Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn five-star safety rating in Europe
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/5/24091043/euro-ncap-safety-rating-europe-2026-touchscreen-buttons-dialsOpen linkView original on sopuli.xyz1200
Comments145https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/5/24091043/euro-ncap-safety-rating-europe-2026-touchscreen-buttons-dialsOpen linkView original on sopuli.xyz
Controlling everything in a car through screens is a safety hazard. It's insane that's even allowed.
I just bought a newish car and would not even consider any without physical buttons for climate. It really helped narrow the options, haha.
Mazda?
I don't know how they are now but a couple of years back Mazda was on the other extreme for me. I don't want to fiddle with a dial when all I would need is one tap. I don't want to squit at a tiny screen to descipher the map. I don't want to jiggle the knob for half an hour to write in 3 words in a search bar.
Having both a decent infotainment and also physical buttons for the most important functions is possible and there have been others that have done it better.
Went with a Hyundai Kona Electric 🤷♀️
I have been fortunate to stumble into Mazda ownership a couple times in my life. I had a 1989 MX-6 coupe with a 5-speed manual ~25 years ago, and currently drive a 2012 mazda3. They have been doing a lot of great design for many years, and I think flying under the radar for many people. And the enjoyment of driving has always been on their radar. Hell, consider that they still make the MX-5 Miata! I think I wanna get me a fun little RWD zoom zoom with a soft top and a 6-speed.
If you look up the 2025 mazda3 interior, you see buttons and gauges, with a small central infotainment screen. Plus you can get that car in AWD with a turbo these days.
I don't disagree, but what's up with climate? Of all the things I change during a drive, climate is probably the least used one. IMO, if the car has a decent HVAC system, it should be set and forget (less the defroster and A/C max in summer).
It might be that manufacturers see in their data that most people use it set and forget nowadays anyways, which made the cost cutting decision easier.
Idk, I probably have autism or something. In more extreme temps I like it blasting on me until I reach a tipping point at which it is completely overwhelming and I need it turned off or pointing away, haha. It could also be the fact that I am upgrading from a 2000. And I got an electric, so if I don't need climate control using battery I want it off, which may change when I am on the highway. Other factors include not having a garage and doing a lot of outdoor activities that can leave one very hot/cold/moist for the drive home. The thing that radicalized me on this issue was driving in a Tesla. You couldn't even change the direction of the vents manually.
You've obviously never been in the same car as my mom. "ooh it's cold in here, can you turn up the heating? A bit more? It's still cold, a bit more?" "oh wow, now it's really warm, can you turn down the heat?"
There are very few core controls and they should absolutely be physical.
I hate screens as much as anyone but I honestly don't think there's much that can't be put behind one.
Climate controls need to be physical, though.
They are safety critical when your windscreen fogs over.
Radio, too. For emergency broadcasts.
And obviously any driving controls, like lights, indicators, cruise control, wipers, ...
Basically, anything that was present in a car 30 years ago needs to have physical buttons.
Disagree about radio (if it’s really that urgent to receive an emergency broadcast you can pull over for a moment), but yeah the rest seem like it’s best to have physical controls for everything else.
The volume down is important.
That's usually on the steering wheel for a while now. I do agree with more physical buttons though.
just because it is doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be regulated to be
Also, it tends to be easier to find the volume knob or dedicated volume keys than trying to see if the label on the steering wheel is for volume, skip tracks or cruise control. Not as important on your car, but it comes into play for rentals and/or borrowed cars.
That's theoretically correct, however, when picking safety standards you should go by how most people would be expected to act, not by ideal scenarios. Is someone commuting to work going to pull over to change the media source or radio station? Probably not. So the controls should minimize how long the driver will look at the console and have their hand off the steering wheel. Media buttons on the steering wheel can seem superfluous, but it helps keep people less distracted.
I had an 02 Peugot with automated climate controls. Shits not new. it's one of the few cases where I will not go back to the caveman way. automated headlights are another.
a case can be made for demister buttons but I haven't owned a car made this century that would fog up so that's a pull over and figure this shit out for the first time affair not a take your eyes off the road and dick around with controls physical or otherwise affair.
