> Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’

> Quick, look at a picture of the F-15 cockpit, and find the switch to set the LANTIRN pod from Day mode to Night mode. Now imagine you’re in a car and you can’t take your eyes off the road for more than a few seconds. That sounds easy: if it's your car, so you'll soon familiarize yourself with where the physical controls are, so you won't need to take your eyes of the road for more than a moment (if you need to at all). If it's not your car, a physical switch is no worse than a touchscreen. Navigating a screen forces you to take your eyes of the road for an extended period of time, since you need to use them to target your touch to the right part of the screen, even if you're already familiar with the UI. In short: for controls that may be used while driving, physical controls are at a minimum no worse than a touchscreen and typically much better. The only place where screens have an advantage is for extremely rarely used controls, like configuration settings. Even then, I'd argue that physical controls (like the F-15's castle button) are better for controlling the screen than using a touchscreen, since they allow a user to memorize key-press sequences. Touchscreens really only make sense on extremely small devices like smartphones.