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.
Drove a new pickup the other day, upper trim model. Felt like I was driving a luxury car. Even had hands-free driving in some areas. Those parts were amazing.
Absolutely hated the infotainment and other automatic systems. A giant clusterfk of poorly designed, non-intuitive, frustrating systems that did unexpected things or took too much time to set up. The nice tech was completely overshadowed by the over-engineered junk.
Jesus finally. Death to touch screens in cars
Monkey paw curls
Same exact cars but with button navigated non-touch screens.
Gimme a keyboard and mouse. I can drive the whole car and operate the infotainment with my 250 apm
What’s your EPM though, like 20?
Replace the steering wheel with a Steam Deck.
button navigated
2000s Volvo?
Or 2000s BMW?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Same exact cars but with button navigated non-touch screens.
I love it!
Fucking finally.
Be still my heart
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 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 or more saved with any company doing this at scale.
You don’t genuinely believe anyone is installing and wiring up individual buttons in a car, do you? That whole row of buttons is delivered as a single unit just like the screen is and will have a single connector just like the screen does. Sure, you then have to install and test two units (screen and buttons) but that is about it in terms of extra work.
Lol of course not, but it’s assembled somewhere (with people or expensive robots) which is why it has a cost more than the simple cost of the button itself. It’s a bespoke piece of hardware specifically designed for the vehicle instead of a commodity LCD screen which can be mass produced for multiple vehicles, (edit and as I said, is already required in the vehicle for a backup camera at a bare minimum, so it’s just the upgrade cost for a slightly more expensive screen, not a screen vs no screen)
You’re contradicting yourself LOL
No I’m not ROFLCOPTER. We were discussing “per vehicle”.
a screen is going to be cheaper by 10s or maybe a hundred dollars a car
10s, yes. Like maybe 15 or 20 bucks in BOM and labor. Hundreds, no.
Were talking 10s of millions or more saved with any company doing this at scale
Money saved to the company, not the end user. The end user just receives a severely degraded and unsafe experience.
I mean shit, let’s just remove all the seats, that’ll save THOUSANDS per car, right!?
Okay, so you admit, using a screen saves money.
Thank you, it was a pleasure watching you come to the realization.
There was no realization. I never said anything to the contrary.
I consider temperature and fan controls to be safety critical for demisting windows etc for example.
What, keeping a rag on hand to wipe away the fog on the windshield every 3 minutes isn’t safe enough?
Not far enough indeed.
I dont need all my entertainment as physical controls but I do at least want volume - and that is totally justifiable as a safety consideration too. Sometimes you need to mute it quickly if you think you heard something of concern on the road, or if you are like me, just to concentrate on driving when things get tricky!
There are so many other items you can apply similar safety arguments for:
Blowers and demisters - you shouldn’t be messing around in a touchscreen when you see your windows starting to fog
Cabin temperature - Uncomfortable driver = distracted driver
In my opinion, the place to draw the line should be this:
If the need to interact with the feature is triggered by external road conditions it MUST be physical. (Example: wipers, heating, blowers, all headlight and fog light controls, enable or diasable lane assist, cruise control)
If the driver has the ability to themselves choose when to engage with the feature and can do it only when safe, then it can be fully touchscreen. (Example: satnav route, fuel economy settings, electric seat position)
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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.
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If you get the fancy steering wheel option
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I have a giant screen, and physical buttons for volume and air temp.
Super happy with it.
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.
Exactly!
This pretty much summarises it.
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
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.
now with #ADS, please tap the x to continue changing your GPS.
Your brakes will be available again after this mandatory 30s ad.
To be fair, it’s at least closer to the windshield, so you’re more likely to see something through peripheral vision with the dash screen than your phone, which you need to keep out of view of police.
Still bad, but probably not as bad.
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.
thank god. I hope this trend migrates to other countries. The amount of effort/distraction for touch screens combined with the additional cost of having to replace full on infotainment systems is annoying.
How about just banning touchscreen use while driving altogether?
E: I meant the OEMs, not drivers
Well, presumably this group is more about models of cars and less about individual driver behavior.
I didn’t mean individual driver behavior, I mean ban touchscreens from accepting any inputs at all while driving.
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.
If they could ban the “confirm you know the rules of the fucking road” dialogue box that would be great.
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.
The second dumbest engineering idea. The dumbest was clearly the car itself, letting the average person control a device that can accelerate hundreds or thousands of kilograms to speeds where reaction times of fractions of a second matter for safety was clearly one of the stupidest ideas ever.
Maybe the evolution. My grandmother told stories of her dad scaring her mom with his “crazy” driving, speeding up to 40, sometimes even 45 mph.
I hope the standard makes it clear that touch buttons are about as bad as a touch screen is
Finally!!!
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
Those things would be way more useful if they had a wider FOV. I hate how most people now use them as the only way of checking behind them when backing up, because you really can’t see shit well enough for that. It’s meant for seeing something small and close that even physically turning around to look, you wouldn’t see it. Like an animal or a child directly behind you.
All they’ve done is make people drive less safe because so many people just stare at the fucking camera screen instead of actually turning their head and checking their blind spots.
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 👍
You can’t see something small right behind you with that.
It served humanity just fine for decades. My car is 25 years old and never ran anything over. Look before you get in, check your mirrors, crane your neck, look over your shoulder, activate parts of your brain. I plan on never owning one of these over complicated modern cars. You do you though I guess.
Yea and sweetening wine with lead never hurt anyone, the Romans turned out fine!
Your position is that rear view cameras didn’t save any lives?
My car is 25 years old and never ran anything over.
That’s in part because your car is 25 years old. Designs have changed over time to increase the sizes of blind spots (as an unintended consequence of things like strengthening the support pillars for the roof to increase rollover survivability).
You can prise my windscreen from my cold dead hands.
😂👍
You afraid of getting bugs in your teeth? Coward. /s
The rate of decline of insects in the last few decades is quickly making that a non-issue.
