Worst New Design Trend in Automotive & How It's a Fatal Distraction

We’ve seen some major changes in the auto industry recently, but there’s one trend that automakers seem to love – and that’s the big tablet-style infotainment systems replacing all our beloved physical buttons. Not only does this cheapen the feel of the interior on most vehicles, especially the higher end luxury cars – I’m looking at you Mercedes-Benz S-Class. But it also makes our roads more dangerous by creating new opportunities for drivers to become distracted.

Over the past 5 years in car infotainment screen sizes have increased on average from 6.4 inches to 7.3. That doesn’t sound like much, but rewind even 10 years ago and most cars on the market had basic radio units that just displayed the radio channel and a handful of presets. Mandating backup cameras forced OEMs to add larger colour displays to cars that otherwise didn’t have a full lcd screen.

The cheapest new car you can buy in Canada for 2025, the Hyundai Venue Essential comes with an 8 inch infotainment system, starting at $21,299, and while Hyundai hasn’t adopted the tablet formula for the interiors, other brands have jumped on board.

Tesla, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, Ford, are a few of the brands here that offer some, or all of their models with large tablet-style screens that replace almost all physical controls in the vehicle. Volvo is one of the latest, with a vehicle like the EX 30 James drove last month, with mirror and seat controls now located in the single, centre mounted screen. This also includes important driver information such as speed and turn signal indicators.

Interestingly Ford recently reverted the interior of the 2025 Explorer, opting for a smaller landscape style infotainment system, although most of the important controls like HVAC are located in-screen instead of physical.

And herein lies the problem. These tablet displays are a distraction for the driver. Not only do they offer plenty of shiny things to play with, but removing physical controls for frequently used tasks like changing the temperature or adjusting the music volume can no longer be done by feeling and must be performed by the driver taking their eyes off the road to look at where they’re pressing on a screen.

None of these all-in tablets provide a safer driving experience. They all require some level of distraction to perform basic tasks, and even a bit of distraction can kill.

The Ontario Provincial Police announced that fatal collisions in Ontario increased more than 40% in 2024 by fall compared with the previous year. Transport Canada recorded that 22.5 of fatal collisions in 2021 were caused by distracted driving, and 25.5% of serious injury collisions were due to them also. 9 Americans are killed every day from distracted driving, 20% of them aren’t even in a car.

So why do OEMs want to replace buttons with screens so badly? Cost. While the OEMs will charge an arm and a leg for a replacement infotainment screen, especially on something like a RAM 1500 which has had its fair share of issues related to the Uconnect 5 hardware, it’s ultimately cheaper for carmakers to route all vehicle controls through a customizable screen than it is to design buttons and wire them individually to the car’s computer. It allows a brand to save on designing a centre console that needs to include HVAC, radio, and even vent controls, and unifies it with one single piece of technology they can use across their entire fleet, adjusting the software based on the features the car has.

So what can you do as a consumer? The OEMs to listen, both to customer feedback after sales, and from lack of sales. We appreciate Ford’s recent change with the 2025 Explorer, offering a smaller screen to help with this problem, however without any physical buttons being re-added to the vehicle I have to assume the change wasn’t based on customer feedback, but rather a way to save cost on a smaller infotainment unit along with improved performance for Sync4 on a smaller screen. \

If you don’t want a large tablet replacing your buttons, don’t buy a car that has it. That’s the best way for manufacturers to know if their product is working or not. I think another avenue is to pressure legislators to recognize these large screens as another form of driver distraction. Fatalities are increasing every year, and these vehicles present more opportunities for concern as the industry continues its shift towards tablet-style interiors. To watch our full video on this trend and join in on the discussion, you can check out our video on the topic, the first of our new OverDrive Series here on PRN_TestDrive.