Slashdot Mirror
Touch Interfaces In Cars Difficult To Use
An anonymous reader points out an article about touchscreen dash interfaces in cars (in particular Cadillac's "CUE" interface). From the article: "I do not recall anyone ever complaining about the iOS interface and there have been plenty of attempts to replicate the experience and its flow of control. ... As simple as iOS may appear on the surface, it is incredibly well-executed balance that matches the requirements of a touch interface for phones, tablets and other horizontal screen devices. Changing the user scenario, hardware, or software will alter the requirements for the desired user experience as well. ... CUE is not as transparent in its usage as, for example, the iPhone. We are used to certain buttons that are located on the dash – sliders and dials that we expect in places that we can quickly memorize. In the end, you want to be able to reach for such a button without taking your eyes off the road. There are no such buttons on the XTS dash. Instead, there are some capacitive touch buttons for basic climate controls, audio volume and seat heating/cooling. Since the buttons are activated by touch, they feel the same."
A touchscreen UI for some functions sounds perfectly sane (how do I set the clock again?), but ditching all of the dash buttons sounds like a recipe for disaster. I've heard from iPod users (and my own experience with my long-dead Neuros echos) that the click wheel was easy to use blindly; the move to a touchscreen made it impossible to use without looking at it.
Using touch screen controls on a car is akin to texting on your mobile; taking eyes off the road to see your dashboard or stereo controls is an inherently bad idea.
I've got something already similar in my GMC Terrain, plenty of things are done by touch screen and with nearly 8mo behind the wheel on it. I don't have a problem. In fact, I can do everything right off the steering wheel without anything besides a casual glance at the centre console. If anything, if more of it was done by touch screen I'd be happier, there's enough damn buttons there to make me think I'm getting in a plane and I'm preparing for takeoff, there is information overload with the design. My only real complaint? When the console dies, it takes the entire system with it. Mine died, oh about a 2 months after I had the car. And it spent 15 days in the shop waiting for a replacement to come in.
After a bit of ingenous thinking, I figured out that it might be a good idea to lean on the dealership and have them talk to CAMI in Ingersoll, and get the part directly from there. Because well...GM had this brilliant idea to fuck Canadian owners over and ship all the replacement parts as a priority to US customers, leaving us Canucks high and dry. Which means that I was only left without my car for 19 days instead. On the upside, I did get XM free for two years for that screw up, along with a $400 maintenance voucher.
Om, nomnomnom...
Our Mercedes cars have a system which uses a knob which you twist/push in the center armrest. It's far superior to a touch interface for the GPS navigator, and mp3/radio control (even video once the car is stopped).
Stuff touch interfaces for this kind of thing.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Lack of tactile feedback is a bad idea when you are driving, because it forces you to look at the controls instead of the road. It's a fad, just like the days when they started replacing rotating knobs for stereo volume with a more awkward control that was linear, or even worse, a series of digital buttons. An analog knob is much easier to control. The companies pushing for an "all touchscreen" interface are pursuing a bad, unsafe design. The programmability of a touchscreen is great, and you can fit layer after layer of complicated control in the same space, but it's at the cost of ease of use. Touchscreens should augment regular in-car controls, not replace them.
Ok not a fad, but its required application is far lower than the current hype curve that everyone seems to be jumping on these days. Touch works in a phone where you have a casual short-use, multi-function device. But it doesn't work on a desktop where you need to input data 8 hours a day, it sucks on a volume knob where you want analog-like gradient control, and it has no place in a car where you should be looking at the road. The worst example I can think of is those stupid shopping mall store directories that are now interactive touch screens. What is wrong with a paper map? It works, anyone can use it, and most importantly many people can use it simultaneously. Technology for technology's sake, it is the bane of my existence.
All the important stuff is duplicated on the steering wheel. If I'm busy and the passenger wants to fiddle with the air conditioning, I can direct them to the touchscreen and I don't have to do anything. This to me is the ideal situation. The passenger can play with things that don't endanger anything, I can concentrate on avoiding the BMW driver who thinks that the little propeller sign on the front of his car means that he can pull out in front of people without looking.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Well I guess that you could say...
*SUNGLASSES* ...that they failed to post Baal.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!
My 1983 Series 3 Land Rover has big chunky knobs and large switches for everything. Engineers have been happy with those things for the user interface for a hundred years, why change now?
Reliability? Not judging by the 'my car UI failed after 3 months and spent two weeks getting a replacement' post.
