If we want eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, we must provide head-up-display (HUD) to drivers.
HUD is not ideal for all the use cases, but it can be extremely powerful on certain tasks. For example, with HUD I had my eyes on the road and hands on steering wheel when I had to change my radio station from BBC R2 FM to DAB Jazz Radio.
Doing the same task with the iDrive was very efficient (14 seconds), but I had my eyes 5 seconds away from the road, in total, during the task. Doing the same task with the touchscreen was way too difficult both on task time and eyes off the road (I will post some data in the future).
HUD is usually an expensive optional for the customer to purchase. My opinion is that automotive manufacturers should invest more into HUD technologies (either windscreen or combiner) and start offering HUD as standard equipment.
*data collection and analysis for a personal study