Auto wipers are very fallible, as is any serious attempt to automatically control the impact of weather. Even the ones on expensive tech-laden cars are over-zealous, but get away with it by doing so silently, and expensively.

Touchscreens in cars have already gone too far, for cost-saving purposes, but also for 'personalising' cars to their owners, and locking them into a familiar eco system of services and add-ons, much like smartphones and tablets do.

I admire Honda for openly saying that heating controls, electric seat controls, windows and all the things that have always have dedicated controls will remain so in their cars.

Do the latest passenger jets have touchscreens or do they still have huge amounts of manual controls? Exactly,

Edited by Sulphur Man on 05/08/2020 at 16:19

Among several irritants on the Golf is headlight adjustment being on a touchscreen sub menu. All my previous cars had a conventional adjuster that could be used instantly for load changes or to fine tune the lights for varying conditions during the journey.

To cancel an unwanted traffic announcement requires you to press a virtual button mid screen about a quarter of an inch by an inch.

The manual controls aren’t all great either. The heated mirrors don’t come on with the dashboard rear screen heater switch. Instead they require a rotation on the mirror joystick control on the door panel. And the cruise control is the most complex set up I have ever had for this feature. I have more or less given up using it.

The most button heavy conventional controls I had were on a Saab 9-5. There were literally dozens of them but within a few minutes they were second nature. Probably a by-product if their largely mythical aero heritage. Must have cost a lot to produce though!

As far as I can see, the driver argued that he shouldn't be convicted because the screen was a built-in, integral, part of the car and he had to use it to control essentials. Both courts ruled against him, saying that the law applied to those too.

As well it should. The fact that somebody is dopey enough to design a car with such a facility and that somebody else is dopey enough to buy it should not be a reason to suggest that an exemption to the law should apply.

Maybe raises an issue for manufacturers.

One can only hope. But it will only raise issues with the manufacturers if enough people decline to buy their products and they make it known why. Unfortunately that's not likely to happen because the more gizmos many drivers have to faff about with whilst they are driving the better many of them view the product. The answer lies with tightening the type-approval rules to forbid the approval of cars with such devices. It's bad enough drivers introducing stuff into their cars which distracts from their driving. But for manufacturers to fit such stuff as standard beggars belief.

On the current car they’ve done away with the touch screen altogether as it’s further away from the driver, and research showed that reaching for it usually resulted in the driver inadvertently steering to the left.

I wonder how many members of the National Institute for the Bleeding Obvious it took to reach that conclusion.