This is the dash of the Mercedes-Benz GL-Class, which begins my rant for the day: why does expensive need to mean complicated?
I'm not singling Mercedes out here, not by any means -- it was just the picture that was handy. I could have selected a vehicle by almost every automaker out there, because almost all of them are guilty.
I remember the days when an expensive car had pretty much the same controls as a cheaper car; they were just better quality. Now, an expensive car practically guarantees that you've got to memorize a manual the size of an encyclopedia, and chances are good that there will be a few controls you'll eventually forget how to use.
In many cars, if you want to change the heater vent mode, or switch your stereo, you've got to page through a series of computer screens to get to the one you want. On many cars, there are rows upon rows of identical buttons. On one truck I drove, I counted all the buttons, starting at the driver's armrest and going over to the passenger's door. There were 83 of them. That's not a misprint: eighty-three buttons. On a vehicle that many people drive at 120 km/h.
And on top of that, so many of these systems are absolutely non-intuitive. Why is it that one manufacturer's navigation system is simple enough that I can use it without a manual, and others require me to all but take a course in how to work it? Why can't the engineers grab someone from the front office, sit them down cold in front of it, and then, if they can't work it right off the bat, make it easy?
The funny thing is that I've driven a few high-end sports cars, the type that'll do 300 km/h without breaking a sweat. And it seems that the faster they can go, the simpler their controls. So why is it that a car that's meant to be driven on a racetrack, alongside other trained drivers who are concentrating equally on the task, is simple to use, and one that's meant to be driven in rush-hour traffic looks like an airplane cockpit?
Here's the deal: if it's something I do infrequently, such as setting the rolling locks, then hide it away in a vehicle information centre (that is, in turn, easy to figure out). If it's something I'm going to be changing regularly while I'm driving, like the heater mode or the stereo volume, make it a honkin' big dial in the middle of the dash. A safe car isn't just the one with sixteen airbags. It's the one that lets me work the controls while keeping my eyes on the road.