Probably marketing (look at the gee-whiz dashboard! See its shiny goodness!) and maybe even insurance (so they can tell if you did indicate or were fiddling with the radio before crashing) and also built-in obsolescence (oh, you need an upgrade, $$$ plz kthx, no, nobody else can fix it) unlike on a car with knobs and switches where anyone can replace a switch.
I hope these touch screens work with gloves on...
My Land Rover does have two switches on the centre of the dashboard that I have no idea what they do...
blablabla iPhone blablabla ios blablabla iPod blablabla
seriously, not everything has to be like your iPhone. kudos to you for realizing that but it should be quite obvious.
... were always over-rated. I hate having to repeat the same actions on touch interface devices because it doesn't register your motion. Buttons are nice, simple and consistent. I mourn the unpopularity of button based devices, I never understood why anyone would take a touch based MP3 player over one with well designed and placed buttons. I always hate accidentally causing music to skip or change songs on touch based devices.
Any car interior design that requires you to look at a display to change a setting, or even worse, require you to navigate through various menus through a joystick or a touchscreen to change settings, should have been scrapped at the prototype stage.
On one hand, we have stereo controls mounted to the steering wheel, a brilliant invention that allows you to adjust the volume, change which station or track you're listening to or even pick up the phone, all without ever taking your eyes off the road. My car is slightly older so it uses a third stalk for these functions, but the basic principle is the same. You can adjust the stereo without ever taking your eyes off the road. +1 for road awareness!
Because the designers of my car didn't have their heads stuck up their asses, the climate control unit has big buttons that are easily distinguished by touch. Any combination of heating, cooling, vents, defrosting, AC etc., I can do without ever looking at the controls. That's good UI design, with proper tactile feedback that you just don't get with touch controls.
But now it seems we're moving in the opposite direction. Everything needs to have a touch display and fancy animations to further distract people from the act of driving. It sells due to the "ooh shiny" factor, but should be considered a danger to road safety on par with eating while driving.
Eat the rich.
Think of a modern digital SLR versus an old pure-mechanical film version. The modern design is a pretty impressive balance between keeping the old layout for things you want to find quickly without looking (knobs, buttons, dials), and adding a load of new features that you don't need very often (menu based). Car UI designers would do well to learn from this approach.
For most people, a Nokia/Blackberry-style keyboard is still more effective for text input than any touch screen keyboard, and even more so compared to Apple's awful iOS screen keyboards. (Touch is good for browsing and menu selection, but once you have decided on a capacitive touch screen, building a good UI for those purposes is easy.)
Touch has caught on as much as it has because people make a tradeoff between screen size, weight, style, and ease of input, and ease of input ends up at the bottom up on that list. That tradeoff may make sense for phones, it makes no sense in cars (or on the desktop), where you have the space.
Switches offer tactile feedback, both that it was pressed and what position it is in. You can find it blindly after some practice.
Touch-screens try to augment this (badly) with vibration, visual or audible cues. This is fine on a phone. In the car the audible works good. But you never know whether you have pressed the right thing.
Also touch screens are fine as long as you are on a smooth road.. but as soon as it gets rough you will have difficulty to operate them.
In Airplanes its even worse. I fly gliders as a hobby.. in the mountains the acceleration forces are so great that you can't even reach the dash properly. Even less hit a certain spot on a flat surface touchscreen. It requires a lot more attention and concentration than "just hitting a switch".
not really ... for a touchscreen like we currently have it, you have to look where your finger is ... if you have buttons you can feel them with your fingers.
hahahaha.... "smote" (reminds me of shrek the third)
Well, Baal is dead, Qetesh killed him.
All the blind people buying iPhones must just be idiots because they can't use them at all. [dumb]
Accessibility is a question of design/feedback, not different shaped surfaces.
A flat smooth panel does not have!
The reason why I like 3 knobs adjacent in a row for climate control, and 2 knobs and 10 primary buttons differentiated by shape and positioned sensibly on my radio. Like a good qwerty keyboard, you know what's what by feel and position without ever having to look.
Some things are best left old-school.
Absolutely, the clickwheel was superior to touchscreens in some situations. One thing that pissed me off about the iPhone (when I had one) that kept me going back to my 1st Gen iPod Nano was that the touchscreen was, for me, useless on a plane. If I was dozing on a plane, I couldn't skip forward or go back with my eyes shut. I had open my eyes and turn on a bright screen, which was annoying both for me, and for others during a long-haul, overnight trip. Adjusting volume was easier too, though that is possible using the hardware volume buttons.
