You can still die if the driver spends too long messing with air conditioner settings instead of focusing on the road.

CarPlay and Android Auto make this problem worse, IMO. Now you have app publishers writing arbitrarily complex UIs for cars. Spotify is a bitch to use while driving and because of Apple's reluctance to enable Siri support for third party apps, it's not very controllable by voice.

The ergonomics in question here are not about the driver being able to operate controls in a critical situation. They're about operating the controls without causing a critical situation.

If you want, you might think of radio, climate controls, etc as having negative values on the safety axis. You still want to shift them to the right as far as you can.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough about this but I was more trying to make a point that physical input is safer, and that the trend towards touchscreens in general worries me. So a return to "normal", which I guess is not so normal these days, is for me very welcome. Touchscreens in cars cause safety issues for other reasons, namely those of distraction, but my concern is what the future will look like if touchscreen normality takes the upper hand over safety concerns.

Climate control is something you will want to adjust while driving, so it should be as eyes-free as possible once the basics have been acquired.

I can’t think of a car I’ve driven where the climate control was not physical though, that seems pretty insane.

I am really sorry but foggy windshield is definitely safety critical.