Notes for auto designers

Let's talk about the driver on the interior of the car.  The dashboard has to be usable in full sun and in darkness.  Those dinky little digital displays, LED's usually, just aren't bright enough to see when the sun is shining in thru the windows.  Where as a good round dialface, with a nice bright pointer is readable day and night.  Even better would be the system we used in the Air Force.  All gauges were marked in green for their normal operating range and red for dangerous ranges.  Hence the term "redline". 
   And the cost cutters keep pushing the cheapest kind of control, a single pole single position push button.  And they make black buttons on a black control panel, with tiny little legends on the buttons.  Leaving us drivers fumbling in the dark just trying to change stations on the radio.  The radio on my car is so bad that Buick wired up a complete second set of radio controls on the steering wheel, to make it easier to use the radio.  Fine industrial design that, dual controls on a car radio.  If they just made the buttons a contrasting color to the control panel it  would help a lot.   And they could standardize those steering wheel stalks that work the wipers and washer, the lights, the turn signals, and the slushbox.   And important controls ought to be knobs that you can feel for in the dark, not pushbuttons.  For extra credit put different shaped knobs on different controls so you can tell them apart by feel in the dark.