Any car will fog up when you get in with 4 people in wet clothes while it rains.
again that's not something you should be dealing with doing 110 on the freeway while steering with your knees and eating cup ramen.
I think my "peak American" was that time many years ago when I went driving down the I35 interstate in rural Kansas...eating a plate of chicken fettuccine alfredo.
It's OK. The statute of limitations has long passed.
Although, now that I think of it, this might be my peak Italian moment, though I'm not of Italian ancestry...
Anyway, it was
deliciousFazoli's.Absolutely not. Italians may drive like madmen, but they drive well and are focussed.
Also why the hell would you add chicken to butter and parmigiano.
We have a 2015 Toyota Highlander with automatic climate controls. Except when it's 72° outside and 110° inside the car when I get in, I don't want it lazily whispering 72° air at me (which it does sometimes), I want it to blow ice-fucking-cold air for several minutes so I don't sweat my balls off waiting for the interior temp to come down. Having physical controls is quite nice for that. I can set it back to 72 or 69^nice^ or whatever after the fact.
Both of my cars have automatic headlights, so 95% of the time we don't really touch those controls. Every once in a while I'll turn them on during a storm, when the light level isn't quite low enough to trigger the headlights.
Do you live somewhere not humid? My 2016 fiesta fogs up pretty badly.
it varies, but I've had 90s cars at the same place look like someone painted the windows white the second I open the door so I just assumed they figured it out. might just have gotten lucky with the model of car or window treatments or something.
Automated headlights should be banned. Whenever I pull up next to someone with their lights off and talk to them, the answer is always the same "I thought they were on automatic!", and then they fumble about madly for a minute trying to find where the switch is at.
It takes one bump and you're driving without lights for days. It's even worse with DRLs since your "headlights" are always on, there is no major visual impact to the driver when their lights are off, but the safety aspects of DRLs I think outweighs the risks here.
For the record, I'm not saying automatic headlights are useless. They're great if you are driving in an area that has a lot of light levels variations, like tunnels, or intermittent storms. They also are nice if you are driving during dawn or dusk. But... Automatic lights should be something you manually turn on and off, not a set-it-and-forget-it behavior.
It's insane that as of now it's up to manufacturers to self-regulate.
Yeah, can’t use a phone while driving but a way bigger screen is fine. Makes sense
Good.
My exact comment.
I would also ban touch sensitive fixed controls. My father's Avalon has dedicated controls for the HVAC but they're touch sensitive, so you set the climate controls to 80C and full fan if you just wipe dust off the panel while the car's on.
You should be able to train your hand on the control, get a good grip on it, and then move it in such a way that a control input is realized. It shouldn't have to beep at you to tell you it's done a thing.
I can turn the air conditioner in my pickup on and off by feel alone, same with the basic radio controls.
VW id3, maybe the whole id series, has this bullshit. I test drove the id3 a couple of months ago. Buttons in the wheel are touch, but you can push them as well which feels clunky. rant warning! Giant freaking screen that got mad at me for trying to adjust the ac while driving (supposedly I tap it too fast, and got a time-out). Stupid LEDs under the windshield that tries to communicate stuff by lightning up in either side or move across and shit, that was really confusing. It even had mood lighting. Wtf, in a car?!? Putting the car in sports mode, to get an idea of how it can drain the battery on the motorway, changed the mood from blue to red.
Stupidest fucking car I've ever driven. Went with a fully optioned zoe instead. 5k€ less for the same year, and actual buttons for stuff. Although I'd like to meet the engineer, who thought sticking buttons behind the wheel where they're hidden, was a good idea.
The Id3 and more specifically the Cupra Born are off my list because of the stupid steering wheel buttons, they are soo fucking bad.
I will probably go with a used electric Niro, saw a video complaining about how it has 73 buttons, I am like, awesome.
And temperature up/down and fan power should both be dials/rotary encoders, none of this "one push per degree/power level" BS.
I have a 15 year old car with a touchscreen. It's not a capacitive screen, it's resistive. That means I need to actually push a little bit to register a touch. It works great!
They even work with gloves! Of course, one could say "just turn up the heat", but it takes a while to warm up the car. And heated steering wheel is still not a standard feature.