For a dedicated music player, the click/touchwheel was hard to beat.
I've had an idea for touchscreen "blind music control", but I think it'd have to be implemented on the OS level, if the hardware even supports it. Specifically, keep the LCD off, but the touch sensor on to recognize gestures. Gestures that are not rotations of each other, e.g. _| and |_ should help the device differentiate between commands, regardless of orientation.
-- My Sig is a P228.
And I have loathed them for more than three decades. The first one that I dealt with was an Intel based minicomputer system in around 1980, it actually ran a pretty decent RTOS. Read and Control a few hundred devices. Now. The "Engineers" decided we needed Touchscreens, with multiple layers of screens. Oh, and no mouse.
It was a disaster. We demanded, and with great resistance, we got the knobs, and buttons, and the multiple meters that we needed. The "Engineers" were pissed, so every couple of years, they tried to sneak the Touchscreens back in. Even two years ago, on new systems running VxWorks, they were pushing Touchscreens. They are still a disaster, especially with those who are color-blind. You still had to go through multiple screens, peering at the filthy touchscreen, while $10,000 worth of welded vacuum bellows were twisting into a pretzle behind your back.
For passive, brainless stuff, like watching videos, listening to music, or reading Slashdot, Touchscreens are probably ok. But anything more active...
Look at a Formula 1 steering wheel. It's full of knobs and switches. No Touchscreen. (Unfortunately not much room for an Airbag either.) It sort of goes back to the evolution from Batch, to Multitasking, to Real Time systems. Touchscreens are still Batch. Oh, and by the way Siri, I don't need to know the route to the nearest Pizza Hut. It's one block down, catty-corner. I can see the sign.
as evolution in action
Putting a UI into a vehicle which requires the user to take their eyes off the road to locate and touch a virtual button on a smooth surface is a car crash waiting to happen. IMO the pinnacle of this insanity has to be the Tesla Model S which sticks a 17" tablet in the middle of the dash. It might look great on paper but I wonder how many accidents will be caused by people fiddling with the screen and it's functions when their eyes should be on the road.
"Certainly a single display can replace all of the current dials,"
Sure it can, but that doesn't mean its better.
""Engine Warning" icon lighting up, it can say "Your O2 sensor is broken""
They could do that already in the LCD or VFD screens that most cars have. They don't because car manufacturers want you to take it down the dealers and pay for a diagnostic.
"or voice control, the display can alter to show what you're changing directly"
Oh wonderful, so you change the radio station and suddenly your speedo vanishes. Genius!
"Hmm, pretty close to the buttons on an Android phone really."
We're not talking about phones or toys , we're talking about large powerful vehicles which can kill people if the driver is distracted by playing around with silly technology-for-its-own-sake gimmicks.
"Still, the latest version of Eclipse is available in a version for car application development"
Excelllent , so we can look forward to some really reliable efficient java apps running our cars can we? I can't wait. Actually I'll probably have to when I'm stuck at the side of the road with a java exception dump showing on the dashboard.
"I think the primary input has to be voice, with steering wheel buttons as a backup"
I think you're talking out of your arse. Why would I want to have to press some push to talk button (unless the computer can figure out when you're talking to it) then fucking DESCRIBE what I want the car to do such as turn down the volume when in 1 second I can reach over and do it myself on a proper volume control without even looking??!
"In fact, the Microsoft Steering Wheel "
Now you're just trolling.
beginSarcasm {
It is a GM car. OnStar will soon be driving for you, or at least report to the police what you were doing and stop the engine for them.
return trollModeration }
Silence is a state of mime.
One of the big problems in design these days (in all manners of design, including UI's in cars) is that the average consumer has no idea that things like this are a bad idea. They don't think about how tactile feedback, or how much they'll have to take their eyes off the road, or auditory input with visual output, or any manner of things that people like us (/.'s) think of. They think that touch is high tech, and therefore better (regardless of the implementation), they put form over function, they want the newest and flashiest, even if it isn't the best. Good design takes a back seat to "cool" design more often than not, because the mass public only wants what's new, shiny and cool. Every now and then, good design and cool design intersect and everybody wins, but it's rare.
