Here's a few more thoughts about the newer car's controls:
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/03/toyota-woes-raise-ghost-in-the-machine-fears.html#posts
And I'd like to call your attention to this particular section of the article:
"This is a slight variation of what is sometimes called the Peltzman Effect. In the 1970s, economist Sam Peltzman claimed that car safety devices could be counterproductive because they actually encouraged reckless driving. While some of his claims have been discredited, it's hard to argue that today's drivers aren’t more detached than ever from the physical act of driving. That, in turn, can contribute to unsafe behaviors. Some cars make it possible to drive 90 mph while feeling as comfortable as sitting in a living room chair.
Ease of operation=hard to control
This detachment may be playing a role in the Toyota unintended acceleration tragedies, Fisher said. For example, he said, drivers who pilot manual transmission cars are intimately aware of how to disengage their transmissions from the car's drive train by shifting into neutral, something they do dozens of times each day. But many automatic transmission drivers have never once put their car's gear box into the neutral position and have trouble performing that task in life-threatening crises.
Newer luxury cars have even more automation and ease-of-use features. The car most associated with the acceleration problem, the Lexus ES350, is particularly automated, Fisher said. It boasts push-button starting and a neutral position that's out of the driver's normal operation range.
"It's a very isolating vehicle, he said. “That makes it incredibly easy to operate, but some things, like putting the car in neutral, are not obvious."
Norman disagrees with the detachment premise, and instead blames a lack of standardization in the new feature implementation.
"It's really a design issue," he said. "Every automobile has different ways of handling these things. ... We've all experienced a situation where you are in a new car and you want to blow the horn but you can’t find it. It's the same with the on-off switch."