I want to be able to replace my infotainment system without hassle or loss of functionality
The good old days when the first thing you did when buying that old beater was change the radio to one with CDs or even MP3s... Of course if you didn't have the budget for that you could always get one of these cassettes with a jack cable to plug into your disc man, the only issue is it would skip when you hit a pothole.
Unless you had a fancy discman with anti-skip. Reminds me of driving my dad's 1963 VW Beetle in high school before we restored it.
Also... Good old days? I did that with my minivan barely three years ago with an Alpine ILX-407... But that one doesn't have a CD player because I don't use CDs anymore. I haven't used CDs in a car since high school, now that I think about it... I just kept my iPod connected to that car, hidden from view.
they already did a study that touchscreens are too distracting and dangerous, buttons are more intuitive and quicker to use, without looking at the menu.
2015 Honda - perfect. Buttons when I wanted buttons. Touch when I wanted touch, and I never had to use it when driving.
2023 Ford - Yeah, it's bad and dangerous.
But screens are cheaper and cars are getting more expensive.
No problem, they'll manage to make them more expensive with buttons as well. I'm trusting the beancounters on that one.
now with AI speed limit assist which you can’t turn off
finally. Assisted suicide.
Yeah, by going 20 on a highway because it misread a 120 sign
Joystick interface... Use directional buttons on steering wheel to steer the cursor on a windows-like point and click interface from around 1999/2000
Why steering wheel? Use direction arrows (which sonstantly change position) on a touch screen conveniently mounted low on the centre console to steer the car. Imagine the leg space you can create by removing that bulky steering wheel and downsizing the dashboard.
/s before some car designer gets any idea
They wouldn't read that far to catch that /s I'm afraid
That's almost as bad. You might be able to remember three to the right and one down then ok but really you are going to take your eyes off the road more than if it was a touch screen.
Cars need physical buttons for all critical features. You push a button and thing happens. No menus.
Nope. Terrible.
Bendable screens that can add a tactile bump underneath a virtual button and that use force touch to detect a press.
https://youtu.be/j_rErbhxNFM
Ah, yes! The Thinkpad clitoris and Windows 98 was peak UX!
I always called it the mouse nipple.
Good! 😜
I mean, I get where you're going with this, but as much as we'd like adequate public transit in the US, it's simply not going to happen fast enough for people to not buy cars any more. Prices will keep going up as long as people keep buying, and I don't see that stopping any time soon.
I feel like I might be too cynical in this, but demand is a strange thing, especially in a heavily corporatized country like the States. A less mobile workforce due to more and more folks not being able to afford individual transportation anymore will at some point result in more lobbying from businesses for alternative transport solutions.
But you're right, that might just be wishful trickle-down thinking and from my understanding the States' problem lies more with inherently car-centry city planning anyway and not with just a lack of busses or trains. That is hard to fix.
Yeah we're built entirely around personal transport. Granted public transit in the form of buses should function inside of that, but I think we're SoL when it comes to good rail options. I looked it up once assuming it would be way cheaper to travel by train, and found plane tickets that were not only like 6 days faster, but 1/3 the price.
Screens make cars look cheap. Why would anyone pay $60k for a vehicle when they cheaped out on the controls. Ipads are no longer new and exciting technology and yet companies want to put them literally everywhere.
But now cars won't look like what Blade Runner drove! /s
The first time I heard that many car manufacturers are getting rid of traditional buttons and odometers in favour of touchscreens, I already thought that it is dangerous.
As always, corporations don't give af.
I don't see an issue to have digital odometer because you don't interact with it
For real, instrument cluster I'm okay having digital. It's not something I need to touch, usually there's steering wheel buttons to interact with it.
Having your whole radio/climate/etc all on one screen with menus and shit is stupid. You can't just reach over and change a setting without looking. I miss when everything was "analog". My first car was a 91 mazda rx7, and I knew exactly where every control was, didn't have to look at anything to operate it.
As someone driving a 2009 Mazda 3 - I really appreciate the simple physical controls in the car. Touch screens are a horrible interface for something you could fiddle with an analog version and get feedback without taking your eyes off the road.
Not saying they shouldn't exist, they can be helpful and useful for displaying information and navigation, hell even controlling the AC and radio and all that but there should also be a physical interface for basic functions.
