Euro NCAP Will Start Punishing Cars For Touchscreen Overreliance

If you’ve been anywhere near a car review in the last few years – especially one of a Volkswagen Group product of a Tesla – you’ll more than likely have encountered journalists grumbling about an increasing number of functions in car interiors being moved onto central touchscreens.

It’s not just us journos being miserable old farts afraid of progress: the mass movement away from physical buttons is not only an example of the worst kind of design – that which pays zero attention to functionality – but it’s potentially dangerous.

Forcing a driver to have to avert their eyes from the road and jab at menu upon menu to do something as simple as change the temperature of the heating – or in some extreme cases, even the direction the air vents are pointing – is not just poor ergonomics and shoddy design, it’s a genuine distraction for someone whose attention should be solely focused on the task of operating two tonnes of rolling metal.

Luckily, Euro NCAP, the Europe-wide car safety organisation best known for smashing brand-new cars into massive concrete blocks, agrees. Over the last few years, its rating system has started punishing cars that lack active safety measures intended to prevent crashes from happening, and its next target is the distracting touchscreen.

From 2026, cars won’t be eligible for a five-star Euro NCAP safety rating unless five key functions are controlled by physical buttons or switches: indicators, hazard warning lights, windscreen wipers, horns and SOS call functions.

To be fair, the vast majority of cars haven’t yet reached the stage of burying all these core functions within a screen, but it was surely only a matter of time before someone tried it. While this move isn’t a legal requirement, it will deter manufacturers from taking the touchscreen too far.

So, bravo Euro NCAP for recognising what plenty of car makers don’t seem to be able to. Now if you could just broaden this measure to include, well… pretty much everything, that’d be tremendous.