I have done a lot of work in this area. In commercial, industrial and aerospace applications (not automotive). If I had to summarize it to a single word I wou

I have done a lot of work in this area. In commercial, industrial and aerospace applications (not automotive). If I had to summarize it to a single word I would say touch screens are dangerous. Context is important, of course. Many have mentioned airliners with buttons surrounding a screen. That is very different from the automotive use case. For one thing, the cognitive load required to interact with a full touch screen or one with buttons and knobs around the periphery is much comparable. The difference is that pilots are able to take shift their sight and attention to the display for as long as necessary to operate it. Anything important during takeoff and landing is on a physical interface they can just reach for. Also, outside of single-seat fighter jets (which is an entirely different category) you have a copilot to assist. Anything works if there's another person who can focus on the UI while you do something else. And, of course, let's not forget that pilots have far more training on the aircraft they are flying than the average driver has on their vehicle. It isn't about experience, it's about having to pass tests to obtain qualification to operate the equipment. The problem with touchscreens is cars is that it takes a non-trivial level of concentration, focus and physical interaction to operate them. Beyond that, they are fragile. Very fragile. I don't mean in the mechanical sense (not talking about breaking them). Randomly run your hand on the surface of your iPad and see what happens. That's a fragile UI. It's OK for a tablet, where you are focusing on that task. Not OK for a vehicle where you could end-up in some undetermined state if you touch the wrong area on the screen. I've been involved in some pretty high level evaluations of touch screen technology for aerospace. The outcome is always the same: For things that matter, add dedicated physical buttons. A long time ago we worked on a project to add full touch-screen control for an industrial CNC machine. The end result was to abandon the idea completely when a mistake caused the Z axis to crash into the table at high speed, causing severe damage. As I said: Dangerous. I would argue that the issue on the road has nothing to do with being able to operate the touch screen and everything to do with potentially causing a horrible accident due to the shift in focus. I am sure accidents have already happened because of touch screens. They are probably not recorded in statistics for us to be able to understand just how prevalent this might be. I know I still see tons of people messing with their smart phones while driving on the highway, which isn't a formula for safety.