Comment by mindlight@lemm.ee on European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls

Touch screen, Vibration feedback/Color change or not, means that you have to look at what your hand is doing and not on the road.

A physical button means you can keep your eyes on the road and find the right button with easy.

So let’s be honest. At this point, touch screens are chosen by car makers because cost and not design. So essentially, safety is less important than cost for the car makers.

Ideally, a well designed physical button wont need any visual confirmation to push or tell if it’s already toggled

Think old school hazard lights, horn or turn signal stalks with clicking noise. You dont need to look at it at all to toggle them, or confirm button is depressed or activated. You can tell by auditory confirmation or haptically

Absolutely. You only need to find it once… And another thing, you can keep your finger on it and press it as many times as needed and know whether or not your press registered because guess what: it always does when you press it down.

Even in a car I’ve never driven before I can find controls by feeling across the dashboard and pushing at random until I get what I want. With a touch screen you can’t push at random without taking your eyes off the road because there is nothing to feel.

Channel change and volume control are all physical buttons on my steering wheel. All feel, no look. To me, that’s the best way it can be. The only time that isn’t useful is if I’m out of town and presets don’t work. For those situations, I’m generally streaming ahead of time.

I can as all the buttons are in a row. Same for the AC and heater controls. I pretty much know them by heart so it takes a fraction of a second to glance where to roughly put my finger, and then I can count them out by feel while looking at the road.

That image, while not as bad as a touchscreen, is still a pretty poor design. So many uniform buttons so close still require most people to look. Buttons should be clustered and/or have slighty different shape so you can tell by touch which one you’re about to press…

Compare it to a video game controller. Or a keyboard.All of my face buttons and keys have the same shape and size. I still know where they are, because I’ve used them each hundreds, thousands of times. You learn where they are, and if you don’t immediately touch the right one, you can find it because they never move and you have feedback. A touch screen has zero feedback, and buttons are inconsistently placed, or 4 menus deep.

When you remember where the buttons are they’re fine to navigate. The average keyboard that meant people can type on without looking has less physical feedback (2 small bumps on f and h).

Yeah, once you get used to typing on a keyboard you don’t really need anything else. I got blank caps for my keyboard because I thought it looked neater. Memorising a row of climate options isn’t that bad. If you mix buttons and dials it’s even easier. If the manufacturer thinks of accessibility they’ll also add tactile bumps and such and make it accessible for people who don’t have great vision too.

Lol as someone who touch types but sometimes has to look down for F-key locations and which symbols are attached to which numbers, this would drive me mad.

You can find a large volume knob without taking your eyes off the road or press the next track/station button. We are not asking to configure a new Bluetooth connection while driving.

Yes to the Volume Knob. The next button or even worse the play button, i cant.

If the next button is to the right of the volume knob, always, and the play button is below the volume knob, always, and the previous button is to the left of the volume knob, always, then if you can find the volume knob, you can find those other controls. It’s just a biiiiiit of learning your car’s interface.

The play button is number 5, 4 is shuffle and 6 is repeat. the buttons for 1-6 are smooth meaning you can not discern on wich button you are without looking. Shuffle and repeat have 3 modes you switch through if you press them.

Volume Knob opens the Menu onclick.

I can type mostly blind on both a Touchscree(phone) and on a Mechanical Keyboard.

You can type blind on a center console touchscreen, but you can’t memorize the location of 6 buttons that don’t move? I’m not buying it, doc. Besides, the buttons should at least have a ridge where the edges of them are, even if the buttons are smooth. If they’re those shitty, completely smooth capacitive “buttons” that some electronics have anymore, I get not being able to discern them, but that’s still the same problem as the touchscreen - no tactile feedback.

I also wasn’t exactly trying to say exactly how your radio is laid out, I have no idea on your specific model. My point was that the buttons don’t move, they’re always in the same spot, so you just learn where they are.

maybe the problem is you and not the buttons or knobs.

Are you having these issues only in your car or in other places too?

Shit interface then. Pressing down on my volume knob pauses it, and I’ve got media controls on the steering wheel as well so I can change tracks with my left thumb keeping both hands on the wheel.

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European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls(arstechnica.com)

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