rid of buttons to cut costs.
oh I agree. the thing is elon has explicitly said that he doesn’t want a bunch of knobs in his cars and they should only have a central control screen to run everything. even the backup shift device is a touch sensor somewhere around the rear view iirc (never driven one nor do I want to). I essence, an entire continent is telling one company explicitly that your cars are not the safest on the road no matter what you claim. that’s going to be a massive hit on the company’s reputation and value and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving induhvidual.
Tesla was the trailblazer, but what’s worse is that everyone else followed. Now Mazda of all companies is kind of a trailblazer in getting back to sanity (there were articles about them ditching touchscreens or at least touchscreen-only setups a couple of years ago already).
What’s really funny to me is that even so-called premium German brands went to pretty much full touch. Used to be they’d put in the engineering time to make buttons feel more solid to push and nowadays they just give you a big slab of touchscreen you can’t even feel properly while driving.
Everyone is just pinching pennies because touchscreens are cheaper than buttons.
Fucking finally.
How about just banning touchscreen use while driving altogether?
E: I meant the OEMs, not drivers
We already have distracted driving laws here. You can’t use electronic devices like phones while driving. How a giant iPad in the middle of your dashboard doesn’t count blows my mind.
Well, presumably this group is more about models of cars and less about individual driver behavior.
I didn’t mean individual driver behavior, I mean ban touchscreens from accepting any inputs at all while driving.
Would be lovely, but what I’m afraid is going to happen is that you have to stop in order to change the climate settings because some idiot bean counter told the UX and engineering departments to find a way to save money so they got rid of the climate control module and put it in the infotainment screen. And the passenger can’t even change the song while driving because they got rid of the forward and backward buttons too.
Mandate physical controls for everything that the driver has a reasonable need or desire to touch while driving (climate, seated heats, horn, etc). And then also do what you suggested in addition to that. Can’t let car manufacturers have too much free reign.
I’m actually a fan of big screens, HOWEVER they should be limited to being an actual “infotainment” system only. All essential controls should be buttons, switches, and dials.
My vote is:
- Button layouts that have worked for 20-30 years
- Heads-up displays for readouts of current values. Mph/kmph is displayed by default and the display temporarily changes when something like volume, heat, radio station, track, etc. is adjusted
Best of both worlds
I disagree. I don’t want to have to take my eyes off the road to change my music, or turn the volume up/down. They need to be physical buttons/knobs.
There are buttons on the steering wheel to skip songs and adjust the volume.
If you get the fancy steering wheel option
I think I agree. I would be fine with an infotainment system that:
- doesn’t cripple the car when broken
- isn’t integrated with non-screen controls like climate
- still has functional buttons on the steering wheel
My malibu meets 2 and 3, but the fact that if the infotainment system breaks it cripples the entire car, puts me on edge. This would be mitigated if actual functionality was outside of it, and that the touch screen was just a control layer.
There should be two screens. One only visible from the navigators seat and always available. The other can be where it makes sense, but it should be disabled for all input when the car is not in park. When the car is in motion only limited information is allowed - you shouldn’t be able to tell what the name of the song playing is as that isn’t something you have any business reading. You should get some indication of what the next turn is, but even that needs serious UX work to ensure it is not distracting.
Exactly!
This pretty much summarises it.
Jesus finally. Death to touch screens in cars
Monkey paw curls
Same exact cars but with button navigated non-touch screens.
button navigated
2000s Volvo?
Or 2000s BMW?
That’s a plus. I drove a hire car with a joystick/dial/button thing that could control the touch screen. It was so much easier to pay attention to driving while controlling something on screen. With touch screens you need to watch your finger as you press because there’s no tactile feedback.
people don’t seem to understand what’s going on here.
Nothing on the infotainment unit needs to be adjusted while driving, it can have a brail interface for all it should matter.
Core controls are being put behind touch screens, that’s the whole point of changing NCAP requirements.
leaving them on a screen with less direct control is objectively worse. need to use turn signal? now you need to select it first.
As someone who drives a mazda with infotainment designed before touchscreens (it has one), I’m fine with this.
I bought my Mazda 3 used. The captain’s knob will be sorely missed if I ever get a different car.
My car is the same. I know the current state of the infotainment based on what is entering my ears. I also know the location of the physical controls and how they alter that state without taking my eyes off the road. Non-touch screens and physical controls is fine.
This whole thing started because manufactures are putting core controls behind touch screens. This would in fact be the very definition of “not fine”
literally nothing important should be on the infotainment system anyway.
I’d take that deal. My touch screen died in my car and guess what can’t control it? The steering wheel buttons, despite having full directional/enter/return.
Gimme a keyboard and mouse. I can drive the whole car and operate the infotainment with my 250 apm
Replace the steering wheel with a Steam Deck.
What’s your EPM though, like 20?
Same exact cars but with button navigated non-touch screens.
I love it!
Driving and texting is dangerous. Put down that phone and stare at this ipad in your dash! Further the ipad is slow, designed by imbeciles, is glitchy, buggy, and not intuitive and doesn’t follow modern design standards.
now with #ADS, please tap the x to continue changing your GPS.
Your brakes will be available again after this mandatory 30s ad.
To be fair, it’s at least closer to the windshield, so you’re more likely to see something through peripheral vision with the dash screen than your phone, which you need to keep out of view of police.
