Re: Based on my (Citroen) in car touch screen
Its almost as if they don't want you to use the touchscreen while driving because its a dangerous distraction or something.
Sure, that's why some dimwit designers also put the heater controls there..
I get why car manufacturers try to get rid of switches as much as possible, it's cheaper to put a screen in but things like lights, ventilation and volume control must be available without having to dig through a menu. That said, I know it's not an easy balance to strike, also because part of that is preference. The simplest test is a rental: if you cannot operate the car without much digging, get another one (there is a particular electric Renault in rental use where it is, for instance, impossible to kill the radio if I still want to hear the GPS unless you spend several minutes in quiet place ploughing through the menus).
I also wholeheartedly agree with the commentard who wanted a normal ignition key back, and not just because that stops a relay based theft. It also gives me a deadman's switch in case something goes bonkers and/or gets hacked. It can also be a BRB (Big Red Button) as long as it MECHANICALLY kills power and so returns physical control to me. I've only been doing electronics and computers for some decades, so pardon me if that hasn't exactly enamoured me to things that deny me shutdown control. As a matter of fact, my next car will have that as an aftermarket alteration - it's standard gear in rallye cars (I think even mandatory) so it's not difficult to obtain.
While I'm at it I would like to express my extreme dislike of the stripy indicators that consist of a sort of an animated "growing" line of orange LEDs. I think Audi started with this first, but it appears to have infected other cars as well now. An indicator is a signalling device that informs other road users that you're about to change direction (I'm discounting the considerable part of the population here that has never quite worked out what that stick on the steering wheel does, of course).
The fact that you are about to change direction is an alert - a possible risk. Any, and I mean ANY delay in making that signal detectable is IMHO bad news. That should be fully ON the very moment you switch it on. Anything that delays a fellow road user picking that up, even by a fraction, is IMHO unacceptable. Safe should still come WAY before fancy.
So there :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