I know my next vehicle will be electric and I definitely will be swayed by the user interface for things. I do hope car companies are listening to everyone saying they don't want just touch screens and nothing else.
I honestly hate to use the central display to control the AC. In my newer car first you have to press a button on the screen to open the AC control, then you have to set what you want.
On my old one I can do whatever I want without need to look off the road
I have a 2019 mustang, and it's kind of a mixed bag. There are a bunch of controls for AC and heat in physical controls, but there's also several you can't use without the screen (like dual zone temps, and niche things like that)
Digital is fine for things that don't need to be touched. Arguably, it's better.
Separate analog odometers are better, because it's a single point of failure otherwise. If one breaks, I can still read all other instruments (fuel, engine temp, speed and/or rpm, whichever failed)
This.
You work in software just a couple of years, you learn to appreciate the mechanical solutions on a whole other level. Especially in cars.
I think the whole cluster can also fail all at once as well as the individual components, so it's actually more points of failure.
I'm not sure what you mean.
A single display that shows all controls as opposed to many "displays" per control. On top of that an odometer has less components than whatever translates the reading to an aggregated video output.
I just mean that your odometer and your speedometer and everything else are part of the cluster which can entirely fail so everything shuts down, just like a single display can fail, so there's no inherent benefit to analog over digital. It's not just individual components they are all connected still and the entire thing can all shut off at once as well, which happened to me in my little 2005 Pontiac Sunfire.
I drive a 2005 Opel Astra and had the tachometer and speedometer fail on separate occasions while everything else on the dash kept working.
That's actually a good point. A lot of cars have both, now.
Thanks, Europe!
For real, so many good things happen here (us) because Europe makes it a thing, and it's too expensive to have separate manufacturing. Unfortunately for those that use iPhones, their requirement of third party app stores doesn't work here, because that's a software setting, and costs them nothing to have different. (Android user btw, don't come at me)
IKR? The EU legislation to require a common charging system is already making big improvements. Seeing so many things, not just phones, that are now chargable via USB C. So many electronic gadgets, like my shaver, screwdriver and others no longer coming with a wallwart adapter each to live in my drawers and jam them up. Benefits for everyone, apart from the occasional company (Apple) that locks in to a specialised charger for profit reasons.
Europe is being awesome once again!
My car is pretty old and doesn't have any screens. I was using a rental car last week for a few days and I was definitely missing my physical buttons. I had to ask the guy in the passenger seat to change things for me because whenever I tried to without taking my eyes off the road I'd almost never hit the right buttons. Especially when I was going over bumps on the road.
Ford, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make the touchscreen pressure-sensitive, but the flat physical buttons capacitive. Which means that it's super easy to accidentally turn on the driver's seat heater if you dare use the volume knob, impossible to use any of the physical buttons if you have normal gloves on, and very inaccurate to use the touchscreen with those same gloves on.
They know it, too, because when I had a 2013 Fusion, the overhead console with the dome light buttons was the same capacitive bullshit, and my 2015 Fusion has a regular button. (Apart from these design flaws, I love the car, which is why I replaced one with the other.)
At least you had a volume knob. Last week I drove a new Renault Clio via local carsharing, and it had a touchscreen, where you had to click a button on the screen to pop up a slider next to it, where you could change the volume. It had like 5 buttons on the steering wheel, some of them even looked like they could be used for controlling the volume, but no, they were for cruise control or whatever, the only way to change the volume was via the touchscreen with two taps.
We had a Civic with that kind of weird slidy up/down volume control, total garbage.
A knob for volume control has been the standard for car audio since there was car audio. If you're going to change that, why not put the clutch pedal all the way on the right?
I looked it up as as I typed it sounded too stupid to me. It was a 2024 Clio. It doesn't have a knob, but it has a separate control rod below the steering wheel on the bottom right side, and that has volume buttons. According to the car sharing app I drove it for 15 minutes, and I remember I was looking for that and couldn't find it. Is it possible it's not a standard feature, and they didn't have it in that car? Or it just placed so badly that you can't see it from the drivers position?
