> It boggles my mind just how car makers thought it was safer/easier to have touch in a car while one is driving.

It is likely that neither safety nor ease of use were part of the automaker's "thought process".

It is much more likely that a first misguided "designer" created the first touch panel control and somehow sold it to "management" as being "futuristic" and/or "ahead of the competition". And once the first car model arrived with one, the rest, like firefox to chrome, felt the need to play the imitation game for fear of being seen as not as "trendy" or "futuristic" as that other guy. I.e., purely the "fashion trend" aspect.

Then, as they proliferated, the reduced BOM costs from removing every other previous mechanical control was reverse justified as the reason for continuing to add them to ever more car models.