My objection to stuff on the steering wheel is that in my experience the buttons are often multifunction. I.e. a "+" and "-" button that do different things depending on a mode that is selected with some other button. Takes too much thinking while your attention should be devoted to driving.
My Mercedes is absolutely terrible at this. Having owned it for a couple of years now I still have no intuition about what most of the steering wheel buttons do. On the other hand, they get cruise control right: It's a simple stalk on the steering column. Up for faster. Down for slower. Easy to find and operate without even a glance off of the road.
If there were a few carefully chosen single-purpose buttons on the steering wheel I could maybe get on board. But if there are too many or they are multifunction then it's cognitive overload.
Yes, but also controls for things that should not even be controls. I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door. Why? Just pick a reasonable number, and don't ask me to think about it. Or if you must, put that setting somewhere out of the way so I don't accidentally fall into it when I'm driving. Or better yet, give me a switch specifically for the interior lights that I can control manually. The cars back in the 1970s did a better job with this than today's cars do.
> I can select---from the steering wheel---how many seconds the interior lights stay on after I close the door.
I don't mind this feature is somewhere deep in the menus of the driver settings area. However, if you're tripping over settings like this either the car is poorly designed or your routinely delving into settings areas you really shouldn't be in while driving.
Must be a user thing. I have an "older" Subaru (2020) and looking at the linked pictures that's pretty much what my steering wheel looks like. My 2011 did as well.
It's awesome. I've never had a better cruise control button setup than in my Subarus. They're usually slightly different by model/year but we're consistently good and easy to use without looking.
I have never accidentally while driving found any settings menu getting in the way there. Yes there buttons there that do that. But only in the same way as my 25 year ago cars did: basic settings you set once and never again and that are in those menus probably for historic reasons as they were there pre-screen being standard in the car and they just left them.
My Mercedes is absolutely terrible at this. Having owned it for a couple of years now I still have no intuition about what most of the steering wheel buttons do. On the other hand, they get cruise control right: It's a simple stalk on the steering column. Up for faster. Down for slower. Easy to find and operate without even a glance off of the road.
If there were a few carefully chosen single-purpose buttons on the steering wheel I could maybe get on board. But if there are too many or they are multifunction then it's cognitive overload.