Has there ever been a product segment that has removed "innovative" features because of consumer pushback? Asking in good faith, I hope it's happened, but I can't think of anything.
I think touchscreens are great in cars as long as they aren't used to replace physical controls. I bought a new Ford Maverick last year and it follows this guidance well. I can still do all the important stuff like skip tracks, tune the radio, change volume, all from both the steering wheel and a cluster of physical knobs and buttons below the touchscreen.
The touchscreen is useful for less common and more intricate tasks like GPS navigation.
Airplane cockpits and avionics are an interesting case where complex inputs are required and, to a very great extent, touchscreens are not used but rather both physical controls and where multiple options are necessary, physical keyboards.
1. It takes a lot more training to learn to fly an aircraft, in part because the controls are so complex and specialized.
2. I'm not expecting to need to type while driving. But when my car is parked, there is no real downside to just letting me use an on-screen keyboard to punch in the address for my next destination. Anything other than a keyboard would frankly require too much re-learning, and I'm not convinced would actually be safer.
3. An airplane cockpit does not need to accommodate third party software, the controls are all designed with a specific intended purpose. Stuff like CarPlay and Android Auto need UX that can adapt to fit the needs of whatever software the user wants to run on them. A touchscreen accomplishes this quite elegantly.
Legislation (fairly unlikely in the US under present trends) or massive and compelling lawsuits and settlements are far more likely to generate results.
I'm going to mention again the 1967 interview by Studs Terkel of Ralph Nader in which Nader details a prior round of reforms, largely involving safety, and the automobile industry:
As much advances as have been made, the dynamics which lead to Nader's initial campaign are still intrinsic to the capitalist-market model, and the behaviours are highly evident not only in the automobile industry but the high-tech world and much of the rest of industry as well.
(The Studs Terkel broadcast and archive at WFMT/Chicago are both absolute gems of the current Internet: <https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/>. This is a compilation of forty-five years worth of near-daily interviews with artists, activists, politicians, and most of all, ordinary people, Studs's true subject and audience.)
