> Touch screens will hopefully never make it into any critical pilot systems
For one, you're too late, touchscreens are prevalent in modern avionics, and unlabeled buttons on the border of a screen that change function depending on what screen you're viewing are the second most common. The more relevant part to the Honda discussion is that there are different considerations for a car and airplane interfaces, and they are so different it's not a good argument to say "planes don't/shouldn't do this so cars shouldn't either."
The issue with a car isn't the interface, it's the fact that people look inside their vehicle for too long to fiddle with the radio. Even if the buttons/knobs could be operated entirely without looking, most people would still stare at their radio while they are doing it. Pilots learning to fly are trained to look outside after pretty much any action, they shouldn't ever stare inside the plane. They do a quick instrument scan and look outside. They glance at their chart and look outside. If they need to change frequency they do it and then look back outside. It's kind of hard to break the habit of looking outside when you start instrument training.
But most car drivers don't have the same amount of training and fixate on things inside the car, like the radio or climate controls. TBH, pilots still get fixated on things, it's just that they usually snap out of it and regain situational awareness before anything bad happens because the skies are pretty spacious. But car drivers don't have spacious roads. There's another car right next to you going 75 mph and if you drift out of your lane you'll cause an accident.
The issue isn't the design of the buttons at all. That matters to a fighter pilot, but the issue for a car driver is the fact that the screen is even on and the radio is accessible while driving down the road. The real critical safety feature would be disabling the screen while driving, and either locking out controls or only allowing voice control. But people would never buy a car that doesn't let them fiddle with the radio or stare at their little screen, so the actual safety feature that needs to be implemented won't happen.
Edit: When I say "fiddle with the radio" I'm including all activities that take place in a car's center stack- audio, navigation, climate control, etc. I'm also a pilot, have designed tests for avionics upgrades for multiple fighter jets, and own my own plane. I have lamented the introduction of touchscreens into modern avionics at a professional level and the personal level. I own three cars with varying levels of touchscreen invasion. So I've thought about the issues surrounding touchscreen quite a bit, and have concluded that the interfaces in a car are so simple that the issue isn't whether you can operate it without looking, it's the fact that people aren't trained to do so.