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.
Fucking finally.
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?
Gimme a keyboard and mouse. I can drive the whole car and operate the infotainment with my 250 apm
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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
Before anyone forgets, this all started with Tesla. They lacked the skill, talent, know how, money and manufacturing capacity to make a decent center console. They then decided to move everything to the touchscreen because software is cheap to add to cars, thousands of small precision engineered objects are not. It was a margins game by the man “with the most knowledge on manufacturing in the world”. The rest of the industry followed because the bougie idiots made the brand so popular “they could not be doing something wrong, right?”. Queue the competitors copying that absolutely regarded idea. Everyone calling this regarded, was screamed into oblivion by tesla fanboys and design savants: “You’re just too dumb to understand minimalist design”. And here we are, turns out designing something that makes the driver take their eyes off the road on a 2000Kg murder machine is actually NOT good design.
Also it accelerates the design-to-manufacture cycle of a new model - just slap a huge touch screen on it and start building the car, and hope the software is ready in time. If not, well, just ship it as is and patch it later.
Builds in a very expensive replacement component too.
A control button breaks? New button is a (still over-inflated) $75 to replace.
A Tesla control screen breaks (and they do, just as often as buttons) - $1500.
https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/tesla-screen-replacement-cost-process#Cost
Tesla doesn’t have that excuse. The original Roadster, Model S and Model X all had fairly conventional controls. They deliberately undermined the safety of their vehicles over time by aggressively removing physical controls in the model 3 and Y and revamped S. It probably saved them a few bucks, but at the cost increased risk to human life. If they get penalized in safety tests for their penny pinching then so be it.
regardedr.tarded, right?Edit, .lm-censoring
Yes, and I know that because I too am highly regarded.
common EU w
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.
“Don’t stare at your phone but instead stare at this screen that controls your car.”
While we’re at it get rid of retina frying headlights. Sure, you can see great but I’m blind as I drive into you at night. At least make it so they don’t look like point sources and can’t aim upwards.
Also make the auto headlight setting the default if the car is in drive. Too many people driving in the twilight with no headlights on.
People do that on purpose, there’s a huge aftermarket for 10x brighter headlights.
New models have LED headlights and they’re awful. They’re angled down, but any sort of hilly back road means you’re blinding anyone in front of you anyway. Halogen are much better because it’s a softer glow instead of a laser beam.
More physical controls is great, so I see this as a win. For navigation and media, I don’t want to be without the screen, but I hate that my ventilation controls are 50 % hidden under touch controls, meaning I usually don’t bother to change them while I drive, because it requires looking away too much.
Wait, which car models lack that for “hazard warning lights, indicators, windshield wipers, SOS calls, and the horn”?
Don’t get me wrong, I agree these need physical buttons or similar. But everyone is celebrating as if it’s for things I’ve seen hidden behind touch or capacitive buttons in the cars I’ve driven and that really annoy me, like temperature, volume, mute, and cruise control inputs. Or have I just not driven the worst of the worst (Tesla).
Tesla, tesla lacks all of those
I’ve only been in a Tesla with an Uber driver, so not paid attention to it… but no indicator or wiper control?
Jeez.
I’ve had a couple of cars with automatic wipers and they’re not that great… Having no controls would do my head in
No wiper controls, indicators are a touch control on the wheel…
Which are really easy to use when you have to indicate you are going to leave the next exit on a roundabout, btw. Just gotta take your eyes off the road to hunt where they’ve moved to, take your hand off the wheel, and boop the capacitive touch button. Easy!
So easy that Norway is banning the use of Teslas for driving schools.
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.
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.
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 saved with any company doing this at scale.
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.
If they could ban the “confirm you know the rules of the fucking road” dialogue box that would be great.
I think Euro NCAP ratings would have more teeth if it was mandatory for manufacturers of standard passenger vehicles to submit a reference model for testing. Voluntary testing doesn’t work since manufacturers would be averse to submit cars for testing if they thought they’d get a bad score. And while Euro NCAP does sometimes buy cars for testing, they don’t do it for every make and model.
And if the cheapest dogshit cars on the road (Kia Picantos, Dacia Sandero’s etc) can have buttons, dials, wipers and indicators then so should everything above it. Companies like Tesla remove controls to cheap out on having to make a part, but they attempt to pass this off as innovation when it puts people’s lives at risk.
