I think it is an elegant solution (only allow ONE thing to be controlled by the touch screen at a time), however will require a lot of learning and remembering to get used to all the different gestures.
From the article:
"even when our participants weren’t performing tasks associated with the touchscreen, their eyes were still drawn away from the road and towards the screen"
So even with a good UI a screen is still distracting drivers.
The problem with smartphones is that you never know whether a new push notification will appear or not - a message, an interesting news article, a hot deal - so the screen is always loaded with the possibility of bringing something new and interesting. That’s why I switched off email notifications. Messages are not happening so often for me that I check all the time.
A car‘s dashboard should IMO never show push notifications.
I know initially people's eyes will be drawn to the screen to check whether they are manipulating the right parameter etc., but over time, I would expect that the hand will just drop to the screen, (multi) touch and move without eyes having to leave the road.
For an extremely simply example, take the headlight control in my car [0]. Thanks to the tactile click, I can feel that the control has responded to my input. Not only that, but it is near impossible to fumble and accidentally set it incorrectly. When people talk about touchscreens in their car, I like to tell them to imagine this switch was a completely smooth disc, could spin 360 degrees, and gives no resistance when turned. Now, try setting it to one of the 3 settings without looking at it.