--- title: "People Buying Cars Hate Touch Screens, Instead Getting Used Cars With Knobs and Buttons" description: "Many people are passing up new cars and are instead buying used vehicles because new tech like touchscreens are distracting." date: "2024-06-15" modified: "2024-06-15" authors: - name: "Sharon Adarlo" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/sadarlo" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/people-hate-touch-screens-used-cars-knobs-buttons" categories: - "Advanced Transport" tags: - "ai" - "cars" - "electric vehicles" - "the digest" --- # People Buying Cars Hate Touch Screens, Instead Getting Used Cars With Knobs and Buttons ![Many people are passing up new cars and are instead buying used vehicles because new tech like touchscreens are distracting.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Switch It Up New cars come equipped with so many eye-catching gizmos, [like large touch screen infotainment centers](), that sitting in the driver seat can almost feel like you're inside the cockpit of a [Star Trek shuttlepod](). But many drivers are passing up this vision of the future and instead buying used vehicles because, [according to *The Wall Street Journal*'s car columnist Dan Neil](), all that new tech is distracting, feels less safe, and is cumbersome to navigate compared to the [knobs and buttons of yore](). That's one reason among many why these "new-car deniers" — or "wild-eyed dissidents," as Neil also terms them — are eschewing automakers' latest offerings. And because of these myriad preferences for older models and the fact that news cars are quite expensive these days — the average has jumped to an astonishing $47,000! — the average age of American vehicles on the road has crept up to 12.6 years, Neil writes, citing [a recent S&P Global Mobility study](). In contrast, the average age was just 11.2 years back in 2012. "Change is hard, whether it’s under the hood or in the cabin," Neil quips. ## Combustion Baby Besides finding the touchscreen and other newfangled doohickeys to be distracting, Neil writes that some think — [correctly, many experts agree]() — that new cars with digital tech are surveillance machines on wheels that will snitch you to insurance companies or even [China](). Others believe newer cars aren't built as reliably as older ones. Some car enthusiasts think all that fancy hardware, and advanced driver assist programs that will do a lot of thinking for you, take away from the analog pleasure of gripping a steering wheel and driving a car as you feel the wheels kiss asphalt. "Recently my wife bought a new Toyota Highlander and it comes with a semester at MIT to learn the turn signal," retired North Carolina newspaper editor Dan Barkin told Neil. Old cars' days are numbered, especially since the trend [in some states]() and [other parts of the world]() is to the ban the sale of new cars with the internal combustion engine. But fear not, luddites, because knobs and buttons may yet stage a comeback. European car regulators recently told automakers [to bring back those analog controls]() so they could get better safety ratings. And carmakers like Volkswagen are [bringing buttons back](). And that's news so good we're tempted to [pop a wheelie]() in our old gas-powered jalopy. **More on cars**: [*Marjorie Taylor Greene Mocked for Saying the Gas Prices for Electric Cars Are Too High*]()