Hacker News Reader

Comment by tensor | Hacker News Reader

Having driven a lot of cars with a fuckton of buttons on the steering wheel, how exactly do people use these without having to look down? One or two multi-function buttons connected to a screen is great, but there is no way I would be able to safely use that mess of physical buttons shown in the photos.

View on HN

By feel. Not everyone uses all the buttons all the time, but stuff you use a lot is easily operated without taking eyes off the road. It pairs well with the other upside of physical controls, the manufacturer can’t move them out from under you with a software update.

The trick is to own your car for a few years at which point you remember where the buttons are by feel.

This is the advantage over a touchscreen - you can't learn those by feel.

For frequently used things, like cruise control, just a few months needed.

I've owned such cars for many years and no, I've never learned all the buttons. Also, I'm not advocating for a touchscreen, but a small number of buttons plus a screen is far more ideal than a massive mess of buttons. This shit has always been a UX nightmare, it sucks that it's coming back.

I knew all the buttons on my steering wheel within weeks. They're very convenient because your hands are already on the wheel. Touchscreen buttons are just not a replacement.

Yeah, there's, like, I don't know, 25 buttons if you count the stalks? That's a lot I guess, but I wouldn't want to turn down my music or skip the track by looking over at a touch screen and guessing.

I normally don't look at them, you know by heart which is which and ours has also one up/down sticking out knob on each side (volume & cruise speed control). Combined with very nicely visible laser heads up display I never look on dashboard nor computer screen in the middle while driving.

Staying continuously visually connected with all environment simplifies driving and definitely improves safety. Also thanx to that heads up display I didn't get a single speeding fine while by default driving at the very limit of allowed speed, including our radar-infested towns and highways.

2010-level of tech of bmw f11 is enough for me, the only real improvement would be full unsupervised self driving which isn't coming anytime soon.

It’s not necessarily “a mess”.

I rent A LOT of cars for work and it’s clear that some makes know what the fuck they are doing(Volvo, Toyota) while others don’t.

> Toyota

Gotta be kidding me.

The touchscreen on my 2010 Prius stopped responding, I could still use the "Voice Control" button on the steering wheel. Waiting 10 seconds each time to navigate the menu by voice, hoping it heard me clearly each time.

Surely voice commands can replace buttons and touch interfaces in 2026!

You just feel around for it. Buttons on the steering wheel can be a lifesaver because you don't have to reach down or even look at it, you know what you're doing.

Usually there are a few buttons that matter to you, and you will memorize their position after some quite short time.

I don't like music while driving, so I know by feel how to mute or turn media/radio off in every car my family has.

My wife can't drive without music, so, she knows all the other media controls I don't care about by muscle memory.

Do you touch type on your keyboard without looking at and searching for letters?

Buttons on the wheel is the same. You simply learn their place and feel.

The same way you're able to touch-type

Touch typing is a standard layout. Every car is different.

Most people drive the same car everyday.

Most people drive the same car most days. Either many or most people (I don’t have stats) drive a different car some days. There’s entire companies — Hertz, Avis, etc — with business models based around this observation.

The interface changes constantly, remember? That's the whole draw of a touch screen, it can do different things, it's not static like buttons.

Somehow never learned after... ahem... multiple decades using computers professionally.

That’s the point : by memory . You don’t have to move your eyes away from street at all

They don't, it's mostly vibes plus them assuming that the "touchscreen cars" don't have some nebulous physical button that they probably do.

Speak for yourself. I can adjust all of my physical climate controls, radio, wipers, and cruise control without taking my eyes off the road. Maybe some fumbling to pick the right blower angle.

Some manufacturers have massively screwed up the cruise control buttons. On Rivians, for example, the car will instruct you to take control of steering if you will soon enter an area where it can’t do assisted steering. Fine, except that the only control that can transition directly from assisted steering to plan enhanced cruise is to jerk the steering wheel, which is distinctly uncool. So you instead cancel cruise entirely and then re-engage it.

To add insult to injury, despite the fact that the speed up and speed down buttons are actual physical buttons, they are so aggressively denounced that there’s a loop: press button, wait, press, read screen to see if you’re making progress, press, etc.

Anyway, the point is that, while physical buttons in predictable locations can make it possible to operate something without looking, it still needs a good design and implementation.

I mean "even" in a Tesla you can adjust volume, next/previous track, wipers, cruise control (among other things) with a physical button, and climate controls are in a fixed location on the screen (and are typically left on auto).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com