Has touchscreen technology gone too far? Euro NCAP thinks so

The use of touchscreen technology in cars is almost as polarizing as the gasoline versus battery debate. Some car manufacturers still equip their cars with hard buttons and let you use a touchscreen to control other functions, but increasingly new cars have hardly any buttons at all.

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And that shift has raised concerns among safety advocates, including those at Euro NCAP, the Belgium-based organization known for its crash testing and safety ratings. From 2026, Euro NCAP will dedicate 5 out of 100 available points in the Safe Driving rating to the presence of “intuitive, easy-to-use vehicle controls”, and suggests it may increase the weight given to these in coming years.

What that means is that cars that don’t meet certain criteria, such as the driver’s ability to activate the turn signals, hazard lights, horn, windshield wipers and eCall SOS function without prompting the touchscreen, cannot achieve a score of 100 percent. And while there is no legal requirement for carmakers to achieve top scores in the Euro NCAP tests, most are keen to keep the bodywork testing team happy as buyers pay attention to the results.

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Related: Which Car Has the Worst Infotainment System in the Industry?

It’s easy to understand why touchscreens have become so popular with automakers and buyers alike. We’re all so familiar with the technology from interacting with our smartphones dozens of times a day, and from a designer’s perspective, getting rid of finicky physical buttons makes for a much cleaner dashboard and console.

When you’re parked or stuck in traffic, touchscreens are great. They’re also useful for things like locating a position on a map – who remembers trying to do that on a pre-touchscreen Audi where moving the cursor first horizontally and then vertically was like a cross between opening a safe door and drawing a house on an etching a sketch?

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But they’re hopeless on the road, as you have to take your eyes off the road for longer than would be necessary if the same function were controlled with a hard button. And that’s if the road is slippery. Throw in some bumps and trying to tap that app icon can be like putting your key in the front door after seven pints on a Friday evening.

Fortunately, many automakers are still spreading features between screens and real buttons and dials, and improving voice activation will help with that. But some brands, like Tesla, are pushing the boundaries. The facelifted Tesla Model 3 now has no steering column levers, the turn signals are on the steering wheel (annoying when you have to activate them when you turn the steering wheel), as is one button for the windshield wipers, while the extended wiper menu and gear lever are now located on the touchscreen (with inexplicably small buttons).

With enough miles behind the wheel you would get used to that setup, but that doesn’t make it a good design or safe. As a car manufacturer, you cannot possibly claim that you have made a step forward if you redesign a control so that its operation requires more attention or time than before you started.

It feels like the overstuffed touchscreen systems that some automakers are producing now would be great in fully autonomous cars, but the problem is those cars aren’t here yet, and won’t be for years. Or are we the only ones who find cars like the otherwise excellent Model 3 frustrating? Do you think touchscreen technology has gone too far or are you happy that buttons have been relegated to history?