Cars will need fewer screens and more buttons to earn a 5-star safety rating in Europe | Euro NCAP will introduce new testing rules in 2026 requiring physical controls for the highest safety score
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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.
I genuinely don't see the problem with those. Amber lights on the left side of the car light up, that can only mean one thing. There is no ambiguity there whether they're playing snake or just flashing. I have never, on no occasion, found myself confused by those.
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I've only been in a Tesla with an Uber driver, so not paid attention to it... but no indicator or wiper control?
Jeez.
I've had a couple of cars with automatic wipers and they're not that great... Having no controls would do my head in
No wiper controls, indicators are a touch control on the wheel...
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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.
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I've only been in a Tesla with an Uber driver, so not paid attention to it... but no indicator or wiper control?
Jeez.
I've had a couple of cars with automatic wipers and they're not that great... Having no controls would do my head in
That's not true, though. At least in 2022 models the indicator is in the standard place, and wipers are controllable via a button and scroller.
The latest models seem to have gone crazier on this though. Along with its owner I guess.
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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.
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 band popular so the competitors just copied 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. -
A giant clusterfk of poorly designed, non-intuitive, frustrating systems that did unexpected things or took too much time to set up
That sounds heavily under engineered, not the other way around.
What i suspect happens is, a good design gets made. It is then "improved" by the M.B.A. having class.
Then marketing gets their say, useless shit and third party add-ons sloppily slapped on top.
Enter another round of "economizing" and a perfectly good design becomes enshittified.
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I genuinely don't see the problem with those. Amber lights on the left side of the car light up, that can only mean one thing. There is no ambiguity there whether they're playing snake or just flashing. I have never, on no occasion, found myself confused by those.
I find them distracting. There are useful innovations, and there are pointless gimmicks.
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Is it possible that you're just following too close if you feel these new turn signals aren't fast enough for you to react?
Is it possible that you have not been driving for the last 35 years seeing a solid block of flashing light, so your brain is not yet hardwired to recognise that and only that?
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Huh. I think it looks kind of cool? Is it that hard to see?
It's distracting.
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Tesla, tesla lacks all of those
They don't have a physical horn? Wtf..
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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.
People do that on purpose, there’s a huge aftermarket for 10x brighter headlights.
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It's distracting.
I like it, wish mine did that
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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.
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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 band popular so the competitors just copied 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.
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No wiper controls, indicators are a touch control on the wheel...
Which are really easy to use when you have to indicate you are going to leave the next exit on a roundabout, btw.
So easy that Norway is banning the use of Teslas for driving schools.
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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 band popular so the competitors just copied 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.regardedremoved, right? -
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.
Only if mandatory rear lights come back as well. Having them animate in the direction they are going to turn is very helpful when the car has no other rear lights whatsoever.
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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.
I have a giant screen, and physical buttons for volume and air temp.
Super happy with it.
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Reversing camera
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You can prise my windscreen from my cold dead hands.