Cars should all be required to include speakerphones for mobile phones, both Bluetooth and wired, that override the radio and pick up / hang up on voice command. When they've mastered that, they should get into heads up displays projected onto the road view. And move all dashboard buttons/knobs to the steering wheel, where they should be physical so hands can work them without eyes.
Carmakers divert $billions and MPGs into safety because we regulated them into protecting us instead of killing us. We have to add views and controls to that regulation, or they'll kill us all with these distracting toys.
And patrol the roads with unmarked cars cruising to bust people holding their phones while they drive. That should be a $500 fine, then a $1000 and a suspended license, then a $2000 fine, revoked license for 2 years and jailtime - all of which should be to car insurance what smoking 2 packs a day is to medical insurance.
--
make install -not war
No duh.
My phone touch screen is difficult to use.
When Capacitive-Touch works it works well but there is always limitations.
Gloves, calluses, skinny vegetarians and calibration all give Capacitive-Touch big problems.
To be successful in the car, buttons must be the size of coffee cups.
And you gotta have positive feedback on select that works for everyone (blind, deaf and any other lack of human sense).
Yes, blind people do ride in cars and may be asked to press a button.
Oh wonderful, so you change the radio station and suddenly your speedo vanishes. Genius!
That could so be taken the wrong way.
Every in-car satnav I've seen has a legal disclaimer saying "dangerous to use while driving" which you need to accept every single time you get in the car.
Do these new touch-screen interfaces have the same thing? Do I need to accept legal responsibility before turning on the A/C? What about things like Facebook and Pandora, which are highly distracting and have nothing at all to do with vehicle operation?
You can buy one at most places for around $60 (US). And a pretty good one at that.
I agree with the speculation of why they don't include it, but for people who have no idea that an ODB II readers is, the additional information that ah O2 sensor is broken won't keep them from taking it to a dealer anyway.
Every independent garage has an ODB II reader.
And no shade tree mechanic goes without. Its time for the car manufacturers to come into the 1990's.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Yes, blind people do ride in cars and may be asked to press a button.
Hey, in California, blind people drive cars themselves.
I never understood why anyone would take a touch based MP3 player over one with well designed and placed buttons.
Because a personal media player does more than play media. Only a few hand-picked developers ever got to develop .ipg applications for the click-wheel iPod, and if you don't like the selection, tough refuse. Anyone with $1000 to spare has a chance to develop .ipa applications for the iPod touch.
There are some pretty negative comments here. The original article while critical at moments was more objective and even balanced. If you have the opportunity check the system out, I think you’ll be impressed.
I've had the opportunity to use the Cadillac CUE and found it to be exceptional. Considering I still get the newspaper delivered every day I found the system to be very intuitive, clean and straight forward. The vibration feedback as you touch the screen works very well.
Regarding distracted driving, this system is no more distracting than any other system new or old. It is all how the individual uses it. This in particular system’s integration of voice commands has the potential to minimize looking at and/or touching the screen if the user makes the choice to use it in that fashion.
Bottom line, give it a shot before you knock it.
hadn't heard about that... link?
The Buick Riviera had all-touch-screen controls way back in 1986. (The screen was a small CRT display.) Consumer Reports hated it and described it as "future schlock". You can see a video of one here (go to 0:20).
You'd think that car companies could do better now, since we've got so many other examples of what a good touch-screen interface should be like.
Which is why Siri and Google both are epic failures on their voice control. If I ask for something verbally and the phone returns something to display, that is a complete EPIC fail.
Which is rather easily taken care of on a car system by using text-to-speech, so the onboard computer can speak out its answers (and that's a technology which has been available for ages, the necessary hardware to do it today is as cheap as dirt.)
and combining it with head up display (available for ages too, modern pico laser projector can do it nicely, with good contrast and luminosity, very low power requirement and very cheap hardware).
hmmm... slowly modern cars will start to look like japanese giant mecha: where every attack command is spoken out loudly and confirmed with a buton press!
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's why, most of the buttons that the drivers needs (rain wiper, cruise control, access to information on the dash board, volume and phone control...) are either on the steering wheel or on adjacent levers:
button you can reach and find without losing eye contact.
The problem is the rest. But the rest is very probably something that you usually turn on/off while starting to drive and that you ignore afterward (like air conditionning).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There is nothing inherently wrong with these interfaces that can't be fixed by requiring a co-pilot in all moving vehicles. Some might complain, but that's progress.
