[zeedude]

It’s all about the bottom line. Touch screens consolidate a ton of otherwise expensive switch gear. Going back to physical knobs and buttons means going back to paying for engineering, assembling, testing, etc.

[civilized]

Profiting off of a less safe product that kills people could be seen as an egregious moral deficiency.

[yellowapple]

Corporations, being paperclip-maximizing automata, don't have morals in the first place, so no deficiency is possible.

[xpe]

Indeed. Not uncommon but still unacceptable.

[rTX5CMRXIfFG]

From a product and even financial standpoint, the trade-off doesn’t make sense. All the litigation that could occur due to accidents caused by a less safe design plus the reputational damage that an inexcellent product could cause to the brand sounds so expensive to me.

[ultrarunner]

It seems carmakers have situated themselves fairly comfortably regarding liability. If a car hits someone in "the road" the victim immediately becomes a "jay walker" and it's their fault. Otherwise the driver made a mistake. Otherwise the DOT is at fault. It's nearly impossible to blame automakers for the damage their products do.

A good example of this might be the lack of intuitive feedback regarding headlights. More and more, dash lights stay on despite exterior lights being off, giving the driver the impression that everything is normal. IIRC several countries including Canada are moving to require exterior lights to be on at all times now, but it boggles my mind that such a simple to understand phenomenon with so many straightforward solutions has to be solved through regulation instead of the automakers just, you know… doing better.

Still, despite a clear design defect and recognition by regulator agencies, no litigation is likely to occur.

[tshaddox]

If it was just about the bottom line, and consumers actually cared enough to be willing to pay for physical controls, then why wouldn’t there be plenty of options on the market?

[thfuran]

Designing two different sets of controls costs even more.