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Euro NCAP Puts A Stop To Touchscreen In Cars, Encourages Physical Buttons
Safety organization Euro NCAP will motivate car manufacturers to use physical, simple buttons for vital functions. Is the battle against the touchscreen on?
Euro NCAP is best known for its crash tests, where a car can achieve a score of up to five stars. These tests also look at all active safety systems and the way they work, so Euro NCAP has been looking at the safety theme with a broad view for a long time. The organization is now working on expansion again, according to our colleagues from the British AutoExpress. In a future ‘Safe Driving’ test, car manufacturers are urged not to hide vital functions on a screen. The reason is obvious: operating via a screen is very distracting and is often cumbersome, and therefore unsafe.
Richard Schram, Technical Director of Euro NCAP, puts it this way: “Euro NCAP will indeed encourage car manufacturers to use physical, simple and tactile controls for key driving functions such as windshield wipers, hazard lights and turn signals.” The absence of this would make a five-star score impossible, but let’s be honest: in 99 percent of all cars, these functions can still be operated with buttons and switches. In the case of hazard lights, this is even mandatory and the only exception in the field of turn signals that we can think of is Tesla. In its latest models, it uses digital touch buttons on the steering wheel for the windshield wipers and indicators. That is not yet a touchscreen, but it also does not meet the ‘easy to operate’ requirement.
For the rest, the Euro NCAP measure seems mainly useful to prevent other manufacturers from following this example, and we are still eagerly awaiting a ‘ban’ on the operation of climate control, seat heating and safety systems via cumbersome menus.