Just because the technologists think its a wonderful idea does not mean it should be done. When shopping for a new car last year we tried a number of vehicals with touch-based consoles. The thought of having to do something in heavy traffic/bad weather was pretty scary. But even more amusing, one salesman had been selling the things for months and could not show us how to change the station or alter temperature. An intuitive interface -- not. Particularly since in order to use it one has to look at it for an extended period to ensure that the changing displays mirror the flow of control desired. I know where the button I need is located -- no further distraction is required. And voice operation, which my current car has, is hysterical -- works well in commercials, though. Reminds me of other technology solutions -- my robot lawnmower just does its job with a minimum of maintenance. The vacuum, on the other hand, is a neurotic narcissus that requires constant attention to keep working. Good engineering in my book is functional engineering -- the product does what it is supposed to without a lot of fuss. These touch-screen cars, on the other hand, demand far too much attention for what they do -- personally, I would rather be driving.
New Ford Explorer has these capacitive button things and I absolutely detest them.
Worst idea ever. Sometimes I accidently brush the button and all of a sudden it goes from nice cold AC to full blast emergency heat. Or dials some phone contact. Or jacks the volume frm one extreme to another.
and then when i WANT to use the button, it frequenctly seems like its not working (no feedback) or working too well (multiclicks vs just one, etc).
Unfortunately I dont get to pick the vehicle in my case.
gimme a simple dial interface (or lever, if you remember the even older cars) everytime.
Quick, easy, simple.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I recently purchased a 2012 GLI with a SatNav package. I wasn't planning on paying the upgrade fee for the SatNav, but it was implemented so well that I decided it was worth it. While it does have a touch screen for the "fiddly bits", i.e. setting up navigation, searching your mp3 player, navigating your phonebook, etc, the screen is mostly used to display information. The climate controls are all nicely laid out buttons that you don't need to use the screen for, but when you make changes to the climate settings additional information is shown on the screen for a few seconds that confirms your changes. While the radio station presets are on the screen (in an easily usable format), the back and forward buttons for tuning (which are also context sensitive for CD and mp3 play) are discrete buttons just above the screen and replicated on the steering wheel. Likewise the volume control is a discrete knob that also doubles as the map zoom control while in nav mode. As an added bonus, information is replicated in a smaller panel inside the driver's gauge area for even less time spent with eyes off the road. In practice I've found that I'm much less likely to miss my turn due to that second info panel, as it is completely under the driver's direct control. All in all, it is one of the best modern car info system that I have seen. The stereo is co-branded with Fender, and per a 2 minute Google search, developed with Panasonic. They did a nice job.
I have a Prius and while I generally like the car, I hate the touchscreen interface that controls the radio, the air conditioning, etc. When we first bought the car, I found the display incredibly distracting... my eyes would keep wondering over to the fuel consumption graph. Now it's not that bad, but it's still jarring to change radio stations.
The one saving grace is that there's a cluster of buttons on the steering wheel that also control most aspects of the climate control and radio, so you only occasionally are forced to use the touchscreen.
...And that's the main reason I have a separate (from my touchscreen smartphone) MP3 player with tactile controls. That and that I don't wont to drag down the smartphone's battery more by also using it as a MP3 player.
"I do not recall anyone ever complaining about the iOS interface"
Apple Fanboi posts about how hard it is to use alternative interface. Ignores everyone else who uses alternative interface.
Whats new?
Where I live, the temperature is below freezing for much of the year. That means I need to wear mittens while driving. Which touchscreen technology is most mitten-friendly?
If they learn to be intimately familiar with my dashboard somehow, then they can learn to be intimately familiar with a touchscreen by going off of how far things are from the edge/corner of the screen itself.
There's a difference. Physical dials on your dashboard have edges that the passenger can feel. Lit-up areas on a touch screen don't.
Stop putting all this distracting tech in automobiles. Looking for ways to make it less distracting is missing the point. Examples of text messages that distract drivers and cause accidents are frequently less than 2 words long. ANY distraction is too much distraction. I can't see it being allowed in the first place. It's already illegal for a driver to watch a movie on a screen in the car - now you want them to watch AND interact with a dashboard screen while driving ?
Thanks for the marginally appropriate use of a manipulative political meme ("nanny state") in your post. I won a pint of beer by completing my card!
The other winning slots were "death tax", "skin in the game", "Kony 2012" and of course the free "terrorism" block in the center.