Still bad, but probably not as bad.
cars will need to use buttons, dials, or stalks for […] the horn
Very excited for when I get cut off in my 2030 Polestar 3 and can adjust my honk volume dial all the way to 11 before Family Feud smashing that sucker through my dash and into the gates of hell.
cars will need to use buttons, dials, or stalks for hazard warning lights, indicators, windscreen wipers, SOS calls, and the horn.
Not enough, in my opinion. I’ve never had a car with these on touch screens, but I can’t imagine why anyone would think it’s a good idea. I’d like entertainment centers to stop being touch screens as well, but this doesn’t go that far. Hopefully they do in the future, though, since this is a good start!
I consider temperature and fan controls to be safety critical for demisting windows etc for example.
What, keeping a rag on hand to wipe away the fog on the windshield every 3 minutes isn’t safe enough?
I can’t imagine why anyone would think it’s a good idea
Suposedly it’s to cut costs but I find it very hard to believe a few buttons add much cost at all. Much less at the expense of customer satisfaction. Tripping over a dollar to pick up a dime, in my opinion.
The button might be 1c, but you gotta wire it, install it, warranty it etc etc. It’s not as inconsequential as you might think. And there’s a lot of them.
A screen is the screen and the wiring to the computer.
It’s a couple skus to maintain instead of dozens. It’s 1 warranty item instead of dozens.
Also if one piece of that dash isn’t available, one button, one wire etc, it can slow production. So a single screen can be a smoother production line experience
edit: Also all cars are already required to have a screen for the backup camera, so there’s already a mandatory cost there. It’s not like they can just forgo a screen entirely.
It might not be a good idea, but it absolutely will save a noticeable amount of money per vehicle.
it absolutely will save a noticeable amount of money per vehicle.
I don’t believe that.
Monroe has talked about how they removed some bolts that weren’t absolutely necessary from the vehicle, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In that case, it’s fine. In this case I think it’s the same situation except they don’t care about driver safety. If the driver is fucking with touchscreens and crashes, that’s gonna be on the driver.
You’re contradicting yourself LOL
I don’t believe that.
Monroe has talked about how they removed some bolts that weren’t absolutely necessary from the vehicle, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In that case, it’s fine.
Its okay if you don’t like it, but come on dude, a screen is going to be cheaper by 10s or maybe a hundred dollars a car. Were talking 10s of millions or more saved with any company doing this at scale.
You’re contradicting yourself LOL
No I’m not ROFLCOPTER. We were discussing “per vehicle”.
a screen is going to be cheaper by 10s or maybe a hundred dollars a car
10s, yes. Like maybe 15 or 20 bucks in BOM and labor. Hundreds, no.
Were talking 10s of millions or more saved with any company doing this at scale
Money saved to the company, not the end user. The end user just receives a severely degraded and unsafe experience.
I mean shit, let’s just remove all the seats, that’ll save THOUSANDS per car, right!?
Okay, so you admit, using a screen saves money.
Thank you, it was a pleasure watching you come to the realization.
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There was no realization. I never said anything to the contrary.
You don’t genuinely believe anyone is installing and wiring up individual buttons in a car, do you? That whole row of buttons is delivered as a single unit just like the screen is and will have a single connector just like the screen does. Sure, you then have to install and test two units (screen and buttons) but that is about it in terms of extra work.
Lol of course not, but it’s assembled somewhere (with people or expensive robots) which is why it has a cost more than the simple cost of the button itself. It’s a bespoke piece of hardware specifically designed for the vehicle instead of a commodity LCD screen which can be mass produced for multiple vehicles, (edit and as I said, is already required in the vehicle for a backup camera at a bare minimum, so it’s just the upgrade cost for a slightly more expensive screen, not a screen vs no screen)
Not far enough indeed.
I dont need all my entertainment as physical controls but I do at least want volume - and that is totally justifiable as a safety consideration too. Sometimes you need to mute it quickly if you think you heard something of concern on the road, or if you are like me, just to concentrate on driving when things get tricky!
There are so many other items you can apply similar safety arguments for:
Blowers and demisters - you shouldn’t be messing around in a touchscreen when you see your windows starting to fog
Cabin temperature - Uncomfortable driver = distracted driver
In my opinion, the place to draw the line should be this:
If the need to interact with the feature is triggered by external road conditions it MUST be physical. (Example: wipers, heating, blowers, all headlight and fog light controls, enable or diasable lane assist, cruise control)
If the driver has the ability to themselves choose when to engage with the feature and can do it only when safe, then it can be fully touchscreen. (Example: satnav route, fuel economy settings, electric seat position)
thank god. I hope this trend migrates to other countries. The amount of effort/distraction for touch screens combined with the additional cost of having to replace full on infotainment systems is annoying.
Screen consoles in 4000lb bullets were the dumbest engineering idea ever. It’s probably a contributing factor as to why accident rates are up.
Up until 2018 I could manipulate my entire console without shifting my eyes from the road. Doing this by touch alone only works with physical buttons and knobs.
The second dumbest engineering idea. The dumbest was clearly the car itself, letting the average person control a device that can accelerate hundreds or thousands of kilograms to speeds where reaction times of fractions of a second matter for safety was clearly one of the stupidest ideas ever.
If they could ban the “confirm you know the rules of the fucking road” dialogue box that would be great.
I hope the standard makes it clear that touch buttons are about as bad as a touch screen is
Be still my heart
