Previously, car controls were designed so that you could find them "by feel" and not take one's eyes off the road. The radio volume and A/C knobs are the prime

Previously, car controls were designed so that you could find them "by feel" and not take one's eyes off the road. The radio volume and A/C knobs are the prime examples. With a touch screen, this is no longer possible. The benefit of a screen is the reconfigurabilty, but the curse is that the screen can be in any number of different modes, requiring the driver to take time to rescan the screen and reorient. For this reason I expect Tesla's design is less safe. It could be worse, of course--the use of the screen isn't required for more critical functions, like turn signals.