I own a Volt, and it has both touchscreen and real buttons, well, capacitive and real buttons. I like it pretty well, though at first all that motion/animation and junk on the middle screen was hazardous (there are two, one in the usual spot for a speedo, that doesn't do much distracting). Still, people on the GM-Volt board used to complain that they'd hit the wrong "real" button when trying to change drive modes, and accidentally turn the car off. Gee, that only takes a short glance to confirm before you double-tap to re-map into "sport" mode, but some people....don't get it no matter how well executed it seems. I'm pretty doggone fond of this car - charge it off my solar system, cash just piles up in your wallet when you stop buying gas most of the time. The bling is fun, but it's not the core of the driving experience at all - it's the car that's great, not the bling.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The auto industry has abandoned safety for shiny tech and high mpg. Distracting and difficult to use controls and my personal pet-peeve, low rolling resistance tires, which add significantly to stopping distances.
I'm the owner of a 2004 Honda Accord with the SatNav package which means I have a big *old* touchscreen interface that controls a large portion of my car's cabin features. This little SatNav package is driven by a Hitachi SH2/WinCE computer packed into a DVD drive in my trunk. About two years ago the hardware started to fail, causing intermittent reboots and lockups of the touchscreen interface.
Every time this happens I lose full control of my cabin A/C controls, radio presets, etc, etc. not even just my GPS is gone. Half of the car's functionality goes with it. This is not a cheap part to replace despite how old and dated the tech is and if you go through the dealership it's astronomical.
What possible advantage are we really given by placing complex systems in front of simple devices like an A/C system? Do we really want to make our cars more failure prone? Are they really just supposed to be disposable every five years now?
I think consumers should fight tooth and claw to keep things simple here, else it's going to cost them more in the long run.
Its impossible...
To shove a Caddilac up your nose...
Its just impossible....
impossible.....
impossible.
Touch screens have always struck me as the worst possible addition to a car control interface. It seems like such common sense and yet year after year more car manufacturers introduce touch screens. They should have been banned long before texting on cell phones. Anything that takes your eyes off the road is a bad idea. There is nothing wrong with buttons, dials, or anything else you can feel with your fingers/hands. Heads-up displays in conjunction with a tactile control surface should have been the way forward, not tablets on the center console. Boo-tai jung-tzahng-duh!
most people have smartphones with 3G now
Where did you hear that? Requiring all drivers to carry smartphones with 3G would add an estimated $360 per year to the cost of owning a car, which is the monthly bill difference between Virgin Mobile USA's cheapest payLo (dumbphone) plan and its cheapest Beyond Talk (smartphone) plan.
you won't be able to keep your attention properly on your radio/climate/navigation control screen.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Future Generations will be amazed when they hear that back in the old days (like now) cars were driven at high speed in totally manual mode, in all weather, with no radar or ITS anti collision devices, by a human driver: Cars, massive multi-trailer trucks, and motorcycles travelled in opposite directions on the same road with only a line painted on it to separate them. Not only that, but by the 21st century the cars were cluttered with entertainment, communication, and navigation devices randomly demanding the driver's arrention with eyes off the road for seconds at a time. And, they were allowed to keep driving into their 80s How did anyone survive?
I noticed a similar issue on some types of buses (Belgium): there is a small greenish monochrome 6inx6in display that seems to offer space for inch-wide pictograms to show info such as brakes, lights, etc. Problem is that the display is empty by default, and pictograms appear in a stack-like fashion (stacking in "reading order", from left to right): when eg beamlights are switched on, a pictogram for the lights appears in the next free spot, rather than in a fixed spot. So it is not possible to know what system is actually active other than by reading the entire display, because the pictograms do not have a fixed place.
-alex-
Touch screens in cars or Airplanes are not at all like pushing buttons even if they look the same they do not feel the same. The mechanical devices are mostly located so you do not have to look at them or even take your hands off the steering wheel. In Aircraft (in the US there is no s for plural) you usually have the option of "auto pilot" and you normally have ATC keeping you and other aircraft from trying to occupy the same space. But even in aircraft, much of the "button pushing" is done before you take off, or even start the engine. Still, when you are bouncing along in the clouds and cant see the wing tips on your own airplane you are looking at the instruments that tell you where you are and where you are going while "pushing buttons" whether they are a symbol on a screen or buttons around the edges. OTOH ATC does make mistakes and you have to be paying attention to catch them.
Even changing your flight plan at hundreds of miles per hour with instruments many times more complex than the dash of a car is far safer than changing the temperature on the air conditioner in your car on the highway.