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?
As someone who drives a mazda with infotainment designed before touchscreens (it has one), I’m fine with this.
I borrowed a Mazda 3 with the joystick dial a few times. It’s absolutely brilliant.
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.
That’s a plus. I drove a hire car with a joystick/dial/button thing that could control the touch screen. It was so much easier to pay attention to driving while controlling something on screen. With touch screens you need to watch your finger as you press because there’s no tactile feedback.
people don’t seem to understand what’s going on here.
Nothing on the infotainment unit needs to be adjusted while driving, it can have a brail interface for all it should matter.
Core controls are being put behind touch screens, that’s the whole point of changing NCAP requirements.
leaving them on a screen with less direct control is objectively worse. need to use turn signal? now you need to select it first.
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
Queue
Cue
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
If you’re in the US like me, we should be aware the problem isn’t bright lights; it’s that our regulations don’t allow for the European beam alteration tech that will dim sections at a time based on oncoming traffic.
Brighter lights are a huge boon to safety, but we need the corresponding tech to keep it that way.
and good luck getting those regs passed with this congress and this administration. it’s likely never going to happen unless the auto industry demands them.
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.
Less screens? Why does a car even need one screen?
The mandatory in EU reversing camera.
Holy smokes. That’s nuts. I’m glad I font live there then.
The United States, Canada, and Japan have the requirement, too. Australia’s takes effect in November 2025.
Reversing camera
They are called rear vision mirrors/ side mirrors, and neck muscles.
If you’d used one you would know they show you angles you can’t see otherwise.
If it works for you, all good. It’s not for me though 👍
“Don’t stare at your phone but instead stare at this screen that controls your car.”
How about just banning touchscreen use while driving altogether?
E: I meant the OEMs, not drivers
We already have distracted driving laws here. You can’t use electronic devices like phones while driving. How a giant iPad in the middle of your dashboard doesn’t count blows my mind.
Good.
Next please go after the animated indicator lights that take way too much time to realise the car in front of you is turning and not playing snake. Fuck you, Audi, and all the others tha copied this absolute bullshit of an idea.
are animated lights cool? debatable. in my opinion, kinda.
are animated lights practical? no. I actually think they’re more of a distraction. I need several use cases of where animated lights other than at car start up play an actual useful role in operating the vehicle.
car companies are going away from the practical and into the cool factor and I don’t think it’s a good thing. those huge car fins on caddys looked cool but provided absolutely no practical functionality (I even believe that studies showed it made them less safe. disclosure: I’m pulling this out of my rear end but I think it’s true).
