Have you ever tried changing a setting on a sleek new car touchscreen while bouncing down the road, only to accidentally turn on the heated seats instead? It is frustrating, but worse than that, it is genuinely dangerous. For years, car brands have been burying everything inside digital menus to make dashboards look futuristic. But the safety experts have finally had enough, and a massive change is coming to protect us.
The team at Euro NCAP, who test how safe cars are, have introduced a strict new rule. From 2026, a car cannot get a top five-star safety rating unless it has physical buttons, dials, or switches for five critical things: your hazards, indicators, wipers, horn, and the SOS emergency call button. They cannot legally ban screens, but losing a star rating hurts a brand big time, so carmakers are forced to listen.
This matters because looking at a screen takes your eyes off the road for three to five seconds. If you are doing 120 km/h on the motorway, you travel about 33 metres every single second. A four-second glance means you are driving over 130 metres completely blind. That is longer than a football pitch!
Think about the classic 1993 Renault Twingo. It had a massive, bright red hazard button right in the middle of the dash. You could hit it without looking, using pure muscle memory. If you are in a stressful situation, your fine motor skills drop, and you cannot be fumbling with a digital sub-menu to find the hazards. Technology should help us drive, not distract us.
