> doorhandles are all intuitive

Doors maybe, but I often hear "how do you open the trunk?"

Some only open from the cabin, some have an obvious knob outside, some have a concealed knob below the registration plate, sometimes you press the company logo...

And when driving, they are downright dangerous.

Many are tempted to say "then don't operate the touchscreen when driving". But if e.g. air conditioning is controlled via touchscreen, you have little choice in case the windscreen becomes fogged while in traffic.

You should check out a mini door handle. Weird choice.

The door handles on the rear doors of my Chevy Sonic are mostly hidden. I have to show people where they are. They usually conclude that there is no handle before I get around to telling them where they are.

That said, I love the way they look, so I'm not complaining. I don't usually have passengers anyhow.

Much of that stuff has been standardized over a century. They weren't always that way on all cars.

For example, you cite the steering wheel as intuitive and obvious. It's actually not: in many early cars, there was no steering wheel. They had a "tiller" instead (a lever that you pushed from side to side to steer). There was a huge debate at the time over whether tillers or steering wheels were better. Obviously, the steering wheel won out, but if you could transport some people from 1895 to today, they'll complain that tillers should have been used instead.

The gear shifter is another example. If you drive a stick, you probably take it for granted that the gearshift is a lever in the middle between the seats. It wasn't that long ago that some cars and trucks had "3 on the column": the gearshift (manual transmission) was on the steering column. And automatic transmission gearshifts on the column persisted much longer than that; I think it took until the 90s for them to finally die out.

Turn signals aren't that obvious either; you're just used to them. My mom got a ticket in 1965 because her boss gave her his car keys to drive his car somewhere nearby. She had never driven a car before, only ridden as a passenger, but of course didn't tell him this because it would look really bad. She managed driving it ok (steering, gas), probably because she had watched others do it, but she screwed up with the turn signals and signaled the wrong direction for a turn while a cop was looking.

Most "intuitive" things aren't intuitive at all; people are just used to them because they're more or less standardized, and people have gotten used to them or have watched other people use them and learned that way. Take some primitive person from the Amazon rainforest who's never even seen a car and stick him in one (on a closed track) and see how well he figures out how to operate it. If he can't figure it out very quickly with zero instruction, then it's not "intuitive".

No, but I was learning on an 1985 Ford F150 with a 5-speed manual transmission. There were so few controls available that my lawn mower was more complex.

My 2010 F150 now has a baffling array of buttons and switches and extra levers hanging off the steering column. It's a crapshoot getting in a strange car and figuring out how the headlights and windshield wipers work in particular.

When I was a kid, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how my parents knew which way to operate the turn signals. It was to me unintuitive as the lever was operated up/down whereas the turn lights were right/left, and as on the car we had back then (a Saab 96, IIRC) the instrument panel had only a single blinking light for when either turn signal was enabled, instead of separate left and right turn signal lights.

But yeah, IIRC there has been research suggesting that cognitive load on aircraft pilots in old-fashioned aircraft (lots of separate switches and gauges) is lower than in modern aircraft with touchscreens.

Steering wheel and pedals, sure. Gearstick, mostly, although the positioning of reverse is different in different cars, and often there's a little trick to engaging it (push the stick down, or pull up a ring just under the handle). The shifter on automatics is often weird (but at least you never have to use it while driving).

Headlights, wipers, cruise control, trip indicator, window controls, A/C, radio -- all different on different cars.

Even the turn signals can vary. If I'm signalling left and want to turn it off, I expect to be able to cancel the signal by clicking the lever upwards, but I've driven cars where that causes it to signal right instead.

Ah yes. Shifters.

Have you ever driven a three on the tree? Or where is reverse on my Renault Grand Scenic, with a 6sp manual and no markings on the shifter?

And the interface is fundamentally the same, no matter who made the car.

I managed 20 years of driving without seeing the arrow, probably because I was never looking for it?

I heard it mentioned on a radio show once but they said the side the tank filler was on corresponded to the nozzle on the pump icon - no mention of an arrow.

I still didn't notice an arrow until the time the nozzle on the icon actually didn't correspond to the filler tank.

You're not the only one. I was surprised when my girlfriend didn't know it, but I can see how it wouldn't be noticed.

As other people have said, not all cars have the arrow. My first car had it, so maybe that's why I was aware of it?

In my truck you push the parking brake to engage it. It's a pedal.