Touchscreen controls must be looked at, unlike findable physical buttons

Raised by 383 people over 16 years (2011–2026), in 16 of them.

What people report

2011-10
Touchscreens (especially ones with menus) are impossible to navigate without taking your eyes off the road.
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2019-05
The mobile-like interface, the far positioning and small buttons make it difficult to use while driving.
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2021-11
the unholy touchscreen that felt outright dangerous to use. I don't understand how it's legal to even put essential controls behind a touchscreen
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2023-06
Climate control and media control should both be physical buttons.
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2026-09
I think people also underestimate how much they look even when using physical buttons
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Principle

Eyes-free operation through tactile affordances and feedback

People report that essential controls such as climate and wipers live on a flat touchscreen with no shapes, edges or detents to find by feel, so they must look away from the road and aim at targets while the car moves.

A fix

Put frequent and safety-critical functions (wipers, defrost, temperature, fan, hazards) on fixed-position physical controls with distinct shapes and clicks, and keep the touchscreen for infrequent settings. Keep those control positions stable across software updates, and measure each task against driver-distraction glance limits (for example, NHTSA's guideline of glances under 2 seconds and 12 seconds total).

Grouping, principle and fix drafted with Claude and reviewed by Justusability. Counts are people whose comment Claude labelled a usability complaint about this issue; see Method for how, and its limits. Something wrong here?

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