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Buttons are Best, Says Euro Safety Org, Years After Everyone Knew It
An influential safety organization in Europe is sounding the alarm about touchscreens and calling for more buttons.
“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.
The European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), which Avery represents, is a nonprofit not formally affiliated with a government or automaker. However, the independent research body is backed by several European Union governments, and Tesla, Volvo, VW, and BMW advertise their high NCAP scores. Beginning in January of 2026, to earn a five-star rating from NCAP, a car must use analog controls—buttons, stalks, or dials—for five tasks: turn signals, emergency flashers, horn, windshield wipers, and calling emergency services (eCall SOS, in Europe). Cars that relegate any such functions to a touchscreen will be docked points.
Just this week, two major automakers showed cars demonstrating the variety of approaches to designing controls—with and without buttons or two stalks on the steering column. Ironically, the VW ID. Every1 concept car has more analog controls than the production Volvo ES90:
Volkswagen’s implementation of physical controls represents a backpedal, following serious heat it received from critics (including us) of the ID.4 and eighth-generation Golf. A few years ago, the brand introduced touch-sensitive “sliders” on these models to control HVAC functions and stereo volume. It also changed the buttons on the steering wheel to a haptic kind that required something between a push and a tap; it was not intuitive, was prone to accidental activation, and the sliders were downright infuriating, especially because, for a brief moment, they weren’t even backlit for nighttime.
People revolted, and VW changed its ways.
“We will never, ever make this mistake anymore,” design chief Andreas Mindt told Autocar. “On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this.
“Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car.”
Modern EVs are especially guilty of relegating NCAP’s five critical functions to touchscreens. What about that stalk on the right side of the steering column in the Volvo above, you ask? It isn’t for your turn signals; it’s for shifting gears. Many modern EVs have adopted this sort of “column shifter” for the modern age, but not all have eliminated the second stalk. Unfortunately, as in the case of the Chevrolet Equinox EV below, the decision to task the right stalk with shifting duties overwhelms the left stalk. I don’t know about you, but craning to see which wheel on the stalk controls the washer for the rear glass is nearly as distracting as poking around on a center touchscreen.
New cars could take a hint from Subaru, which is admittedly not a brand associated with lovely or cutting-edge interiors:
Look at the controls tucked behind the left spoke of the wheel, by the driver’s knee. They’re meant to be pulled, not pushed; you slide your hand down the left side of the rim and click them with your third or fourth fingers. Not necessarily elegant, but a functional and simple solution from an automaker that is, simultaneously, guilty of perhaps the ugliest and least useful touchscreen in the business:
We seem to have reached a moment of peak touchscreen. Finally, automakers are understanding that the novelty is dimming—even Mercedes, which created a nearly A-pillar-to-A-pillar “Hyperscreen” for its most expensive EVs, is changing its tune. “Screens are not luxury,” Gorden Wagener told ABC News last month. He is the brand’s design chief. “You have a better—and bigger—TV at home, right?” Craftsmanship and sophistication, Wagener said, are what distinguish true luxury cars.
We couldn’t agree more. We’ve advocated for them for years on these pages, and we hope both automakers and agencies come around.
For our money, the industry hit the sweet spot of buttons versus touchscreens about seven years ago—essentially, in the previous development cycle. In closing, please enjoy this photo of a Lincoln Navigator … from 2018.
This whole deal gets over blown.
Case in point the Chevy is just fine with the wiper stalk as there is no craning needed to see it. It is clear trough the wheel.
But when it comes to buttons and screens they both have good and bad.
The touch screens are not good with every day stuff. But to set up items and deeper menu items they are fine. GM in most models do both buttons or touch for most daily items.
Th real trouble is this . Placement Every car has controls in different places. As most with rental car experience you suffer though where the shifter is and how it works as many do it in many different ways.
The talk on the right is not what it used to be. It has gears up and down but park with a button. Others the old PRINDL selection is there. My wife’s SUV has buttons on the console
Buttons on the wheel are all different and in different places. No real standardization.
Even seat buttons some are on the seat, some the door and even some on the dash.
Window buttons. On the dash, roof, door, console etc.
Push button start. The button is all over. Key start. Most on the right, Porsche on the left Saab on the console.
Most of this works fine it is a matter of getting used to it. I find my self looking for a lever on the column and find I need a button on the dash.
Familiarity is needed and most people are seldom exposed to many cars. So you are often as smart as the car you normally drive. Everything else is a jumbled up mess to you.
After driving my manual transmission Z3 for a couple of days I find myself searching with my left foot for the non existent clutch pedal in the other cars, including my DD.
Yeah – no kidding. But you need to go beyond these five functions – audio and climate control are the two most distracting areas IMO.
Nooooo! You’re gonna make me push buttons and turn dials? That’s too much work for me to do. We’re going back to the Stone Age!!! Say it isn’t so!
[All of the above is phony – I’ve been anti-touchscreen/pro-buttons for decades]
I bought a car that people say the interior tech is too dated because it has buttons for the ac and radio functions. The short cut radio buttons mean I don’t need to play with a touch screen. I love that.
Best example of a modern interior having buttons is BMW’s iDrive 7 and I think it peaked in the Z4 and prefacelift 2-series coupe and 3-series
It shows how well integrated the screens are into the dash that had its own distinctive design and still kept the functionality with the buttons and knob I would say it even aged better than iDrive 6 and most of the other digital setups at the time
iDrive 8 and 9 are not that bad although it just follows the trend of just slapping on big screens just for the appeal and cheaper costs it is quite responsive and one of the best systems on the market although I wished that it just kept the buttons hopefully we can see a comeback of buttons in European cars because there’s no shortage of them in Toyotas and Hondas just saying
I myself am a button afficionado, the more buttons the better, the Pontiac grand prix with stereo controls where the airbag goes these days? LOVELY, I WANT MORE BUTTONS
What frustrates me
Most is you have a large screen and when a phone cal comes in the accept and decline buttons are so close together that even when looking it’s easy to hit the wrong one…, waddaya thinkin? Spread em out!
Control placement in the Volvo 240 series should set the bar for intuitive controls, including HVAC. The only time you need to take your eyes off the road is to check the odometer. 60 MPH on the speedo is at 6 o’clock so you can estimate other speeds with peripheral vision.
The worst thing I ever had in a car was a digital tach – accurate to 1 rpm. Drove me nuts within 10 minutes.
Correction – 60 MPH is at 12 o’clock
Unless you’re in Australia….
Volvo 240 – best car ever made. Simple, strong, functional, and usually with a stick shift. I wish Volvo would go back to something such as that, as I haven’t bought a Volvo for years, and never will. All my cars are manual transmission, but it’s get more and more difficult to do that.
My ‘81 245 4-speed was sacrificed on the altar of the rust gods. My current V50 5-speed is only 18 years old so I know all of the controls by feel. I occasionally have to check the screen to double check which symphony is being broadcast. I have other things than a screen to save for my caresses.
Even the stalks have gotten out of hand. Our Mercedes GLK has a stalk on the right side for gears (push in for Park) and three stalks on the left side. One for wiper controls which is common, one for steering wheel adjustment and the third for cruse control. It could have been simplified by placing the cruise controls on the steering wheel like Honda and others and the gear shift on the console like the E class coupe and cabriolet. Why not even standardized within one manufacturer?
agree 100%. I love my new VW GTI and absolutely hate the interface. 4 months in, I still can’t figure out how to perform several functions. The radio functionality is poor compared to most other vehicles. Technology has become overdone