Ah here it is (timestamped):
https://youtu.be/V8xarINsqDg?t=245
It is invisible from the driver's seating position. And it looks like a complete afterthought. It wouldn't surprise me if it was an option that not all Clios have.
I'd say it was placed badly. These days when I rent a car I always read the owners manual. At least the sections that explain the infotainment system, steering wheel, and stalks, which always have a huge number of buttons and dials with inscrutable graphic labels that don't explain what they do. Yet ironically despite all these physical controls plenty of important controls are not accessible physically.
It's short range car rental, and they have a lot of different models from different manufacturers, so you can't even know which one you will ride next tine. Open the app, see where is the closest car and what it's type. Book the car than you have 30 minutes to reach the car and start your trip. That's not enough time to look up manuals.
I see, short term rentals are a different situation.
Control rod? Like an extra stalk off the side? Totally possible for that to be invisible from the driver's position, either from being behind a steering wheel spoke, or by blending in to the rest of the car, while being a thing you would not even be looking for, especially for something like volume controls.
It's also possible, being a "rental" car, that it had as few options as possible, including not having that control.
Yeah, I don't know what is the correct English term for that thingies. As it was a rental car maybe the seat was not at the perfect height, I usually just move the the seat back and forth, you don't start to change it vertically just for a 15 minute ride.
Have you driven a clutch?
whoosh
I'm renting a Mazda and it seems really tame on that front. Buttons for everything.... There's one screen that can do Android Auto/Carplay but it's NOT touchscreen. You have a big knob down with the gear selector that you can rotate and push in/up/down/left/right to use it. But no car controls except radio tuning on it. There's a separate knob for volume (and on-wheel controls).
Bring back physical keys!
I don't even mind the option of being controlled in the screen, so long as there are also physical buttons. Radio and climate control should be easily accessible by physical buttons. Also, I really hate the newer aesthetic of looking like someone just jammed a tablet into the consol. There no contouring or anything.
I hate key fobs, I have two cars both with massive fobs. I can't keep both on my keyring if I'm planning to put my keys in my pants pocket. I also hate these stupid things are $200-300 to replace - even more at a dealer.
They don't even make the car more secure or harder to steal. Get rid of them.
You can usually buy physical keys san fob. If you're keys then..
That will get me in the door, but I need a fob to start the cars.
I'd expect modern cars to use proximity detection which means the fob only needs to be with you.
Like my Peguot has a fairly large fob, but it's just in the pocket of my jacket. Never leaves it. I guess it's a problem if you don't have a semi permanent thing like a jacket you use every day though.
Blackberry
Europe wins again.
Fuck I hope this gets brought to North America.
Spoiler: it won’t. Tariffs are gonna make it cost prohibitive to buy anything abroad so Americans will have American cars, Europeans will have European cars. Expect quite a bit of divergence.
I don't know. They tend to standardize pieces across countries to reduce costs. And we might just end up with European cars up here in Canada in the end. Who knows. 🤞
up side: divergence isn’t so bad… divergence leads to problems being solved differently rather then homogeneously because it’s cheaper to copy than to solve
Cars have had a multitude of controllers (which means software) for over 30 years now. It's the cellular connection you don't want or need.
The only way I would ever have a connected car is if the software was under my control and could be self-hosted. Nothing crazy, just stuff like weather, traffic, and maybe remote diagnostics. But that's just my nerdy side coming out.
Both of my cars are fairly modern (2008, 2015), but neither have any sort of connection to the outside world, and despite both having touchscreen interfaces, all critical functions are button-operated.
More buttons and more screens
good
i kinda wonder if this is motivated as a non tariff trade barrier to chinese cars designed for the china market which loves apps, touch screens and karaoke in your car 🤔
Maybe but probably not. It's just basic common sense that all car manufacturers need to get on board with. Maybe there's just a coincidence that touchscreens and no physical buttons are cheaper to produce and the Chinese brands that you're referencing are also targeting cheaper production at the cost of road safety.
My experience with country level regulation suggests yes. Usually this sort of thing is targeted at protecting domestic firms from other EU firms. There is always some good sounding reason to do it.
In this case I don't mind at all.
As this is about NCAP testing standards and not about EU regulations probably not, but I welcome every bit of support to convince my wife to never buy a tesla again.
I will never even get in a Tesla. I've seen far too many stories of it burning its occupants alive because the manual release for the doors is a hidden feature.
Having to have an intact software/computer system AND power just to leave a vehicle is beyond dumb.
Not to mention, F-ELON. Screw that guy, and I hope every asset he owns becomes worthless.
I remember back in the mid 2000s with my flip phone a T9 texting. Could text and drive without looking away from the road because of muscle memory. Once I got a touch screen I realized that wasn't the case anymore. So imagine this anecdote with car buttons to touch screens.
Zero is the correct number of touchscreens for a car. This has seemed obvious to me since the first time I saw one and I've never understood how anybody could think otherwise.
If you want an in-car navigation system, that seems like a good application for touchscreens.
Rear view camera is nice too have too. Top down is neat too.
Doesn't need to be touch for that
I'd like to buy a European EV
Go ahead. I like the e208 myself, but there's lots of options
I prefer my 2014 car to anything new i have tried. Buttons are just better.
I know people like to harp on Tesla about this, but ALL of the mandatory controls can be done with stalks/buttons/wheels and have been for awhile
Hazard warning lights - button
Indicators - stalks or buttons
Windscreen wipers - button to initiate, wheel to choose intensity (or press button again to increase intensity). Button then wheel to turn off.
SOS calls - N/A
Horn - Press the wheel
The only one that Tesla didn't always follow was the wipers, but that's no longer the case, glad they finally listened on that one.
Is there actually any OEM that doesn't meet these requirements? I agree though, these are good bare minimum requirements.
Edit: I could also see merit to adding a defog one as that could be a critical timing thing.
Those are always button on all cars tho it's more about secondary operations like tuning AC etc.
The law is about the buttons I listed. Those were in the article.
https://youtu.be/Vk3d-gHdhrE?t=30
It might be a push button, but it's literally in the worst location I've ever seen it in a car.
You’re right, the legislation also needs to mandate a reasonable location for information display. Around me teslas just CONSTANTLY have a blinker on because the stalk has no feedback and the indicator lights are only visible if you’re looking far enough down to lick your own junk.
Not sure why that is, but they do make a noise when they're like all cars.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mPIqbxd6xHo
Your point? It's a button, it passes the law.
This is genuinely good for safety.
Bout bloody time, I really hate modern cars
Thank fuck. I'm still keeping my 2013 civic forever.
Europe rules!
Common European W.
Customer can choose any car they like as long as it has an ipad on the center console.
The screen should be strictly for the radio, and maybe some android-auto like thing.
Radio and parking camera, maybe sat nav for users that don't do android auto or carplay.
My parents' Duster has volume buttons, but… they randomly regulate different things: navigation voice loudness, media volume, something with microphone icon. If you want to change something else, you need to tap a button on the far top right corner of the display, which is incredibly difficult. And even then, the decision isn't remembered, so if you press the volume button after the popup disappears, it will change not what you want again.
I swear, the cars are not even tested these days
I'm still waiting for someone to try haptic screens.
Is there proof that screens are resulting in more crashes?
Touch screens are basically buttons. Maybe they just need physical buttons to get to the essential parts on the touch screen. My car the buttons are on a touchbar-like screen already. For people that prefer physical buttons, you should ask for a mounted remote.
Screens are not basically buttons. I cannot reach at the screen without looking and find a toggle and know that I pressed it successfully.
Yes you can, you could have it announce or provide auditory feedback. You could have a mounted remote with physical buttons if that is what you need. Wait until one of your integrated buttons fails and then you find out it will cost $1k to replace it.
go to your home screen, close your eyes, and then open your lemmy app without looking
you can absolutely not get feedback from a touch screen about which control you’re groping around blind for: this leads to people looking at the screen while hunting and pecking for buttons, and that’s incredibly dangerous
Go tell that to a blind person. I'm actually surprised you've never heard about this. They have sensors as well, you could lightly touch & have it tell you which one you are on and then press longer & harder for it to activate. You also get used to their position.
I also suggested a physical button to navigate to a specific section or mounted remotes with physical buttons. The issue with integrated physical buttons, and I have experienced this personally, is extreme cost to replace when they start to fail. Usually around $1k per button to replace.